Windowed Resolution - will I lose light?

[Simon Shasha]

Hey guys, I've gotten my head around the windowed resolution of Scarlet (thanks to Phil Holland's amazing post here: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?66210-Scarlet-X-Data-Sheet). But I was just wondering, if I shoot at anything below 4K, will my image suffer in low-light situations due to less of the sensor being used?

Thanks in advance to any replies :smile:

 

[Terry VerHaar]

Can't see why that would make a difference; same amount of light hitting each photo site. Think of it as shooting 4K and then cropping in post.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Yes and No. Yes it'll be noisier so higher ISOs will be less appealing. No, you won't clip at a lower intensity.

With 4k you can supersample 4 pixels per 1080p pixel. The result is that several noisy pixels will average out to 1 cleaner pixel.
With 2k you can't supersample so the noise inherent to each pixel will contribute all of its variability into the final picture.