Tom Reichner wrote in post #19092040
.John,
I am a bit confused with this talk that involves "normalizing results" and the like.
In post #210, I asked Cary some questions, as I wondered about some of the things he said about this issue.
. But I would value your feedback, as well, as you seem to know what people mean when they talk about normalizing results.
Just please try to answer in a way that I can understand ..... many things that you and others write here on the forum are way over my head and I just don't understand because the talk is often too technical for me.
. It's about equal display of equal goals, and also recognizing when equal goals aren't achievable.
You seem to operate in the corner case, where you are only interested in the best photo ops, gear-wise and light-wise. You seek out larger subjects, if possible, getting real close, carrying a large lens, and trying to use most of a larger sensor. So, there is no way that you can do better, except to have a FF sensor with more pixels and less noise, or get an even bigger lens. Almost everyone wants that, but not everyone is willing to limit their photography to the very best opportunities.
Lots of people don't operate in that corner, though, and frequently shoot things that are always too small, or too far away. Such people can get tricked into thinking that they're getting better captures than they are when they use larger sensors or larger pixels.
You made a statement recently about how much better the 5D4 is than the 7D2 in low light. I see this statement all the time, but it is not necessarily true. It is only true in real practice, when you get closer to the subject, or use a bigger lens, which both give a different photo with more shallow DOF, or in the case of just getting closer, a different perspective.
I've seen people who have to crop heavy even from the 7D2 for most of their photography "upgrade" to the 5D4 or even the 5D3. Those are certainly upgrades without quotation marks for many photographic situations, but not all. They are happy with their upgrade, but are viewing their results at 100% or viewing the entire images resized to their monitor and then noticing how they are sharper, and less noisy at the same ISO as on the 7D2. What they don't notice, is that their bird is smaller on the monitor in either case, and the increased sharpness or lower noise is only an illusion deriving from the smaller size.
If the default method of inspection were to view every bird photographed at 12" from tail to bill tip on the monitor, this illusion would not exist. The subject "bird" would be normalized, and it would be clear that shooting bigger birds, getting closer to them, or using a larger entrance pupil or shooting in brighter light (or risking blur with longer exposures) are all that matter for noise; the sensor size and pixel size are out the window.
