Michael - hoisted on his own petard.

Yes – and sometimes it's necessary.

Michael

The way I see it, the quality of "100% crops" is the only pressure the manufacturers gets to keep the pixels at a reasonable size. The only ones who could possibly put a 1um^2 pixel on a fullframe DSLR to good use are the people in the marketing department.

To keep them at bay we need to look at the pixels and tell them "your 864 megapixels stinks worse than my breakfeast".

If they can not make their pixels have a high quality, stop making them. Bin them at high ISO or something, but do not pretend that the engineers won the battle with the PR department.

Well,

We can post bitmaps on the net, prints are a bit hard. It's also very difficult to compare images, even prints, because much depends on viewing distance, contrast and other factors. My suggestion is:

Shooting under controlled conditions and making reproducible images is helpful.
Best way is to release raw files, that way anyone can print the images to taste and draw conclusions.

Best regards
Erik

But! But! -- If I get you right then it depends on what printer, what viewing conditions, what paper, what processing you apply to the image, etc, etc..

I agree that 100% doesn't tell the whole story but it *informs* more than anything else as long as you know what you are looking at ..

I *know* from looking at a 24TSEmk2 image from a 5dmk2 at 1005 that it will look sharp in the corners (sharper than a 17-40). Would I be able to get this information from a 10x8 print on a dye sub printer? No! Will I get this information from a 40x60" print from a 5Dmk2? probably..

What you definitely have with a 100% view is *all of the information that you have* - it's up to you to interpret what this means. In a print, you have *one interpretation* of the results. If this is your interpretation then it is significant but if it isn't your interpretation then it's fairly useless...

Anyway - just defending the *pointless* practise of using 100% images as part of purchase consideration (for instance)

Tim

http://www.timparkin.co.uk

No, the point isn't to turn the print into a means of technical measurement. Anything but.

What I was trying to get at is that it's what ends up on the final print (however it's made) that is the ultimate arbiter. If I can see the difference in the final work of art, then the difference is meaningful. If I can't, then it may be there but of only academic interest.

Michael

Michael,

Do you have any way to describe what you can see in a print? I see only two solutions:

1) Distribute the "RAW"
2) Make "objective" measurements

Best regards
Erik

Another consideration:

More and more photographs -- even good photographs -- are "monitor only." Advertising and news people are jamming more and more photographs onto the net...one reason that newspapers are failing. "Wall art" photographs are exceptions, and a tiny percentage of the photography business. That means that we are developing a new monitor-based aesthetic, and somebody, somewhere, should really be working hard on a system to maximize the quality of monitor-based photographs. I think we are not far from the day when most monitors will look like the current Mac cinema displays, and that putting up an 18x24 inch photo will be perfectly feasible. While you can't tell what you need to know about a print photo from looking at a monitor, the reverse may also be true -- that the camera and technique qualities that make a good print may not make a good monitor photo.

More and more top-end fine-art photographers seem to be displaying their photos in back-lit boxes, almost as if they are driving toward monitor displays. The whole aesthetic of internally-lit photos is shifted when the skies can actually be bright, as opposed to light-colored.

I know this isn't what MR is doing, but more and more people are...

Hi,

Monitors are like 2 Mega Pixel devices. So if we shoot for monitors everything will do..., The person behind the lens still matters!

Best regards
Erik

Well, lets see, a P65+ back will give you 60.4 MP and 8976 x 6724 pixels. Currently, my 30" display can show 2560 x 1600 pixels. That means to show my full frame crop on the display I would have to downsample it by 3.5x.

That's the fallacy of that argument...even a 6.3 MP at 3072 x 2048 would need downsampling to display on a 30" display.

Ok, my iPhone at 1.9 MP and 1600 x 1200 pixels would be insufficient. Shucks...I guess I won't be able to get by using my iPhone...

Again, Michael's point is that evaluating an image at 1:1 tells you nothing about what the image will look like printed nor downsampled for display/web use. Image sharpness and noise get substantially impacted by any size interpolation–fact is, downsampling is a great way of reducing noise.

If you have an LCD the adds are you'll be seeing close to 100 PPI. If you print out at 300 PPI, what you are seeing on the display is 3X the size when you look at the image at 100%. If you reduce the image even to 50% the image will be too large on the display and you'll be looking at the image with a low resolution. The only way to truly evaluate an image for print is to print it on the printer and medium you'll be using (with the proper image sharpening of course!)

And, until we get displays in the range of 180-220 PPI, the computer display will simply be a very poor gauge for the detail you'll be able to expect in print. Smaller displays like the iPhone actually do have 180 PPI which makes them look really good. heck, color management is far easier and more advanced than image detail...

YOUR error is to think I'm making an argument. I'm not. I'm describing a situation. A newspaper provides professional journalists with professional editors making carefully judged selections of the important news of the day. They're failing. In the meantime, some blogger who's pulling his opinions out of a place where the sun don't shine, becomes famous. That's a situation, not an argument.

A cell phone won't make the best possible video display shots because the lenses and responses are crappy.
You talk about your P65+, I'd like to see you take your P65+ onto a photo platform in the endzone of a football stadium and zoom from a full view to the player's face down on the field...you can't, because you don't have the $70,000 lens needed to do that.

The point being...maybe you've got the wrong equipment for the developing aesthetic. Maybe you've got the 21st century equivalent of the best glass-plate negative camera after the arrival of film. Maybe what we need are highly refined 4mp cameras that will shoot both video clips and stills with very strong tracking zoom lenses, at ISO104,000, because that's what monitors need. And you don't have one...but you may get one.

