When Coc, Pixel and ND filters come together

[Kolia]

I had an epiphany this week I thought other newbies could benefit from it and orient their own leanings.

I finally got around to educating myself about Diffraction Limited Focus which led to a Cambridge Color web site (lost the link so you search it yourself) that had an interactive graphic showing the resulting Circle of Confusion of a given Aperture overlaid on the sensor pixels of a given camera body.

That made me realize that my 24MP APS-C sensor will start to feel the diffraction as early as F8. It will get evident (at 100% crop) at F11 and above…

Which in turn explains why I couldn’t get a very sharp image of that duck in the river, at mid day, last summer. I was stopped down way to much (f22) and made it impossible to get the best image out of my lens.

In turn, this highlights even more the usefulness of good ND filters. By allowing you to stay below the diffraction threshold by using a larger aperture but still have the desired exposure. Epiphany.

Secondary epiphany, a Full Frame sensor of same MP will tolerate a smaller aperture before being diffraction limited simply because of the larger pixel. Yet another reason to full our FF envy.

I provided no links in an attempt to force some research on the part of the reader. Nothing to do with me being lazy of course…

 

[KmH]

led to a Cambridge Color web site (lost the link so you search it yourself)

Digital Photography Tutorials

 

[amolitor]

This is why the f/64 group was NOT a bunch of idiots. They really could use f/64 in a useful way.