Risk of moire in nature photography with 5DS R?

[Vern]

A question for Neuro or another imaging expert: would moire be a significant problem with the repeating patterns in avian feathers? I understand that it is rare in most natural scenes due to the general absence of repetition in patterns, but feather structure seems like a potential problem.

I am toying with the idea of the 5DS R mostly for landscape b/c I make very large prints on occasion (and could be inspired to do more). I can achieve very high resolutions with panos, but that technique is limiting for moving subjects (waves, leaves, even clouds etc) and results in a lot of post capture fiddling around (not my strength). However, I could see this body being helpful for more pixels on small subjects (birds) when the light is good and lower ISOs achievable. A dual utility would encourage me to pull the trigger.

Thoughts? (Thanks)

 

[Zeidora]

Bird feathers and butterfly wings may be some of the nature subjects that could *potentially* lead to moiré. It will depend a lot on the precise distance and the spatial frequencies of those repeating elements. In bird feathers, there are coarser and finer feathers and feather regions on the same bird, which makes the problem a bit worse. Butterfly wings usually are more uniform. Have people with 7Ds complained about moiré with birds? If so, that may be a warning sign.

The S vs. R version is a typical trade-off between potential ultimate sharpness but occasional moiré, vs. playing it safer with moiré. Absolute safety does not exist; there is always the perfect combination of pixel spacing and spatial frequency of object that leads to moiré. Additionally, moiré may also come up in off-set printing depending on line-screen used. There are nowadays random dot-distrubution patterns that avoid some of those problems. Talk to your printer about it, if it is a concern.

You can do some Gaussian blur afterwards to get rid of moiré once it crops up, sometimes resizing image also helps. You can then USM to get some of the crispness back without introducing worse moiré. Just make sure that the diameter of blur and of USM are quite different. I used that trick when I had to reproduce scanned off-set print illustrations in new off-set print publication, possibly a worst-case scenario for moiré.

In my opinion, I rather want to have ultimate sharpness in the initial capture, I can always downgrade it afterwards. It is the same rational for shooting RAW (requiring a bit more fiddling, but giving you more control), vs. saving lossy and processed jpegs. I have a 5dsr on pre-order and I do mainly documentary nature/natural history shots, some landscapes.

Hope that helps.

 

[Vern]

many thanks Zeidora

sounds like a case for experimentation and the perfectionist in me is drawn to the best capture (although until I retire, I will always be very limited on time for the post capture expertise development)

I will look for some posts from you when your 5DS R arrives

cheers

 

[sandymandy]

im sure there will (is) be a ton of software to help with the moire problem for the 5DS R if it ever does occur. i wish all canons wouldnt have a moire filter. yes i can also sharpen my images now and get about the same effect but what about sharpening the already sharp photos even more? it should win

 

[crashpc]

My experience is that I can get moiré effects in image using current Canon cams with AA filter ANYWAY.
That way I´d buy AA filter cancelled body, and did two things:
1) Corrected these images where this happens.
2) Deleted these few unrepeatable, because I shoot multiple images in "personal" nature mode anyway.