JC

I liked the rant, Michael. Thanks for posting it.

"I alternately chuckle and get steamed up when I read someone on a web forum either condemn or praise a camera or lens based on a web images. This is utter nonsense."

Agreed; there are very few lens/camera issues that can be evaluated from such small images: bokeh, distortion, flare, perhaps a few others.

A refreshing rant and one I entirely agree with. Thanks.

Amusing to see how this is now being debated... chuckle

Oddly enough if all you need is a 4"x5" halftone output, the iPhone (if the original is well shot) can produce an image roughly equal to the 60 MP P65+ back. From the end zone, perhaps the optics of the Mamyia 6x4.5 system is limited...could shoot from the sidelines though.

I always get a kick out of photographers talking "video". Different beast, different skill set. You don't shoot video with the expectation of successfully pulling great still frames. Nor can a videographer really appreciate a still, unmoving frame. Two different art forms.

Greetings from Ireland,

I experience a great deal of frustration in trying to create pictures for web, one reason is that I did not manage to get across the point of "This is how the print will look", at all, and frankly I gave up on it.

I always wondered about Alain's 600 pixel pics and was tempted to believe I need a much bigger size to represent my work, but as a matter of fact, in this case, bigger ain't better.

Someone who has printed himself a lot, well he probably has a better judgement of what this shiteRGB will look like on Hahnemuehle Bamboo ____fill in paper of your choice, but that is only because he has printed himself a lot, which is not true for the average client who will purchase a print of course.

As for stereotype 100% pixel show me your noodle attitudes all over internet foras, well, yeah, it is really amusing isn't it.

I guess the question remains, what can we do to showcase final print quality in better ways with the given technology? Anything at all?

Posting a A4 size demo of a possible 40"x60" print on the same paper probably has more of an impact than anything that even the very best 30" screens can reproduce.

As for pixelpeepers, I suggest a can of Hahnemuehle protective spray to be applied three times, let screen dry for 10 minutes and turn 90 degress before you apply the next layer, onto the 129.99 Dollar wallmart HD ready before judging final sharpening. ....ahem, no offence, just could not resist....

It is amazing how many articles appear on this website just as I start to consider the very subject.

Recently an Epson 7900 arrived in my Studio and I have worked very hard on my prints, pushing some 35 mm file (D2x and D700) to twice their previous size (24x16 being the largest I've gone so far.) The results have made me very happy and are a step or two up from the B9180 (for my eyes anyway)

But onto the topic. Last weekend I was part of a studio tour in Prince Edward County, Ontario with many people visiting my studio and viewing my prints. They were absolutely amazed when I showed them 100% crops on my screen and then the print, they could not believe how ugly 100% screen crops can look. Some folks did pixel peep the prints, (and gave good comments) but most just let themselves become immersed in the experience of viewing reasonable sized prints. No-one said that is a B9180 print and that one an Epson, although the size generally would give them away.

And for that very reason I am about to revamp my websites and remove my art most of my art images and produce just an online catalogue, leaving my website for my commercial work, much of which is destined for the web anyway.


Steven

While I agree fully with Michael's point, it misses the much more important rant: what on earth is the point of 10+ megapixel point&shoot cameras, 20+ megapixel dSLRs and 50+ megapixel MFDBs when 99.999999% of all photography is only ever seen on the screen? I'm fully aware LL is in large part for and of fine art photographers, but out in the real world people don't do prints beyond a 4x5 (that's inches, not feet). And that's a dying art as well. Even those who hang pictures are moving towards digital picture frames. Printed magazines are going extinct, and Kindle 5, Sony Reader 7 or disposable digital paper will kill the last few which remain. A slow, painful uncalibrated 72 dpi sRGB screen at a time.

Sure, we'll have affordable and large 300dpi screens eventually. Then again, current trend seems to be pushing video and 3D stills rather than screen resolution, so the 5DII and P65 owners might be out of luck for quite a while.

Now, I have a 80cmx80cm MF shot I made on my wall and will have more after I move, and like a good print as much as most others here. I even go to exhibitions. But I and especially the average LL forumite is hardly the standard, even in the industry. Just how many photographers get their living from prints, and how many of those out of prints larger than a magazine spread? 20%? 10%? 1?

It's not only us, though. Canon, Nikon, Sony, Hasselblad, Phase, etc. need to wake up. I've ranted elsewhere about the lack of innovation in the industry which I won't rehash here.

My point here is that what you can show on the web is all that matters in 99.99999% of the cases. If you can't produce work which looks stellar on a 72dpi screen, you're shit. Unfortunately the photographer has almost zero control of how their work is seen on an uncalibrated 5-year-old LCD through color mismanaged Internet Explorer. I presume that's why we have so many ghastly HDR, prickly oversharpened, surypy oversaturated, morbid draganized, overvibranciated and too much frigging local contrast enhancement*, making your average day even on most fine art sites like a nightmarish stroll through a kitschy version of Alice In Wonderland - but perhaps I give too much credit to the photographers thinking it's not their fault.

For photographers this means that we should urge hardware manufacturers and software developers to move to aRGB (or wider) color standard, make monitors and cameras factory-calibrated and "good enough" (no one calibrates outside this audience), create fully color-aware workflows which don't require an IT degree to implement, and write web browsers which consistently, correctly and by default use color profiles. I know these are mostly pie-in-the-sky dreams, but I'd much rather have companies spend my investments on those, rather than putting frigging microprisms or goddamn AA filters on my frigging cameras.

Ooh, it feels good, ranting.

