Fuji GFX studio scene test on dpreview.com

[simsurace]

Sorry for any misunderstandings...

There is no obvious problem with the dpreview statement. It is just that I cannot verify it now (it would be easy to verify, given enough time).
What I was asking is whether people that were commenting on some dynamic range issues based on JPEGs, can now see the same issues in these RAW files.
Nothing more, nothing less! 
You said that you can see it from the ACR histogram, but I'm not able to follow your reasoning. How do you do that?
That's why I asked for clarifications.

P.S. I said 'the histogram is bunched up' which is a synonym for your expression 'the histogram is compressed'.

[Erik Lund]

Now I understand you.

Comparing the D810 and GFX histogram samples at ISO 100, to me it looks like the GFX is done ETTL this would to me suggest a too dark image, as compared to a neutral one, where you don't take advantage of the GFX sensor to the fullest. The D810 looks more neutral or toward ETTR.

Could explain the 'dark shadow' JPG files we have seen so far,,, since people didn't have the RAW converters until now,,,

[simsurace]

I see.
The problem with this is that simply using a different camera profile in the 'Camera Calibration' tab you could move the histogram around as you please.
I.e. the histogram depends on what Adobe deemed a 'standard conversion'. This is a fairly arbitrary concept.
I was also wondering why the Fuji file is darker than the D810 file when opened in ACR with 'Adobe standard' profile.
You might be surprised that the Fuji file has slightly brighter RAW levels than the D810 file (only about 0.1-0.2 stops as measured in RawDigger).
Any ideas?

EDIT: added RawDigger screenshots.

[Erik Lund]

I understand that its just a 'standard' or an educated guess at a 'normal' convertion,,,
Ok we observe the same issues then


It seems strange I agree, my first guess was lack of highlight recovery/tolerance  of the GFX sensor,,, to avoid blown highlights and blooming,,,

[Erik Lund]

Now I see the RAW Digger histogram;


Look at the spikes on the right,,,


Look at the saturated areas left,,,


Exactly what I am trying to say with words,,, I'm no expert but this looks strange to me,,,


I have never seen a histogram mapping before 

[simsurace]

It seems strange I agree, my first guess was lack of highlight recovery/tolerance  of the GFX sensor,,, to avoid blown highlights and blooming,,,

You might be onto something. You can see in the RawDigger histograms that some separations between peaks are different. This means that the linearity of the light response of the two sensors is different.

[simsurace]

Look at the spikes on the right,,,
Look at the saturated areas left,,,

Please note that the test images are different. The Nikon image has some additional checkerboard patterns that the Fuji is missing due to different aspect ratios. This checkerboard pattern is what I think is causing the higher number of peaks on the right side of the histogram.
I think for differences in dynamic range and such you have to look at distances between peaks that are visible in both histograms. If the distance is smaller on the EV scale then it means that one sensor produces data which is nonlinearly distorted wrt. the other sensor.

[Akira]

Is the Adobe Standard, or ACR per se, immune to the encrypted white balance data in NEF?  If not, the difference of the exposure in each color channel could be affected.

[Ilkka Nissilä]

ACR does read white balance set in the camera from NEF files.

[Akira]

Thanks for the confirmation.  Then the difference of the exposure of each color channel could be caused by the different white balances.

[simsurace]

White balance is done by multiplying the channels with some numbers in order to achieve the same value in all channels at the white balance target. But white balance has two degrees of freedom while there are three colors, RGB. So one of the multipliers can be considered to be one while the other two are being tuned relative to that. An overall multiplication of all channels by the same number corresponds roughly to the exposure slider in ACR. However, how bright an image the zero position will result in depends on other controls as well as the camera profile, which includes nonlinear transformations of all channels (gamma curve, to get from the linear response of the sensor to something the human eye can digest, i.e. logarithmic) as well as individual channels (color profiling, which consists of channel mixing and a subsequent curve per channel).

The white balance in ACR is different between the Fuji and Nikon, but note that for the same white balance target there need to be different sets of multipliers for the two cameras because the color filter arrays are likely to be different. I can see from the RAW histogram that the blue response is stronger in the D810 while the red response is weaker. But all of these things, while interesting, IMHO are only weakly related to dynamic range.

[Akira]

Isn't there any possibility to tweak the contrast or the tone curve of the individual color channels in addition to balancing the levels?

By the way, I'm also interested in the comb-like pattern on the large and wide peaks in the histograms of the blue and the red channels.  I wonder if they would suggest the posterization or lack of gradation due to the fewer pixels for these colors?

[Frank Fremerey]

After reading a lot about the GFX I  feel that the new sensor might not be perfectly embedded yet into the firmware and RAW converter environment. Due to its bigger area and lower pixel density it should outperform the a7r2 sensor easily. That seems not to be the case.

I feel a fair test will be to put both the D810 and the GFX on a bellows and put a Schneider APO Digitar on the front standard.

Michael can easily do that. The lens easily outperforms both sensors and with the same light and the same scene we have a much better starting point for discussion.

For better firmware and RAW converter support we can only wait.

Yes. We should calibrate the workflow on a per sensor / standardized target basis also using the same lens.

Thank you.

[Erik Lund]

I think Michael returned the camera,,,

[Ilkka Nissilä]

The A7R II has a BSI sensor so it probably collects a bit more light per area. The D810 has the ISO 64 which too works to its advantage when there is enough light to use it.

When I was shooting 35mm film in the 1990s, I looked at images printed from 6x4,5cm film, 6x6cm , 6x7cm , 4x5 inches and 8x10 inches. I felt the 6x4,5 was a bit better than 35mm but to get really blown away, 6x7 cm and bigger did that.  I got a 6x7 rangefinder and shot with that for a few years, and yes, the image quality was great, the detail in print was amazing once properly scanned (LS-9000 in my case), but most lenses were designed with compactness in mind and I wasn't that happy with the relatively small apertures. The 6x7cm diagonal is sqrt(56*56+72*72) = 91mm vs. 43mm for FX; the ratio between the diagonals of the two formats is 2.1:1.  For the 33x44mm sensor the diagonal is 55mm; ratio between the diagonals of the two formats  1.28:1.  So the sensor sizes are not different enough to make a really clear difference in image quality especially given the variation in lens characteristics in each system. Yes, the images shot with the larger sensor are probably a little better, but I would consider the system as a whole and see if it offers features which together with the larger sensor size make it worthwhile.

For example, the X1D has the leaf shutter lenses which are useful for outdoor portraits with flash in particular, the GFX has a tilting EVF which I would imagine would be very useful for some kinds of technical photography and, e.g., shooting portraits in sunlight if you want the camera to be at waist level without kneeling down; the D810 and 645Z have optical viewfinders etc. All these differences make the systems different in what you can do with them even though image quality differences are not that large. It is possible that Fuji, Hasselblad and Pentax make 100MP variants of the camera bodies in the near future; perhaps the differences will be more pronounced at that point.