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EOS R does NOT lack sharpness in 4K - Here's proof


Andrew Reid
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x-t3-sharpness.jpg

eos-r-sharpened.jpg

Take a look at the shots above.

Looks fine to me.

And that is vs the most detailed 4K camera I own - the X-T3 with the 6K oversampling.

Max Yuryev's test video 

In this thread there was some talk about Max's video.

It has been basic knowledge for filmmakers since the 5D Mark III that you can apply different sharpness in-camera, but that it's always better to dial it down to zero in-camera with the option to sharpen in post.

The natural look is at 0 but if you want more pop, you just drop the Unsharp Mask or Sharpen effect on in Premiere.

Max shows the unsharpened camera file and claims it's a performance problem with the camera.

Yet with the digital sharpness applied in post, you can see it matches the X-T3 for fine detail above.

This is in 4K even when pixel peeped at 1:1. At normal viewing distances, you'll want to dial it back down to 0 for a more natural less digital look.

No digital sharpening is a GOOD THING out of camera

Canon is doing the right thing and they are getting blasted for it.

eos-r-no-sharp.jpg

That's the original file. Big difference.

What I don't get about Max is surely he knew about this basic stuff even from the 5D Mark III sharpening in post days.

At the same time other people are complaining that cameras like the GH5 are too sharp and you can't turn off the digital sharpening in-camera(!!!) and they all want to go off and shoot RAW on the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K to get a more natural image.

I bet some of these same people are now complaining the EOS R is too soft!!

Blow-ups on YouTube

The biggest joke of all is the 400% digital zoom people use in YouTube to magnify the unsharpened detail, which together with YouTube's compression makes a complete mush.

Even just the digital zoom itself results in mud. Here I did it with the unsharpened EOS R 1:1 crop.

If this is how we are to judge the performance and image quality of 4K on YouTube it's seriously misleading.

Click this to view at 400% and see how muddy it is (and that's a TIFF!!) -

eos-r-unsharp-400pc.jpg

**************************************

Original TIFFs direct from Premiere (3840 x 2160)

X-T3 with whatever sharpening in-camera it seems to be doing in F-LOG

x-t3-sharpness.tif

EOS R sharpened

eos-r.tif

EOS R unsharpened direct from camera (Canon LOG, zero sharpness)

eos-r-unsharpened.tif

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5D Mk IV is not an EOS R.

The chart test is useful for telling us about absolute resolution. The real world is quite another matter. Watching a film should not be an eyesight test, it should be an emotional experience. If the higher resolving images with digital sharpened look have a fatiguing, distracting picture that looks too digital, would you rather have a softer 4K image or a harder, sharper one? I know what I'd take.

The X-T3 will have a small advantage from oversampling the 6K sensor readout, and you can see it is the best ever tested on the DPReview chart (although they never updated the NX1 image with new firmware, which made a big difference). For filmmakers though it basically means - maybe it is too sharp, might need careful treatment in post. Yet all the pixel peepers are saying it's the best thing since sliced bread.

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The fact that the 4k doesn't have that razer blade in your eyes sharpness (along with nice colour) is the only reason I would still like a look the the eos R despite the crop and rolling shutter.

So far with the XT3 I turn down sharpness and leave a diffusion filter on by default

 

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I had sharpness down at -3 on the X-T3 just one notch above minimum (-4), to maintain some grain texture - and the contrast is as low as you can get in F-LOG... Still too much digital sharpness to the image. It is a bit like the GH5 where you cannot quite turn off the digital sharpening.

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1 hour ago, Andrew Reid said:

I had sharpness down at -3 on the X-T3 just one notch above minimum (-4), to maintain some grain texture - and the contrast is as low as you can get in F-LOG... Still too much digital sharpness to the image. It is a bit like the GH5 where you cannot quite turn off the digital sharpening.

I don't want to sound to negative towards the XT3 image because I think it's pretty wonderful overall and a more pleasing image than I had from the gh5.. however I wish all these cameras would add an 'off' to the noise reduction and sharpness. Then we could add a little for straight out cam looks if we like but leave it off for doing later or just leaving it natural. I guess people would be shocked at how noisy beyond iso 400 on a gh5 would be without the processing though ?

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56 minutes ago, Robin said:

I don't want to sound to negative towards the XT3 image because I think it's pretty wonderful overall and a more pleasing image than I had from the gh5.. however I wish all these cameras would add an 'off' to the noise reduction and sharpness. Then we could add a little for straight out cam looks if we like but leave it off for doing later or just leaving it natural. I guess people would be shocked at how noisy beyond iso 400 on a gh5 would be without the processing though ?

"Sharpness" in camera is really a debeyering parameter. As long as you have a camera with a Beyer filter you are always going to be in a situation where you have to balance resolution against color accuracy. That will most apparent with anything that has a contrast edge. If you bias towards resolution you compromise color at boundaries, and if you bias towards color at boundaries then you compromise resolution. It is just how it works in anything other than a true grey scale image. In older cameras people used to scrape the beyer filter off their sensors (which was possible in some of the first digital cameras) to make B&W cameras with better sensitivity and resolution, primarily for astro use.

Sharpening in post is not the same as sharpening in camera. You might make an image appear like it has more resolution through digital effects such as adding artificial halos, but turning down sharpening in camera comes at the expense of detail, and that cannot be recovered any more than edge color accuracy can be recovered in post if you have sharpening turned up.

If you are not doing a whole lot of color correction and do plan to sharpen the image in post, you are better off setting in camera sharpening to the level you want in your final product to start with with since that will give you the best compromise. Trying to do it afterwards through artificial means in that scenario will result in unnecessary loss of information and an overall inferior image. People who just turn sharpening all the way down no matter what without considering what the final product is supposed to look like or how it will be manipulated in the interim simply don't know what they are doing.