* I swear if Lightroom made Clarity scale go to 11 people would still ask for 12. _{And yes, I know it goes to 100.}

"I would feel less riled up about this if it wasn't for the fact that I encounter people almost daily that come to my gallery and say, "I can't believe how different your images look in prints to how they look on your web site." It's almost as if these folks are reading from the same script. Talking to other photographers who both show their work online and then in large prints, I hear the same thing; how people can't believe the differences. In fact I know quite a few widely exhibited fine art photographers who refuse to show their images online because they feel that this misrepresents how their work should be seen."

Boom goes the petard indeed!

Surely these folks are expressing their surprise/frustration with small monitor images and their inability to represent the print, just like you and other respondents. It's no different than trying to put together on on-line catalog for e.g., a painting exhibition, is it? Why would one be surprised that the real thing is so different from the small thingy in the brochure? So the reaction is to replace them with, what, names? Is that an improvement? "Hi I'm a photographer - here's my website: a text file of my titles and word descriptions of the images" Of course the fine art photographer's work is meant to be seen as prints, but it doesn't exist if people don't know about it - and if it's not on the internet then a lot of people just won't know about it - whether we like that situation or not. I don't understand the rile factor here: If they are fine art photographers (or aspire to be) and have made large prints themselves, they'll already know the deal. If they're not and they're unfamiliar with large prints, such as yours, they'll be pleasantly surprised and, thankfully, a bit more educated at the same time. They might also spread the word by mouth (or text message )


Assessing the performance of a Leica from an 800 pixel image and concluding that "of course the latest FlipHD just blows it away - it goes up to 11" is just lack of education and surely just generates chuckles. The huge teaching component of your website reveals your desire to educate, so I'm a touch surprised at the "steaming up" due to reactions and comments of the (as yet) uneducated.

I hope your rant provided some relief.

Resolution, gamut, dynamic range. Pick any two.
For many of us that's the choice. And for web presentation it gets worse. All that has ever interested me is printing, and I have never gotten used to seeing what happens to an image when posted. Sometimes I sit here looking at images on screen and wonder what they really look like.
What is more interesting, however, is that there doesn't seem to be much discussion on the aesthetics of images seen with transmitted light. It is not as if it is anything new. After all, we have a millennium of stained glass. There is a rich tradition of story telling and pictorial styles here. What puzzles me is why I prefer not to view photos on a screen or digitally projected. Is it the refresh rate? Is it the limited viewing angle? I suspect that what is missing is the tactile pleasure of walking from one image to the next and back again. Being shown one image at a time on one or two screens is not the same. A slide show is venturing more into the realm of the aesthetics of cinema. The decision over what to look at and when is passed over to someone else. I want to get off my bum and move around. Switch the light on and off. Talk about it. Close and open the curtains. I enjoy the experience of using my whole body to view an exhibition or even a single photograph on a wall.
Also there is some educating to be done. Few people expect an on-line catalogue of paintings to look like the real thing. But many people have not experienced a real print. It's like taking someone who's only ever watched television to a wide-screen cinema.
My 2 cents worth, David

Interesting rant and a rant I fully agree with.

This afternoon I've just sold several fine art prints printed on A2 Iford GFS printed with my 3800.

My client said "wow they don't look like that on the web. Look at all that detail ..."

To me at least, the final print is what it is all about. As a medium small web sRGBs images are completely different to large well printed print.

Hi.

Years ago my father painted copies of Old Master images for people who did not want a cheap print of Constable's or Turners. I wondered why we had to go to the museums to see the actual pictures when they were in so many books, until you realise that much of the enjoyment of a real painting is actually being in its presence, not just looking at the elements of the picture. I also noted that the colours and detail were different without all those little printing dots!

Yet many people never saw the real painting yet enjoyed pictures in books or cheap prints from market stands. Yet do 'wet' artists get over fussed - most I know do not have web sites - so probably not.


Is the real issue not how other people enjoy our 'online' photographic images i - and yes folks enjoy pictures they see on the web on really old monitors with really odd colours, but a fear that our images, often created using expensive equipment and slaved over for hours and hours will just be equalized with someone who has snapped something similar on a mobile phone an sent it straight to Flickr!

I think that people who are seriously interested in buying prints are also sophisticated enough to realize that the web is really just a catalogue of work, Yes they will probably enjoy getting to know a little bit about an artists style and flavour of work, and yes they may narrow a choice of prints down from a whole collection to two or three, but ultimately they are using the web as a tool, with the experience of a print in mind.

I'll also add that earlier this year I did get an exhibition based largely on a few emailed files and web site, although in fairness the curator had seen one file as a print at a show, therefore the ability to mentally visualize the others may well have been easier. And that is why people still come to galleries to see exhibitions - although the web may provide a check as to if the concept of what is being displayed is to taste - unless you have a big reputation!! So getting work in public display IS critical if you want to build a reputation - the more real images people have seen, the better they can anticipate what a print of a web image will look like.

For people who believe that the screen is the 'end product' then you can draw your own conclusions. However I can say - as chair of a successful artist run gallery - we've actually increased our sales this year over last - with photography doing very well. So the print is a long way from being dead. The biggest selling point of an image is the connection a viewer has with it, if they like it, it goes with the furniture and the price point is about right they will purchase. The exact details of the print, paper, whether the master file is sRGB or prophoto, do not matter, infact many do not want to know because they have no need to understand in order to enjoy the print. There probably comes a point for a few photographers when their name becomes the core selling feature, but that does not always mean great prints, although many will be, just that their name means something. However for the majority of middle ground photographer, the overall image NEEDS to be more creative and technically better than what the purchaser feels they could achieve with their own camera.... and that means pretty good now days!

