Not trying to hijack your thread (he says while in the process of hijacking your thread) but I just added another part to a software suite that I have that unlocks some real and usable capabilities in synthesis with the other parts.
Below, I’ll attach a photo of my Grandmother and Father taken in 1924 +/- 1. I found it years ago in an old suitcase and have since made various and some fairly significant efforts at restoration. But the latest software, Topaz Gigapixel, made a 102 year old heavily degraded B&W portrait look like is just came out of a modern studio.
Since the original, I’ve run it through 2 other Topaz filters that function as a plug-in Photoshop. The programs will function as standalone programs too. The Topaz filters are Denoise AI, Sharpen AI and Gigapixel. Currently Topaz has gone to a subscription basis and they would want $200/month. The devil with that. If you hunt, you can buy them standalone for $30-$40 each and they plug into PS to function integrally.
I would describe the specific process but the result would remind me of when, while in engineering school, a professor had me stand up in class and demanded that I describe in detail my critical path analysis of a multi-hundred item sequence. The description did/could not make sense on an element by element verbal description, and was an obvious waste of everyone’s time.
I’ll attach the finished shot first, you can tell it was the 1924 equivalent of a studio portrait. Whenever I look at this shot, what pops (no pun intended) into my mind is a very short 20 years later, my Dad, as a West Point grad, was a Platoon Commander in the 101st Airborne was in a desperate and murderous fight with the Germans in Normandy. It’s hard to look at the little fat faced cherub and equate that immanent reality.
My knowledge from both a personal and professional level indicate that the Georgia DOT is well funded, efficient and competent. Lord only knows the crisis level if that were not the case. Pure traffic density is the issue.
The density problem was significantly purposefully created by supposed “environmental” groups. The effects of the rapidly developing increasing traffic density has been easily extrapolated for decades. In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s a number of projects were proposed to head it off to a significant degree. But, each project was sued into non-existence in Federal court , one by one. Every suit was brought and financed by non-regional environmental groups ultimately financed by, nobody knows. The Sierra Club was the front group for several suits. Whatever the ultimate purpose of the suits was it did not include the well being of the citizens
The biggest hit was an outer perimeter to route non-local traffic, both E-W and N-S entirely bypassing metro Atlanta. I75, I85, & I20 all intersect in the middle of Atlanta constituting a large portion of the total. But noooo. Several other major projects were killed.
You would not believe the competency the GDOT call on to plan and execute MAJOR infrastructure projects. This bunch in FDOT District 3, not so much. They make what would be a 4-5 month project in Atlanta Metro last for literally years. And in the face of rapidly increasing traffic density, the local FDOT’s traffic light timing and coordination is absurdly bad.
I was “involved” with the industry for some time and before I retired couldn’t open my mouth publically.
Picture below: Ga 400 entering Buckhead area of the city on a Sunday morning. Buckhead was the area in the news a couple of years ago that tried to secede from Atlanta due to non-protection from the APD from the hoards of inner city predators.
<a data-flickr-embed=”true” href=”https://www.flickr.com/photos/tomd77/21935250858/in/datetaken/” title=”Into the belly of the beast”><img src=”” width=”2048″ height=”1477″ alt=”Into the belly of the beast”/></a><script async src=”//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
Just happened to be near the Port of Pensacola yesterday and saw this.
This is a Gulf of USA (Mexico?, can’t get used to that) open water oil drill rig. It Is not a ship, it is built on a barge and towed to location. The drill rig has been in port for a few weeks for maintenance and repairs.
We have a years long history of getting some strange looking oil field boats in port for refit. If you look at the bow (left side of the image), you can see the helipad used to get workers on and off.
This rig can drill 35,000 feet deep. Hope the workers speak Chinese.
I’m definitely not a Naval Architect and I can’t fathom (to coin a phrase) how this can remain upright when loaded with the drill heads, pipe and whatever else is hanging on up there while in a 10′-15’+ sea.
