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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

2/3" fixed lens Scarlet as stills camera

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Tim Young

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I'm sure this has been discussed before, but I couldn't find it. I'm sorry if it's been belabored already or was right in front of me. What's the word on what we can expect from the 2/3" fixed lens Scarlet as far as being a stills camera? I think I remember seeing that it would be 4MP or so? I just saw a post from Jared saying that it should definitely be considered a DSMC. Anyone know how large a 4MP still can reasonably be blown up?
 
I've always worked with the standard that 5mp was the minimum for an 8x10 at arms length, with 8mp being the standard. I've blown up 3mp images to 8x10's without any real problem, though, and I'm sure the image qual on the Scarlet will more than hold its own and blow up well.

That said, it's important to remember that the brain by itself is being claimed to be around 5 pounds. So the only realistic use as a still camera might be tripod (ie studio) use.
 
Tim Young said:
Anyone know how large a 4MP still can reasonably be blown up?
Click to expand...

People go to film theaters all the time and sit 10 feet from a 50-foot screen and watch an image with about 720p resolution (depending on the focus of the projector and quality of the release print). That's less than 1 MP. For a 50-foot display.

Still images are sometimes held to a higher standard, but I've seen exhibition prints (20x30) made with just 2 MP.

So if you want to find the very bare minimum before the poor resolution just makes viewers hate you with a burning passion, I'd probably say about 1 MP, but 2 MP is safer. 4 MP is plenty.

On the other hand, if you want to find the *maximum* amount of resolution; the point where adding more resolution would make no difference in the print; that is a different question: I'd say about 19 MP for an 8x10 with little post processing, and 45 MP for an 8x10 with all full post processing options exercised:

* [10.4 MP] 8x10 @ 360ppi
* [12.4 MP] Cropping from 3:2 for aspect ratio
* [13.2 MP] 3% crop for the 95% viewfinder that didn't match the file.
* [19.0 MP] 10% crop on all sides for a better composition.
* [32.1 MP] 30% increase in resolution to remove OLPF blur.
* [42.8 MP] Sufficient resolution for ideal rotation/aberration correction and OLPF contrast
 
Tim Young said:
I'm sure this has been discussed before, but I couldn't find it. I'm sorry if it's been belabored already or was right in front of me. What's the word on what we can expect from the 2/3" fixed lens Scarlet as far as being a stills camera? I think I remember seeing that it would be 4MP or so? I just saw a post from Jared saying that it should definitely be considered a DSMC. Anyone know how large a 4MP still can reasonably be blown up?
Click to expand...

Megapixels are great for marketing, as the pixel count grows exponentially even when perceived resolution only grows linearly.

The difference between i.e. 9,5 MP and 5.3 MP sounds big, as if the first was twice as big as the second... there are roughly twice as many pixels, yes, but it's also the same as scaling the image to 75% size in photoshop: a 25% reduction in width.

Unsurprisingly, I used 4K and 3K, 16:9 aspect ratio images in the example above... 4096*2304 and 3072*1728 (not sure if this is the exact size of 2/3" Scarlet's 3K sensor, but the latter should be close).

The 3K image should print at roughly 10 inch width at pristine-ish 300 ppi, 20 inch width at still-very-usable 150 ppi (assuming no cropping etc.).
 
Here are some stills of my daughter I shot at 2k on the RED One camera with a 16mm Angenieux 17.5-70mm F2.2. I shot these wide open so they aren't tack sharp unfortunately. 2k, 24fps, ISO 320, 1/48 shutter, Build 20. Added a bit of curve in REDCINE-X, no sharpening, and output a full res .tiff file (REDCINE-X makes this really easy, btw).

The 2/3" Scarlet will be the same sensor size as the RED at 2k but will be even higher resolution.

Right click on the images and "save link as" for the 13mb TIFFs.



 
Thanks for the responses everyone.