S

Well, I have spent a lot of my time looking at fashion and beauty photographers' sites on the web and some have been amazingly impressive. Frankly, I doubt if any printing device can ever match the luminosity and sheer sense of life that springs out of the monitor when the original is wonderful. This is not sour grapes, either, because I have coaxed some (to me) quite impressive b/w from my B9180 with unexpected detail that I hadn't seen either. But there is something else, beyond detail - the same thing that the transparency used to have and print never did.

Perhaps there is a confusion here - is there the fear that the web image hasn't been prepared well enough for the medium? Is it the age-old defence system coming to the fore, saying that though the website looks good, my work is better, the shot the client used wasn't the best and so on?

That uncalibrated monitors don't help is beyond dispute, but are they all so bad, I wonder? My first monitor was a Mitsubishi Diamond Pro, I never calibrated it because I had neither the tools nor the desire nor understanding of digital problems at the time, but also because I was fascinated and highly impressed by the images that I did manage to raise on it: they looked stunning, straight out of the box (the monitor came out of the box, not the images). Of course I had no idea what the photographers saw in their studios, but it still looked great to me at home.

Perhaps we have to cut down on our expectations; if we sell prints via the web, then if the buyer likes what he sees there well enough to make an order, we should be happy that he will be even more happy when he gets the real print. If the theory holds good that is, that the print is going to be better, which is not always the case, even when you are trying to match colours yourself as you try for that magical, final piece of paper.

This theory would make perfect sense if control at the production end was also perfect, which for me it sure ain't, nor, I suspect, for many here, regardless of how expert they may wish to appear.

Rob C

As we are not able to judge about how an image will look like printed that also means by implication that softproof, curves etc. etc. are pointless ... so finally (pointed) a screen is not an helpful part of the equipment.
Of course the screen view never looks exactly as the print, especially regarding noise. But infact I feel that I can estimate quite well how a certain image displayed on screen will look like when printed (on different papers). That also means that I can judge about files of other cameras (within limitations of course).

While I agree with Michael's point for prints, if you shoot for stock, the pictures are judged and purchased based on the screen thumbnail or enlaged version. I have many shots I'll never print and which are not that interesting in fine art terms, but they have to look noise free and sharp on screen because that is how buyers make their buying decisions - even if (eventually) the picture is destined for use in print in a book or magazine. For these shots, appearance on screen is all that matters

Quentin

I can see how comparing prints is meaningful to the photographer taking the shots and doing the printing. They know the scene, the lighting conditions and have the final image that they wish to achieve in their heads. They can figure how this camera or that camera helped or hindered them on their journey from scene to print.

However, for judging dynamic range, say, it's hard enough when you were at the scene yourself. Eyes are not light meters. Even harder still for someone who was never their to infer what the lighting conditions were. That's where calibrated test charts come into their own. Even resolution and detail are tricky to judge on real world scenes.

Even with careful measuring, the test you do yourself is the one you should trust.

Graeme

Michael,

I think this sidewsipe:

“Now, if judging a camera or lens' performance by means an image on-screen is your idea of a good time – well, fine. But, except for the Flickr crowd that's not what fine photography is about – at least it isn't for me“

was pretty uncalled for. There is a scary amount of talent on show at Flickr, and frankly if it's good enough for Art Wolfe.... There are some very fine photographers out there who's work is actually very adapted to the online space, indeed in embraces the medium.

There is no single "Flickr crowd". Far from it. There are many. And frankly, the amount of time they spend "judging a camera or lens' performance by means an image on-screen" is approximately zero in my experience. Flickr ain't DPreview - or even The Luminous Landscape.

David

I am a little confused on the purpose of Mike's rant. I thought the essay's point was that you cannot evaluate the performance of a camera or lens from samples posted on the web, which is valid.

However, saying that you can evaluate a camera or lens from the output of an inkjet or laser printer is equally untrue. All laser and inkjet printers are halftone devices that print very fine multi color dots to produce an image. The resolution of a print is not directly dependent on the 1s and 0s a digital camera generates, but on the printer's halftone screening process, the inks and printheads used, the raster image processing (RIP) algorithms and the paper's ink dispersion rate.

On another note, if you are working in Photoshop, or any other pixel-based program, keep in mind that Apple displays can only accurately show a pixel image at a halving or doubling of 100%--i.e. 100%, 50%, 25%, 200% 400%, etc. At other magnifications, which is usually the case if you type command-0, the screen image is dithered and inaccurate.

Actually, to be accurate, if you are using Photoshop CS3 and earlier, this is true. If you are using Photoshop CS4 then not true depending o n your GPU settings. If you are using Photoshop CS4 and you have GPU turned on, then resampling for screen display in Photoshop is being done using Bilinear. If you have GPU turned off then it's using Nearest Neighbor. So, one should be precise regarding the version you are using...

David,

I meant no offense to Flickr or the people that use it. I was simply using it as a metaphor for web based photographic display.

Michael

Sir Edmund Hillary's comment about why he climbed Mount Everest "Because it's there." comes to mind. We look up close because we can. This was not such a thing with film because it was a pain in the butt to look at so many frames under such magnification.
I think what Michael's saying is that, just because we can, doesn't mean we must. And when we do, take what we're looking at with a grain of salt.

I like prints. Our house is full of (our own) large prints; in fact, we need a few more walls!

What if the cost and availability of large flat "monitors" changed favorably so that I could hang (framed?) monitors instead of framed prints? Would the display and resolution need to be even more HD than current HD monitors?