I’ve long been an avid photographer and have, on a number of occasions, been paid for my work. My actual profession is (was) Civil Engineer and Project Management in the construction industry.
I have 2 cameras for different functions, a smaller, lighter and cheaper “carry around” camera to have with me for targets of opportunity and a larger, heavier and more expensive camera that I use for shoots and studio work. The specific cameras that I use have changed over the years but have followed that format. Currently, the small/light/less expensive roll is covered with a Sony A6600 which retails for in the $1600 range without lens though you could get a good used one for a little more than half that. The larger camera is currently a Sony A7RV, which are retailing in the $3300 range without lenses. Notice both are Sony. Because of the cost of the lenses which will only fit that brand camera, once you start with a brand (Sony, Nikon, Canon, Fuji, Fuji, etc.), you tend to stay with it. No way on earth am I gonna start over on a lens collection, which cumulatively over time can represent far more money than the bodies, if you’re a fanatic. Most normal people can buy one good multipurpose lens and live happily ever after.
I’ve notice that I shoot as many of my favorite shots with the A6600 as with the A7R5 and really haven’t noticed much in the way of quality differences between the two, so I decided to do a test. Shoot the same object with both cameras while eliminating or adjusting for as many of the variables as possible. Then taking the images to do a side by side to see the actual differences between the camera images.
Below is a picture of the two cameras side by side wearing typical lenses.
Here’s how I set it up:
All shots were taken from a tripod
I put the subject, an old Rollei camera on a wood tripod in my yard, in the shade.
The same lens was used on both, a 90mm f2.8 Sony branded macro.
ISO was set to 400. I should have set it to 100 but———
The shots were manual mode 5 sec timer to eliminate camera shake, f5.6, 1/100th sec
Focus was center
For technical reasons, the effective magnification of any given lens is different depending on the sensor size of the camera. To keep the included image the same, I had to move the tripod to equalize a 1:1.5 magnification difference. The shooting distance was 9’ for the A6600 and 6’ for the A7RV.
There were no post production modifications, the images were straight out of the camera as RAW files.
The original images are far too large (24 meg and 70 meg respectively) to put on the net so these images have been changed to jpegs at a more usable file size. But still with no modifications.
Results
The images are below, with the top being from the A6600 and the bottom the A7R5.
Looking at image quality, there is very little detectable difference. There is a slight difference in white balance and color saturation but I easily and commonly alter any of those attributes in a few seconds with Photoshop. The bokeh is slightly different mostly because ASP-C cameras all have a slightly greater depth of field than full frame. That’s due to optical physics, not camera quality. Usually, you have to shoot an ASP-C camera 1 stop lower to match full frame bokeh.
Looking at image resolution (sharpness), below is a side-by-side isolation of the camera face. Just above the top lens is printed “Made in Germany” in small (less than 1/16’’) print. In addition, there is the company logo on the bottom lens with the line thickness in the 1/100” range. If I was required to choose a clear winner, I would have to bore in to the point that the test would have no relevance to what most of us do. Astronomers, perhaps.
The image from the A6600 is on the left and A7Rv on the right
Conclusion:
I really don’t see any substantial differences in image quality I have no doubt that the differences are there but only at levels that would make it moot for the great majority of people. My self too, probably though some of my studio work pushes it hard enough that I’ll keep the full frame.
If you and a friend go on a shoot armed with one of these cameras, given close to equal skill levels, who ever has the best lens is going to get the best images.
Here’s a parallel: For a number of years in my native Atlanta, my profession commonly had me evaluating old abandoned buildings in the downtown area. I was usually by myself and there was almost always lots of evidence of “tenants”. I’m ex-Marine and life time competitive shooter in several different disciplines, so I commonly carried a weapon. When anyone asked my for my recommendation on the best carry pistol, I would reply, “The one you’re most likely to have with you.” That works in cameras too.
