D850: diffraction

If you can only shoot with faster than f5.6 before diffraction kicks in, wouldn't that be limiting? You add a TC to a 500mm and you're at the limit already. I'm guessing this could cause some depth of field issue if I'm going to shoot something close with a tele. What about wide angle landscape shots? Or, is diffraction really a serious issue at all for all kinds of photography??

What about sensors of even larger mega-pixels at the dslr level? Would one day we could only be shooting with f4 and nothing slower??

Should I worry??

Diffraction is overblown, I bet you could go to f16 before it is noticeable.

I agree with Mike but you will definitely see it way before f/16 because you can easily see it between f/8 and f/11 on an a7R Mk II which is 42 mp. But that doesn't mean you can't shoot there. For most uses, it won't result in very noticeable softening. There are also ways to mitigate it by using deconvolution sharpening, something built into Capture One. This uses a predictive modeling approach to how much light diffracts on a pixel level based on your exposure parameters and uses computer logic to undo it as much as possible. You can also mitigate it by doing more focus stacking - it is now built into the camera. Another way to look at it is that your pixel sites are the same as a D500 and actually bigger than a D7200 and certainly i have taken many photos with those cameras in the f/11 and even f/13 region - heck all of my Ecuador hummingbirds are taken at f/11 and f/13 and they are certainly not lacking in detail. So yes, the internet amplification effect makes it seem like diffraction is a huge issue but at the same time, there are many very successful photos taken on cameras with even smaller pixels at f/11 and even f/16.

Sounds like I can just deal with it in post-processing then.

Thank you for the responses, guys !!

DChan wrote:Sounds like I can just deal with it in post-processing then.

Thank you for the responses, guys !!

Well kind of.  Certainly you would have no problem correcting to f/11 with deconvolution sharpening.  Once you get beyond that, the diffraction related losses are just too great to recover, but that doesn't mean you can't still make a good photograph.  But this is not regular sharpening we are talking about.  you need software that specifically can do deconvolution sharpening.

E.J. Peiker wrote:

DChan wrote:Sounds like I can just deal with it in post-processing then.

Thank you for the responses, guys !!

Well kind of.  Certainly you would have no problem correcting to f/11 with deconvolution sharpening.  Once you get beyond that, the diffraction related losses are just too great to recover, but that doesn't mean you can't still make a good photograph.  But this is not regular sharpening we are talking about.  you need software that specifically can do deconvolution sharpening.

I also use Capture One Pro so the deconvolution sharpening part seems to me I got that taken care of. I don't usually shoot slower than f11 except when shooting close-up or macro (perhaps that's why D850 can do focus-bracketing automatically  , or group shots where f5.6 may not give me enough depth of field and the folks does not hold their smiling faces long enough for me to do focus-bracketing Hopefully Nikon can shoot focus-shift as fast as Olympus does.
 

It has been noted previously that Photoshop Smart Sharpen uses a form of deconvolution sharpening. As noted in a recent article in Photography Life the author states; a basic starting point is, set the radius as small as possible (0.5 pixels), the detail as high as possible (100) and the masking as low as possible (0). Then, adjust the sharpness value so that the amount of grain in low-detail areas is tolerable. For my D800e, this is typically between 20 and 40, depending upon the image. Photos that are filled completely with details (as in, no clouds or out-of-focus areas) will let you increase the sharpening value more than images with low-detail regions.

bradmangas wrote:It has been noted previously that Photoshop Smart Sharpen uses a form of deconvolution sharpening. As noted in a recent article in Photography Life the author states; a basic starting point is, set the radius as small as possible (0.5 pixels), the detail as high as possible (100) and the masking as low as possible (0). Then, adjust the sharpness value so that the amount of grain in low-detail areas is tolerable. For my D800e, this is typically between 20 and 40, depending upon the image. Photos that are filled completely with details (as in, no clouds or out-of-focus areas) will let you increase the sharpening value more than images with low-detail regions.

Not the same thing because it is done after demosaicing.  Capture One's is done on the RAW file prior to RAW conversion.  Also, in order to do true deconvolution sharpening, the software has to take into account the aperture and sensor pixel pitch that the photograph was taken at.  Photoshop does not do this at all.

Yes, you can worry too much about diffraction but you will begin to lose detail above about f/7.1 with the 36MP D800E so going even smaller pitch with the D850 would tend to lower the f/# where diffraction begins to kick in. But if the situation calls for it there's no reason not to go to f/16 though you will see a significant reduction in recorded detail at that point. It really depends on what you're doing and there are occasions when shooting at ISO6400 is acceptable same with f/16+. As I shoot mostly landscape I tend to stay, most of the time, in the f/5.6-f/8 range and by my observation the greatest detail is right about f/7.1 depending on relative distances.


Brian