It depends on the viewing distance. We should always bear in mind, if you walk up close to an impressionistic painting in an art gallery, it generally looks like crap. It's made to be viewed from a distance.

I like big photos on my wall so they can be appreciated from the average distance in the room that I find myself most of the time. It's why I bought an Epson 7600 some years ago.

My partner has a 50" Panasonic plasma TV which sits on a stand close to a 23"x35" print of mine hanging on the wall. Out of curiosity, I downsampled the same file from which the print was made, to around 2.5mb (converting also to sRGB) and displayed it on the 50" plasma through its built-in SD Card slot. I was amazed.

The image on the TV screen is about the same size as the print on the wall. From a comfortable viewing distance of 3-4 metres, there is no greater detail to be seen in the print, and the image on the TV monitor looks clearly more vibrant and generally preferrable, but not always. The print can be seen only through reflected light. As the nature of the light changes, so does the appearance of the print. There are changing subtleties as the ambient light changes, which result in changes in mood as reflected in the print.

I agree 100% crops is nowhere near a guaranteed "end-all" to judge qualities of a lens or sensor, however I object to the addition of the italics words "(at least in part)" on the WHAT's NEW page. Some useful information or comparison can be had from these crops. Even Michael himself has posted 100% crops, for instance to point at noise characteristics. I believe with proper care it can still serve a useful purpose, even when posted on the web.

I still got good value out of this page, or should we conclude from this rant that this is a useless comparison, since the only thing that matters is how the images look in print

I am not David.

With all due respect, there was a lot of simplistic thinking and overly-simplistic generalizations in said article, if not outright falshoods and self-mockery.

For starters, as has been suggested above, if the physical printed image is the end-all, be-all judge of the value of any given camera, then pray tell what is the point of Michael's own page-after-page, year-after-year articles and posts on the web ... all of which are replete with "digital, internet" images being used as 'proof' for his own voluminous takes and positions on said products? If this new article isn't self-mockery, then I don't see what is.

That being said, this entire tirade begs the question as to "on what" physical printers may a camera's quality be accurately judged? All of them? Or only a few? After all, if the printed image is the 'only' image on which a camera may be judged, then does this statement hold true for every photo printer available---or does this statement hold true for only just a hand-selected few? After all, can anyone seriously declare that the print quality produced on a cheesy multi-function devise, printed-out on cheesy paper, gives a better inclination of 'camera quality' than does the highest-resolution, color-calibrated monitor available today? I doubt that very much.

So aside from the problems with reality that the above scenarios represent, is another fact, which is simply that MORE images are seen, evaluated, and judged online, via the internet, than are seen, evaluated, and judged in person on fine art paper. Further, more images are seen, evaluated, and judged in simple magazines and books, too, than are done so on fine art paper. If anything, fine art photos are actually the LEAST-purchased, LEAST-used applications to which the majority of photos are in fact put and judged. There are more photos in books, in any one major city, than there are photos in all of the collections of the world put together.

Further, notwithstanding the additional simple-minded posit that 'all' Flicker contributors put out the same-quality images, captured on the same-quality cameras, there is the point to be reckoned with that the value of any image isn't in it's 'absolute pixel (or printed) detail and quality, but on the overall impact (or significance) that the image conveys. There are too many 'technically-great' mediocre images to mention, and too many fabulous images that have technical problems to resolve.

There are simply too many variables to consider, to be able to completely dismiss the value and power of the online internet image. Moreover, I would say the future suggests, if anything, that the physical medium of 'paper and ink' are in fact the "dying dinosaurs" on the decline, not the digital image. If anything, all evidence suggests it is the digital image that is ever-growing in importance overall, in most people's lives, than is the physical printed image. For example, my girlfriend and I are in a quandary as to which of our images we would like to display in our own home. Thus the question becomes 'which one' makes for the best presentation? Ray alluded to this also. My girlfriend and I decided that we would rather purchase a 40" x 30" LCD monitor, on which we could 'flash' a thousand of our very best photos ... each flashing every few seconds ... than we would to "print and display" any one of our images on paper. I mean, let's be real, which presentation would ultimately prove to be the greatest "display" in one's home?

Thus, in the end, I think the printed image will ultimately be the least-used, least-desired form of display for the majority of people in the not-too-distant future. This is not to say that the digital print has no value; it is simply to suggest that digitized, computer-monitor-viewed images are more ubiquitous and important to most people than what is being acknowledged in this article.


Jack

.

Old men obviously get confused, but I sort of miss where the OP made the statement that has carried the thread into the current mood of taking up positions.

I hadn't realised that, all along, it had been an either/or proposition.

Silly me.

Rob C

I'm not sure why the central thesis of my argument is proving so difficult for some people.

I am not saying that people shouldn't display their images on the web, on screens or in any other manner. I am simply pointing out that the full quality of a properly shot, edited and adjusted image from a high quality camera simply can not be properly seen electronically.

Point: The web is sRBG and images displayed are compressed JPGs, while a print can easily exceed Adobe RGB in gamut.

Point: A print from, say, an 18MP camera (certainly not the biggest) is some 5200 X 3500 pixels. A 30" display is just over 2 million pixels. Something has to give, no?

An 18MP camera file can produce a roughly 16X20 print at optimum printing resolution, allowing one to see everything that the camera and lens have to offer. To produce an image with comparable resolution on a screen would require a 240-300 PPI screen, which do not exist. Yes, a 50" LCD or Plasma can show the image at 100%, but to view it properly one has to sit across the room which means that the resolution isn't properly visible the way it is on a print.