Given the marginal differences in image quality between the two formats coupled with the anything but marginal differences in camera weight, size, camera costs, lens cost, & camera portability, it’s hard not to conclude the ASP-C format is superior for 90% of the population. There are advantages to full frame, making large prints for example. A full frame camera will usually be better at low light, high ISO situations such as indoor sports, concerts, night time street photography, some wedding shots, etc. I’ve gotten some indoor shots at an ISO of 12,000 that look fine right out of the camera. An APS-C would be close (at least) to useless at that ISO.
This is based on Sony because that’s what I have but you can get equivalent models with equivalent performance at equivalent price from any of the major camera makers. I also recommend exploring the used markets. Skip Ebay though and look at major camera dealers like B&H or Adorama. Cameras these days are engineered to make it well past 100,000 snaps. An average photographer shoots, what, 1000/year?
Cell phones? Cell phones make decent snapshots but if you want a photograph— Also, cell phones do fairly well as long as the conditions are ideal but the images degrade rapidly otherwise. Then, there is no adjustability. Say, you’re shooting photos of mostly still subjects and everything is fine but later you want to shoot something moving, maybe rapidly. You’re SOL. Cell low light capability truly sucks.
Better a cell than nothing but if you aspire to more.
Below is a sample of one of my high rez product photos taken with a full frame. This is one of a series on Mexican coins taken for a online dealer.
The picture I posted is of an old late 70’s era lens for a film camera. It looks a little grungy but I haven’t touched it in well over 20 years.
This lens has a feature that all lenses had at the time but not any more and I don’t know why. It is called “depth of field preview”. This is set up at f4. See the 2nd ring out from the body? It has the straight vertical orange line with the little 4, 8, 11, 16 on each side of the vertical. Notice that the lens is now focused between 10 and infinity (meters). Now look down at the 4’s on each side of the orange vertical. They show that the camera will be focused from around 10 meters to infinity. That explains your shot above.
The DOF preview also tells you that if you were shooting f16, you would be focused from roughly 4 meters to infinity.
To this day I miss this feature. But I guess that it requires too much thinking (read any) for today’s public.
UPDATE:
I should mention that this camera is a Canon AE 1 from sometime in the late 70’s. It was an auto exposure (AE) but you still got to set ISO and shutter speed, and not to mention focus vis a split image distance finder.
(Quick historical aside: split image was the principle optical range finding method for most naval gunnery prior to radar. If you’ve ever seen the zagged warship camouflage paint schemes from WWI and up to mid-war WWII, the purpose was to defeat or eliminate the effectiveness of split image range finding. It gives you no clear planes to match up.)
I had a main camera before the AE1, a Nikon F1, a pure manual camera though it did include a “match needle” for setting shutter and f stop. Before match needles, we had to carry a light meter on a cord around our necks. Things were definitely manual but that meant that you had to have an understanding of all of the elements involved and how they related.
I learned to shoot with my Dad’s single shot 1934 depression era .22 bolt action. No magazine. In order to shoot, you had to, open the bolt, take a single .22 round, insert it in the chamber. close the bolt, pull back the firing pin, aim and fire. Just like having to set all the elements of a photograph, this little production meant that the shooter had no instant backup and had to think about about what he was doing, and understand.
I remember trying to teach my stepson how to shoot with a Ruger 10-22, an autoloader. The 1 lesson was a disaster. With all the easy backup rounds, he had no motivation to absorb the elements that go into a successful shot and just start spraying to little effect. All further lessons until he was a fundamental shooter were with Dad’s old Winchester single shot. Or as I was later pounded into us in the Marine Corp, “sight alignment, trigger squeeze”. I already knew but I did qualify Expert using a M14.
Successful photography is a balancing lesson between a number of variables. Until you learn those variables, one by one and how they interrelate——–
If you’ve ever been into cameras you’ll notice occasional affinity between a particular camera and lens combo. One such pairing is my #2 camera, a Sony a7IV, a Tamron 70-300 f5.6 zoom. The shots are crystal clear, the colors vibrant and a nice smooth bokeh (the out of focus area). The lens isn’t expensive as things go these days but I consistently get great results.