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4 minutes ago, Mokara said:

"Sharpness" in camera is really a debeyering parameter. As long as you have a camera with a Beyer filter you are always going to be in a situation where you have to balance resolution against color accuracy. That will most apparent with anything that has a contrast edge. If you bias towards resolution you compromise color at boundaries, and if you bias towards color at boundaries then you compromise resolution. It is just how it works in anything other than a true grey scale image. In older cameras people used to scrape the beyer filter off their sensors (which was possible in some of the first digital cameras) to make B&W cameras with better sensitivity and resolution, primarily for astro use.

Sharpening in post is not the same as sharpening in camera. You might make an image appear like it has more resolution through digital effects such as adding artificial halos, but turning down sharpening in camera comes at the expense of detail, and that cannot be recovered any more than edge color accuracy can be recovered in post if you have sharpening turned up.

If you are not doing a whole lot of color correction and do plan to sharpen the image in post, you are better off setting in camera sharpening to the level you want in your final product to start with with since that will give you the best compromise. Trying to do it afterwards through artificial means in that scenario will result in unnecessary loss of information and an overall inferior image. People who just turn sharpening all the way down no matter what without considering what the final product is supposed to look like or how it will be manipulated in the interim simply don't know what they are doing.

I guess it's more complex than I realised. Still regardless of whether I know what I'm doing, I still prefer the lowest sharpening settings on all the cameras I have owned so far ?

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2 hours ago, Robin said:

I guess it's more complex than I realised. Still regardless of whether I know what I'm doing, I still prefer the lowest sharpening settings on all the cameras I have owned so far ?

Exactly, a lot of people do. So why is the EOS R getting criticised for being soft? :)

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I turn down sharpness all the way but I never add sharpening in post. Same with photos. 

The bad thing about canon is their 120fps is pretty poor. I think Canon's 4k is nice. Their 1080 tends to be really noticeably softer even without punching in. Thats where the problem is for me. Haven't seen any 1080 EOS R stuff yet or at least not comparisons. 

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3 hours ago, Mokara said:

Sharpening in post is not the same as sharpening in camera. You might make an image appear like it has more resolution through digital effects such as adding artificial halos, but turning down sharpening in camera comes at the expense of detail, and that cannot be recovered any more than edge color accuracy can be recovered in post if you have sharpening turned up.

I think ARRI, Red, Varicam, Sony F-line, Blackmagic etc... disagree.
Btw, in big productions blur in post is applied to combat the digital look even newer Red cameras have although Red cameras don't apply any sharpening at all - sensors nowadays are just too clean and realistic.

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38 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

Exactly, a lot of people do. So why is the EOS R getting criticised for being soft? :)

It's criticized for being the worst camera of the year for video at this price. With unusable rolling shutter and massive joke-like freaking crop together with underwhelming specs particularly in slowmo, it might win the prize at April Fools day but that's it. 

When you are Canon and you release that crap in 2018 you deserve all critics in the world. The fact it is soft or not does not matter considering the above. Last but not least, its FHD is so soft you might as well ask a blind guy what's on the image, he might "sense" it better than you ?

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55 minutes ago, wolf33d said:

It's criticized for being the worst camera of the year for video at this price. With unusable rolling shutter and massive joke-like freaking crop together with underwhelming specs particularly in slowmo, it might win the prize at April Fools day but that's it. 

When you are Canon and you release that crap in 2018 you deserve all critics in the world. The fact it is soft or not does not matter considering the above. Last but not least, its FHD is so soft you might as well ask a blind guy what's on the image, he might "sense" it better than you ?

Its definitely a bummer and not an innovative camera. However the Canon advantage that was present before the EOS R, is still present after the EOS R. Canon hasn't changed much so if you were happy with it before you probably still are now. 

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1 hour ago, wolf33d said:

It's criticized for being the worst camera of the year for video at this price. With unusable rolling shutter and massive joke-like freaking crop together with underwhelming specs particularly in slowmo, it might win the prize at April Fools day but that's it. 

When you are Canon and you release that crap in 2018 you deserve all critics in the world. The fact it is soft or not does not matter considering the above. Last but not least, its FHD is so soft you might as well ask a blind guy what's on the image, he might "sense" it better than you ?

Agree with you but like I said in the first impressions, it is a jekyll and hyde camera. It is at once badly specced and in the very same instance, a superb image to look at. Go figure.

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Andrew seems fair about it to me. He ripped on the camera a lot initially but it surprised him when he actually went to use it. 

Color science is more important then specs when it comes to a nice looking image. That said I don't think Andrew is defending the 120fps usability or the crop factor. But you can't deny it when you shoot with a camera and get nice images in 24/60p at least.

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4 minutes ago, Yurolov said:

The same thing happened with the xc10. Specs were crap but the image was unmatched for a s16 look. It is the nature of canon. If u like good images then the Eos r will give u that. Talk about absolute sharpness in 4k is complete nonsense; its unimaginative and any artist worth anything could care less about it. 

This.

Thats why I felt so confident that I even preordered. After using the 6Dmkii and XC-10 I knew I wasn't going to be disappointed. The only surprise so far is the vast improvement in control and handling making it even more efficient to operate. 

We say it over and over, but it seems it needs to be said over and over. Every persons needs and wants are different. There is no superior camera. It all depends on what you need. 

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even the sharpened Eos R file is missing some detail in comparison. The small branches on the right are easily distinguishable in the Fuji image, but neither in Canons unsharpened nor oversharpened image.

But I agree with the generell idea, that sharpness nowadays is way overrated and there are many things that are more important. 
At the same time I don't get, why anyone should praise the Canon for things that it's not. This is the reason why canon gets away with a lot of awful decisions 

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