A Camera w.o. An AA Filter Is A Sports Car w.o. Brakes?

I'd say sometimes an AA filter is a good idea, sometimes it's not. Camera makers did not put AA filters on camera because they were entirely redundant, they felt getting rid of moire pattern was worth the slight lack of sharpness. Whether you agree with that is a personal thing, and some people would rather have the sharpness.
 
If the X-Trans sensor design (or Foveon for that matter) will be followed that AA will mostly get obsolete.

For landscape I would take AA-less camera anytime. For fashion I would certainly not. The rest falls somewhere in between.

EDIT: AA does not cost sharpness, it costs fine detail, which I find is much more important. Sharpness is only matter of local contrast and can be (up to large extend) post processed, detail can not.
 
.... I bet that chap has never driven a sports car with drum brakes, because it's not at all like he's suggesting
 
The AA filter is the new dodo bird....

The AA filter is the new dodo bird....

A number of camera manufacturer's a re thinking the AA filter. The very simple situation is that a strong AA filter prevents (reduces) moire patterns in images, while at the same time softening edges in images (reducing sharpness)

I purchased the Olympus E-PL1 when it came out because I read an obscure review that indicated the reason the E-PL1 produced very sharp OOC images is that they reduced the strength of the AA filter. That was, what, 4-5 years ago. They have continued this practice, and it may be ONE of the factors the OM-D EM5was chosen the Camera Of The Year (Over Canon, with Nikon taking a further back seat) by DPreview for 2012.

Other MFRs going the weaker or no AA filter path are the Nikon D800E, where the E indicates among other things, a low pass filter combination that neutralizes the AA filter.

Others toying with weak or NO filters include Sony, Pentax, etc.

It is being justified on the basis the "moire patterns" can more easily be removed in Post Processing than the images take to "sharpening". And while "moire" does not occur in every image, the softened edges resulting from strong AA, or low-pass filtering are suffered by EVERY image shot. One of the "bill of goods" decisions made for the past decade that the industry is finally dealing with in their cameras.

All I know is that my Olympus E-PL1 has been the sharpest images OOC than any of a number of others, I have tried.. Fuji S5 Pro, Canon and Nikon DSLRs. etc.

I am now awaiting delivery of my Olympus E-PL5 which has the new 16Mp 4/3 sensor and the continuation of the weak AA filter technology, and also get the same images that others are getting from the EM-5, but for $600.

The AA filter changes bear watching.
 
If you want to stop VERRRRY fast... Buy Italian....

If you want to stop VERRRRY fast... Buy Italian....

willie_901 said:
Eons ago I had regular access to a TR-3. Those drum bikes were... Uh interesting.

Great analogy.
Click to expand...

I owned a TR-3 and can relate to the braking you mention. However, I switch from restoring english cars to Italian cars. The Italians know brakes, must be the mountains and switchback roads. I had an Alfa Giulietta Spyder, which was a tad smaller than a TR3, but had drums with 50% more swept area.

Always had to clean blood of the steering wheel from hitting my nose on the horn button.... Stops Fast!
 
My response to Doppelbauer's article is, to put in my 11-yr. old daughter's words, "whatever". In my opinion, his article is yet another example of too much information about something unseen in the real world. Or in other words, another example of "pixel-peeping".

I've been using an AA-filterless Fuji X-Pro1 for about 9 months now. The prints look great.
 
There is a clearly structured and well-written article about AA filters and moire by Michael Hußmann in LFI 6/2011. If you are really interested in that topic that LFI iussue is worth getting.

I personally prefer cameras without it.
 
I think one motivation to put out AA-less cameras is to avoid having to increase the size of the sensor. The bigger it gets, the more costly (exponentially) it gets, and cameras and lenses get bigger and more costly too. Either you accept the risk of possible moire in certain situations (D800E etc), or you build a new sensor colour array (Sigma, Fuji).

In medical terms the AA filter is not a cure, it is a treatment. The disease is the Bayer array. Changing the array is the (possible) cure. It's not as if camera designers back in the day started off with an AA filter in mind, and then built a sensor and camera around it. Get rid of it I say!
 
Most people will never see moiré with a D800E because it will oversample the amount of spatial detail in most images. Focus won't be precise enough, shutter speed won't be fast enough, lenses won't be quite sharp enough, etc. With enough pixel density diffraction and less-than-perfect technique become a de facto anti-aliasing filters.

Many owners of digital cameras lacking AA filters claim that they don't get moiré, because they generally don't. Their technique isn't good enough to get it.

Note that this is quite a separate issue from the artistic content of the images so produced. Many of these people are seriously good artists.
 
Thanks for all the interesting and insightful comments.

I have mixed feelings. Aliasing artifacts are unavoidable. Sometimes the artifacts are significant and sometimes they aren't.

Every filter in every application degrades the data. Often the information loss is unimportant compared to the filter's positive effects.

I think the camera companies caused the reaction against AA filters by using unnecessarily strong filters in the early days of digital photography. I also think the M8 and Leica's reputation (which didn't have an AA filter for the same reason it didn't have an IR filter... space) started the demonization of the AA filter.

Today AA filters are appropriately designed to match the manufacturers sensor/lens technology.

At least we have choices now.
 
willie_901 said:
So says photographer Martin Doppelbauer.
http://www.martin-doppelbauer.de/foto/tippstricks/aliasfilter/index.html
Is he right?
Click to expand...

Whatever. A little study on the dynamics and physics of sensor design make these sorts of comments sound rather silly.

AA filters become less necessary as sensor resolution increases. It's a matter of sampling frequency and subject dynamics. Now that we're getting into the 12-24 Mpixel range on average with camera sensors, the incidence of moire decreases naturally and the need for AA filtration is greatly reduced.

A 5Mpixel camera without an AA filter, on the other hand, produces a mess.

G
 
Jamie Pillers said:
My response to Doppelbauer's article is, to put in my 11-yr. old daughter's words, "whatever". In my opinion, his article is yet another example of too much information about something unseen in the real world. Or in other words, another example of "pixel-peeping".
....
Click to expand...

+1

semilog said:
...
Many owners of digital cameras lacking AA filters claim that they don't get moire, because they generally don't. Their technique isn't good enough to get it. ...
Click to expand...

I also haven't had any moire issues, sometimes in jpgs but never in the actual raw file, that makes me believe it can also be compression artifact.
But then maybe my technique just isn't good enough to encounter the problem, lucky me ;).
 
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