So my thesis isn't that prints are a superior means of showing ones images (though for me they are). I realize that many people never print. But, simply that with today's technology they can't show you everything that's in the file the way a print can. Or, if they can, they suffer from very high cost, the extremes of technology, or other impediments.

Michael

Hi!

Making RAW images available may be the best choice in my opinion, than you can download and print.

Regarding "scientific data" like Imatest and DxO-mark I'd suggest that they are probably correct, but not necessarily relevant. The reason they may be less relevant may be that we don't know how to interpret them.

My own testing seems to point in the direction that we need to go beyond A2 size to clearly see advantage for "full format" over APS-C, and this also applies to "medium format".

Subject may matter a lot, it's note really obvious which subjects are most demanding and in which respect they are demanding. The issue is quite complex. It's a good proposal that you should test with rental equipment, but that can be both impractical and expensive. Renting a Phase One equipment for two days here in Sweden is same money as a Canon 5DII, and there is no warranty that the equipment you rent is properly aligned.

There was some comparative shooting on different systems on Flickr, here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dos-chin/sets...6120567/detail/

I downloaded the sample image for Nikon 3DX and Hasselblad HII-50 and printed both in A2-format trough my standard processing pipeline. In my view the Hassy image came out on tops when "pixel peeping" but the Nikon image was actually sharper in general.

I asked a friend of mine who has been working at one of Swedens top professional photo labs about his opinion and he was quite affirmative that the Nikon image was sharper. Looking on screen at actual pixels in the area of maximum sharpness there was no question that the Hassy image was sharper. My friend did not know which was Hassy or Nikon and I could not talk him into changing his mind that the Nikon image was the better one.

My explanation for this is:

- Subject was not really suitable for this test, much because lacking high frequency detail.
- Distance to subject was to short, longer distance would give smaller detail and larger depth of field
- Color and tonality was better for the Nikon image
- DOF was in favor of the Nikon image, but the lens was also stopped down beyond optimal aperture

The conclusion I draw from this:

- If sharpness is good enough for a certain size of print other factors will dominate.
- The benefit of larger formats is not obvious for sizes up to A2

Best regards
Erik

I made a mistake in my previous post by writing that I downsized a large file I used for a 23"x35" print to about 2.5mb for display on a 50" plasma TV screen.

Of course I meant 2.5mp. One doesn't have to be precise because the TV will downsize a larger-than-necessary file to the exact size to fill display, although it helps to crop the image to the 16:9 aspect ratio.

Perhaps the time has come for Canon to go full circle and produce a D30 MkII using all the latest technology to provide those 3mp with the maximum DR and lowest noise possible, even better than a D3X image downsampled to 3mp. This is all one needs for a full HD display.

Quote from "What's New":
We've all done it. There's a photograph or a 100% crop of an image online, taken with a camera or lens that we're interested in, and we judge its image quality capabilities (at least in part) on the basis of that screen image.

Wrong!

I think I'm getting the central thesis of your argument and even agree with it, however the words "(at least in part)" suggest you find absolutely no use of comparing 100% crops which I don't understand and is not supported by your points.

I'm not trying to argue, I'm just trying to understand the whole logic better.

"I'm not sure why the central thesis of my argument is proving so difficult for some people.

I am not saying that people shouldn't display their images on the web, on screens or in any other manner. I am simply pointing out that the full quality of a properly shot, edited and adjusted image from a high quality camera simply can not be properly seen electronically."






Michael

Relax, the internet is the natural home of the blown hermeneutic. You fare neither better nor worse than anyone else who ventures to publish a thought!

Rob C

Points made and points well taken.

Even amongst digital devices there is a tremendous difference in what one can see. For example, my finished images that I adjust on my color-calibrated NEC (in ProPhoto) don't appear anywhere near as colorful or vibrant when viewed online (converted to sRGB) via my web browser and cheap laptop. So I understand your point there, and I further understand that even the images which look so vibrant and rich in color on my calibrated NEC will look still more colorful and vibrant when actually printed well on archival paper from a quality printer. Again, points made and points well taken.

The trouble I have is, while your logic above is entirely sound, and the mood you convey above is entirely sober, such was not the frame of mind in which you began your original article. This is how you began your original article:

"I alternately chuckle and get steamed up when I read someone on a web forum either condemn or praise a camera or lens based on a web images. This is utter nonsense."

You then pretty much, and with a great deal of contempt, dismissed "the Flickr crowd" as a single living entity, from which you then went on to your central theme of fine art prints being the ultimate arbiter of equipment quality. Backpedaling a bit now does not change the mood of what you originally wrote. The paradox is, while the theme of your article may be true ultimately, the real truth is the vast majority of photographs do not get seen, judged, bought, or sold in a "fine art print" form. Moreover, there is an overall condescending theme to the original article towards any person whose judgments are being rendered through digital evaluation, while at the same time an automatic self-contradiction is raised by virtue of the existence of the "Luminious Landscape" very own digital presence and reviews.

Therefore, since this here is a forum to discuss your site and the topics of discussion, I would like to convey here that (as a reader looking to learn from your online articles, supported by your online digital images) when I read something from a man who is 'alternately chuckling, and then getting steamed up' over something he himself does, this doesn't conjure a feel of a level-headed thinker. In fact, when one is being tossed back-and-forth with such emotions as a writer, one can miss a lot of key points.