Justin, those are great photos! Very cute little one you have. Have you tried to blow any of them up? Basically, I'm wondering if stills from a fixed 2/3" could be blown up to about 20x30 and still look good. I'm not a pro photographer, but I enjoy enlarging my photos and mounting them to display in the house. 20x30 is about as far up as I've gone. It's time for me to move up to a better camera since my Canon Rebel is getting worn down (after a year in Spain, a month in Peru, and years of abuse at home, I can't get the CF card out anymore), but seeing as I'm going to get a fixed lens Scarlet eventually, I'm just throwing around the idea of waiting for it and holding off on the new DSLR. Which makes Daniel's comments about 20x30 with 2 MP interesting. Maybe it will work to replace a DSLR for someone like me.
 
Tim Young said:
Justin, those are great photos! Very cute little one you have. Have you tried to blow any of them up? Basically, I'm wondering if stills from a fixed 2/3" could be blown up to about 20x30 and still look good. I'm not a pro photographer, but I enjoy enlarging my photos and mounting them to display in the house.
Click to expand...

Photos on the wall don't need to be as tack sharp as images that are to be printed in magazines etc., as they're not normally watched from close distances. They should look sharp enough even at pretty big sizes.
 
That makes sense. I hadn't thought of it that way.
 
My old Olly E20 was 5Mp (Though 4:3) with a roughly 2/3" sensor and 8x6 prints were fine, main failing being short tonal scale, even A4 was acceptable.
So for some situations I think a fixed 2/3 may be all I need for stills, while for others I'll need a FF DSLR, perhaps a hypothetical Canon EOS 3D or 5DIII.
Dave
 
My dslr is an ancient Konica-Minolta dynax 5d with 6MP and while it's exceptionally bad at taking good pictures I always seem to look for more tonal range, better high-iso performance, faster raw shooting, but never have I really felt that I need more megapixels in there to take better pictures. So I guess the 8x scarlet should do just fine for me(and others who aren't expecting the world from it)
 
here is a sample from a Leica Digilux 2, a 5mp 2/3" sensor camera.

254247911_48af093353.jpg
 
Before I owned my first dslr, I remember renting a Fuji FinePix S1 that had 3.4 megapixel images. I used a 14mm lens to capture some nice architectural images for one of my clients. They wanted the images output as 24" x 18" posters. Photoshop (and programs like FractalPro) do an excellent job interpolating pixels for images that need to be enlarged. The key is having enough quality pixels to start with. And Scarlet will provide that for sure.

My only concern with the 2/3 sensor isn't resolution but the difficulty in getting that coveted shallow depth of field with pleasant bokeh. I wish I knew math enough to know how to figure out the DOF properties we could expect from the 2/3 Scarlet with the fixed lens. I've seen charts and actually have an iphone app that calculates DOF for various DSLRs and various lenses. But even a Nikon with it's smaller sensor (compared to FF35) is still twice as large as a 2/3 sensor. But the large aperture on the fixed Scarlet may be able to compensate somewhat for it's diminutive sensor.
 
Andy Roberts said:
My only concern with the 2/3 sensor isn't resolution but the difficulty in getting that coveted shallow depth of field with pleasant bokeh. I wish I knew math enough to know how to figure out the DOF properties we could expect from the 2/3 Scarlet with the fixed lens.
Click to expand...

The DOF difference is about 2,5 stops. So, at fixed scarlet's full open T2.4 (assumed), you should get roughly similar DOF as an APS-C or S35 cameras have at f5.6. Maybe a little shallower, as T2.4 lens might actually be something closer to f2 or f2.2 than f2.4.
 
Eki Halkka said:
The DOF difference is about 2,5 stops. So, at fixed scarlet's full open T2.4 (assumed), you should get roughly similar DOF as an APS-C or S35 cameras have at f5.6. Maybe a little shallower, as T2.4 lens might actually be something closer to f2 or f2.2 than f2.4.
Click to expand...

Thanks. That helps. I'll do some experimenting with my Nikon D300 at f5.6 to see what I might expect from a 2/3 Scarlet.
 
Andy Roberts said:
My only concern with the 2/3 sensor isn't resolution but the difficulty in getting that coveted shallow depth of field with pleasant bokeh. I wish I knew math enough to know how to figure out the DOF properties we could expect from the 2/3 Scarlet with the fixed lens.
Click to expand...

Watch Slumdog Millionaire, that was shot on a 2/3" camera :emote_popcorn:
Trying to "calculate" the dof and fov values is silly, no number is going to give you a good idea on what a picture from a camera is going to look like.
 
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