Thread: Cloudy skies, with three different cameras

I've always had a thing for clouds and taking pictures of them.
Today on the drive home from work I noticed that the sky had just the right kind of clouds so I decided to take the same shot with three different cameras and see what I could do with Lightroom 4.

Foveon clouds really impress me, they look fantastic and it's easy to process the image to get good results, but I wanted to see if my D5100 could at least give it a run for it's money and I wanted to see how far away the LX5 was.

What do you think?


Clouds_SigmaDP1 by ChristianHass, on Flickr


Clouds_NikonD5100 by ChristianHass, on Flickr



Clouds_PanasonicLX5 by ChristianHass, on Flickr

chris - the lighting within clouds can change so quickly - in a few seconds - I could not decide which is which, or which one is better than the other, especially when looked at on a laptop screen

I see not significant difference at screen resolutions. What did you conclude from the originals?

[QUOTE=Chris2500dk;77396]I've always had a thing for clouds and taking pictures of them.
Today on the drive home from work I noticed that the sky had just the right kind of clouds so I decided to take the same shot with three different cameras and see what I could do with Lightroom 4.

Foveon clouds really impress me, they look fantastic and it's easy to process the image to get good results, but I wanted to see if my D5100 could at least give it a run for it's money and I wanted to see how far away the LX5 was.

What do you think?

Christan,

I'm with you -- I love pictures of the clouds. If you search this forum for "skyscapes" you'll find a couple of different threads about them (I advertently started a second one, not knowing that the first was already there.)

Anyhow, my opinion is that I like the LX5 the best. It has good "pop" like the Foveon, but the highlights aren't blown out. The 5100 looks less contrasty to me, but ultimately I like them all.

Cheers, Jock

Originally Posted by Country Parson

I see not significant difference at screen resolutions. What did you conclude from the originals?

The LX5 loses detail at higher resolution which isn't surprising really, the D5100 and DP1 are very close and I think it's more down to processing than anything else.
Also, the DP1 lens is a lot sharper than the 18-200VR I had on the D5100 so if Nikon (or anyone else) could be bothered to make a good wide prime for DX it'd be nice :)

What I need to do is find out if there is any notable difference at the size I normally print (30x40cm), sometimes the gearhead in me takes over and I get stuck at "but the D5100 looks better at 100% pixel view!" when the LX5 might be good enough for the application.

Originally Posted by Chris2500dk

I've always had a thing for clouds and taking pictures of them.
Today on the drive home from work I noticed that the sky had just the right kind of clouds so I decided to take the same shot with three different cameras and see what I could do with Lightroom 4.

Foveon clouds really impress me, they look fantastic and it's easy to process the image to get good results, but I wanted to see if my D5100 could at least give it a run for it's money and I wanted to see how far away the LX5 was.

What do you think?


Clouds_SigmaDP1 by ChristianHass, on Flickr


Clouds_NikonD5100 by ChristianHass, on Flickr



Clouds_PanasonicLX5 by ChristianHass, on Flickr

Honestly, I can't notice the difference... Maybe in more critical eyes of photographers, they might notice. What can I say is that I love the photos.

I'm more attrcted to the D5100 shot, there seems to be more detail in the clouds, the other two have some blown highlights which the D5100 does not seem to have. But overall there's very little difference looking at them on a computer screen.

I got the prints today, 30x45 cm (around 12"x18").

Viewed at "normal distance" the difference is very small, but when you get closer you can see noise in the LX5 image both in the blue sky and especially in the dark parts of the clouds.

The D5100 shot has the least noise overall, but I still think the DP1 cloud details look finer. A lot of this is probably due to the lens.
There's very little in it between the DP1 and D5100 which I find very impressive for a 6 year old camera, even if the shot is of a subject the DP1 should be good at.

It certainly was a fun little experiment to run, who said GAS was all bad? Without GAS I wouldn't have all these cameras to compare :)

The D5100 gives the better image here in my eyes, except for the rather massive purple fringing which is the 18-200's fault (see the top left part). The LX5 is the worse for me.

I like the D5100's the best. But I'm pleasantly surprised at how good the LX5 also looks, although at a web sized photo.