For, while you entitled your article, The Fallacy of Judging an Image Online, what seems to be two twin simultaneous fallacies of your own article is (1) to assume that the most important photography (to the most people) is fine art photography 'in print', and (2) that this position seems to make a mockery of all of your own online articles, all of which are supported with plethora of the very "digital web image evaluations" you dismiss as "utter nonsense."

Regarding (1), since many {if not the majority} of the viewing & buying decisions and judgments of photographs are in fact made based on the submission of electronic images, to dismiss the importance of how such digital images look (either online or on a monitor) is itself a real fallacy. In "The Photographer's Market" book, which lists just about every purveyor of photography known, almost every one of these purveyors ASKS FOR the submission of high res digital images on which to base their decisions on whether or not they will accept (buy) any photographer's work. Furthermore, regarding (2), I still don't understand how you can say this:

"But please, please, stop judging the technical quality of photographic equipment by looking at small web images. And, while 100% crops can be helpful in comparing certain technical aspects of image quality, this usually bears little real-world relationship to how a photograph will appear in a print. In my experience its rare that the pixel peeping that the online image analysis that many people love to do (doh! including myself) bears any real-world relationship to how an artist's image will appear in a final display print."
(Parenthsis added)

... and yet post as many photographs as you do digitally online as 'proof' of the positions you take regarding the quality of the lenses and software.

I don't think too many photographers judge photos based on "small" web images, but I do think 99% of judgments come from 100% crops. So it just seems pretty hard to reconcile the two positions, the fact you yourself have evaluated cameras and lenses (for years) on your website, always supported by large digital web images, and yet that you take the ultimate position you do above, that such judgments have little 'real-world' value. One is left scratching one's as to "why?" You even said, "In fact I know quite a few widely exhibited fine art photographers who refuse to show their images online because they feel that this misrepresents how their work should be seen." I would say this latter quote shows more integrity to the above belief system than does holding this belief and yet at the same time still posting articles with web images "as proof" for one's position on the quality of cameras and lenses.

In the end, the ultimate truth of your article is easily understood. The fine art print, in fine form, does show the most of what a camera and lens can do. It was not the truth of this that was the problem, it was the self-contradiction of utterly condemning the importance of any judgments being made of digital images at all, as nonsense, and squaring this with the plethora of your own online articles and judgments, all supported with digital web images, that raised an eyebrow for me. For while the very largest of "fine art prints," printed on the very finest printers, may in fact show the ultimate strengths and liabilities of any equipment, the truth is such end results are NOT how the majority of photos are in fact bought, sold, or even seen.

The majority of photographic images bought, sold, and judged in this day and age are in fact based on DIGITAL evaluations, long before they ever get to be printed, and so to dismiss the importance of digital evaluation (or how images appear digitally) is to dismiss the vast majority of real world photography ... and thus the vast majority of people ... as well as your own online, digital presence. The A1 fine art print may tell the ultimate tale, but ultimately it is the least-used medium that buyers of photography use to judge photography.

The reality is, almost no one has the luxury to be able to get a free camera and a free set of lenses, and then be at liberty to take as many photos as contents their heart, print-out their images on the finest paper with the finest printers ... and then do this with all of the name brands, makes, and models ... from which they may then make a purchase decision. This is not a reality for people. The purchase decisions most people make are based on online viewings and/or high-res digital viewings, and so such judgments are ultimately the most important.

Thus, if the point of your article is that the ultimate reality is to judge cameras and lenses based on fine-art prints, then I think all of the judgments and proclamations of your own articles online ought to be based only on a comparison of A1 and A2 prints, not on digital crops, so that the conclusions on your website product reviews are to be in harmony with your core beliefs.

Jack

.

I'm hesitant about joining in the discussion because we didn't have a prayer of repentance yesterday for posting less than optimal images on the Internet. So be it.

I can only offer the following observations (which I think are true):
1. most of those who view any of our images on the Internet do so on monitors that are much worse than ours;
2. most of us (and those who we give or sell our prints to) have only limited wall space to display prints, whereas digital displays offer "almost" unlimited number of images;
3. anyone (caveat: in my experience) who has seen a fine art print and the digital image, prefers the fine art print (though it doesn't guarantee a sale);
4. there will be a continuing move towards more digital presentation of images (and probably Ansel Adams would not only approve, but be excited about the prospect were he to see all of the advances in the 25 years since his passing).

I still get excited seeing the print come off the Epson and seeing details in it that I've not seen on my monitor. I would hope others feel the same way.

Scares me silly actually, how on earth are we supposed to be able to control our output if we don't have the slightest idea what it's going to look like until it's printed? I thought that WYSIWYG was supposed to be part of our modern workflow. Flatscreens that are far sharper, contrastier, brighter than the print that you are looking to achieve (yes with all the best profiling unless perhaps you spend more on your screen than on your camera), colours that you didn't know were there (ooh I'd really love that if I was trying to get skin tones right), etc, etc. Personally I'd prefer to edit within the constraints of WYSIWYG even if it means sRGB. At least I won't have any surprises.

Perhaps I wasn't clear in my post (or maybe I'm not clear in the following response). I have a NEC profiled monitor and I get prints that are what I see on the screen, so I am controlling output. However, a 13x19 print is a much different viewing experience than what is/was on the monitor. It's a different visual experience, and yes because I can continue to look at the print, I do see details that were overlooked on the monitor (these have nothing to do with getting colors, tone, etc. correct for output).

And that really is the point. I mean photography is a visual medium. Anything outside the human eye's ability is really irrelevant in this respect. Also, for me, extra pixels aren't for creating better art (especially after the new IDS3 and D3X) but more for cropping and still having enough pixels to do as you wish with the image. This is exactly why I will buy the next iteration of Canon 1DSMKIV, if the increase in pixels and noise warrant it, say 27-30MPs. I can't see needing more than that, at least for my needs.

Surely everyone understands that a print is a reflective medium whereas a monitor is transmissive. Turn the lights down and the shadows on the print will become impenetrable, whereas on the monitor they will remain just as detailed. Turn the lights off completely, in the evening, and you can't even see the print at all, wereas the image on the monitor will appear even more vibrant than it did with the lights on.

So of course a print is a different viewing experience. In a sense, the image on the monitor is a more reliable representation of the detail and tonality in the photo, as a result of the transmissive nature of the monitor which is far less affected by changing ambient light conditions.

I simply don't expect to see detail on any print that I make that I can't see on the monitor. In fact, the reverse is often the case, and that's because a 100% crop on my monitor usually represents a much larger print than I have the means of making. Shadow noise that is visible at 100% on the monitor, representative of a 6ftx4ft print or even larger, will be far less obvious on a 3ftx2ft print.

Of course, just as a 100% crop on the monitor should reveal more detail in the image than is likely to be visible on the print, the complete image at 5% or 12.5% on the monitor cannot display the detail and have the same over all impact of a 24"x36' print.

Perhaps my experience is different because I still use CRT monitors which generally have a better contrast ratio than LCD monitors. When I process an image for printing, using the 'proof color' facility in Photoshop, always ticking the 'paper-white' box, I sometimes have difficulty in successfully adjusting the image to match the vibrancy of the previously adjusted image for monitor display. Or, to put it another way, when I succeed in matching the vibrancy of the non-proof image, almost invariably I find there are large areas of out-of-gamut colors. Reducing the intensity of such areas of out-of-gamut color, either by reducing saturation or luminance (or sometimes increasing luminance) tends to dull the image.

However, I do appreciate that the average member of the public who is not a photography enthusiast is likely to use an uncalibrated monitor. In those situations, jpeg samples of images for print might give an inaccurate impression.

The real questions in the end are "what is a good photograph" and "what is a good print". I see a some confusion in this debate between photography and printing/marketing. IMHO Michael's article is about great prints, not about great photographs.

I would personnally argue that a photograph that doesn't look good on screen/on flickr, is probably not a good photograph, merely an average one.

However it is possible to do a great print of an average photograph, as well as a poor print of a great photograph. Both are not directly related.

Prints will reveal qualities in images that are hard to perceive on screen, and it is true that a high resolution large print will be a lot more impressive. Yet, all things being equal the image that looked good on Flick will look even better printed on an Epson 9900 and the best Baryta paper providing the print size matches the capture resolution.

Top end equipment or large stitches can extend the scope of the outputs that can be handled (size and colors) but will never be able to turn an average photograph into a great one. On the other hand, there is probably some truth to the belief that each image is best viewed at a given output size, some lending themselves more to very large sizes though.

I am sure that a lot of us will agree that there is far more photographic talent on Flickr than in the official circles of fine art printing, but these folks typically don't have access to the latest equipment and do typically not even attempt to print or to sell their images. It doesn't make their images less interesting nor talented. Their focus is great photography, not great prints.

This debate will not end until this distinction is explicitely done and agreed with.

One thing to keep in mind is that this distinction will reveal clear paradoxes since fine art printers often use online sites to market their prints to a large audience...

Cheers,
Bernard

If that was the intent of the rant, I don't think it came through very well. Part of the problem is that he can't quite decide his premise: is it that we cannot predict print quality from on-screen images, or that "judging a camera or lens' performance" from on-screen images is a pointless exercise, that's only useful to pixel peepers and the Flickr crowd? He seems to be arguing both points at different times, just in the first few paragraphs.

Now, if you want to limit the argument to images that have been re-sized for viewing on the web, I would agree that those images are just about useless for judging the performance of today's cameras and lenses.

I also agree there are people on the net who will argue endlessly over minute differences that have little if any impact on final output, whether that output is a print or a web-sized online image. I can even understand someone getting tired of such arguments and feeling the need to rant a little. But to say that viewing full-resolution images on-screen is useless for judging camera and lens performance, well that's just absurd. In fact I would say that even if your intent is to judge eventual print quality, the premise is still not correct. It's true that a 100% on-screen image doesn't look exactly like the final print. But that doesn't mean it won't tell you anything at all about the eventual print quality.

If two shots are taken of the same scene with two different lenses, and on-screen evaluation shows that one of them has obvious CA, light falloff, corner softness, barrel distortion, etc, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the other image is going to make a better print. Maybe small differences that are detectable on-screen at 100% won't show up in prints until you hit a certain size, if at all. But an experienced print-maker will understand that, and will have an idea of what kind of differences are going to show up in the intended output. Comparing actual prints is the ideal, but that doesn't mean anything less is pointless.

Michael,

Maybe because a majority of them have never bothered looking at a quality print in the first place?

I don't know for sure, but have wondered the same thing. Based on a few of the recent threads in your forums, it seems many of your readers don't own or have never even used the cameras they claim are inferior -- and worse, don't actually ever PRINT anything either! Their opinions seem to based entirely on whichever sensor's raw data performed the best in a test some distant lab devised. Regardless, they refuse to believe somebody that actually does own and use the gear in question and actually has made prints from it when they say, "IME x is better than y because of abc." Of course that ultimately leads your test-heads to their "prove it" comments, demanding you show them the differences you see in your prints on the forum -------- VIA A WEB JPEG! Yes indeed, the absurdity of their logic does make one wonder...

Cheers, and good luck!