[Primus]

Hi all

I ´m a photographer and now playing with maxwell and composing with C4D. I understand that maxwell simulates more or less a real camera. But to my opinion there is a big difference in kind of DOF in maxwell and a real camera. I often shoot with wide open lenses, f1.4 etc . in combination with a 1D Mark II. In this case the maxwell renderings are not the same as a real photo ( difference in DOF).
I´m still learning maxwell, therefore i´m interested in your opinion or better say the claim maxwell has . Should it be the same ?

Best,
Thomas

[Half Life]

Originally Maxwell was based on a film camera and those will have very different properties from most digital cameras because of differences in CCD (to traditional film sizes) and lenses made specifically for CCD (instead of film)... this can be best understood by the huge variations in the digital market in just trying to get a 35mm equivalent focal length standard.

The reality is Maxwell is not limited in the same way a physical camera is and therefor is capable of a much wider array of effects than most cameras -- the trade off is it will never have the same qualities which may be desirable but are really born from those old real-world limitations.

When I teach Maxwell I tend to gloss over the real-world camera settings and focus on EV simply because there is no need to tie oneself to limitations that Maxwell does not really have... but then I've never been a serious photographer.

Best,
Jason.

[Primus]

Thank you Jason. For all your other answers to my questions here in the forum as well.

Best,
Thomas

[Mihai]

Did you set your film back to the same dimensions as the 1D? It should be 36x24mm for the 1D full frame sensor, to get the right focal length. If you could post some images it would be interesting to see. You should be able to get heavy blur and bokeh effects if you want:

[Primus]

Hi Mihai

I did taht, set the maxwell camera to the 1D settings. I got the blur and bokeh effects, but i think there is a more or less "big" difference in Depth of field between real camera and the simulation. I think in the simulation is to , let say "not deep enough" , concerning DOF. When i use my real camera ( 1Ds) e.g. with a lense with f 1.4 by 50 mm, i´ve a very limited sharp area ( at a short distance to the object). I thin k maxwell calculates here different values, more DOF. The pictures look nice, but in an other way.

But before i do big words here, i will do some serious test again, in addition i´m new to maxwell since 2 weeks. I will post my results here.

Best,
Thomas

[Mihai]

Ok If you can, please send me an MXS to do some comparisons, perhaps the scene scale is not quite the same. You can send it to mihai at nextlimit.com.

[kami]

I did investigate in that matter quite a while ago, because I had the same feeling (http://maxwellrender.com/forum/viewtopi ... &hilit=DOF). But I think that issue has been fixed?
Even though, I still think that the DOF is not the same to a real camera if you put the parameters identical.

There is a workaround I have to use quite often: scale the model down by .1
Then you are able to get a nice DOF effect, even on large scale models (eg. architectural renderings)

I hope I find the time to make that old comparison again.

[Primus]

Thank you for your link to the forum discussion. !!

In this old discusion everything is mentioned i wanted to say. And there are some hints i didn´t test ( scaling the scene by 0.1 and use different diaphram ). By the way, my expierience is the same , modeling in C4D or direct objects in Maxwell Studio. Result for me is the same, not strong enough DOF (Maxwell 2.5.1) .

I will do the same test as you did kami and i will post the result here an mail to Mihai.

Best,
Thomas

[Nova66]

Result for me is the same, not strong enough DOF (Maxwell 2.5.1).

I haven't gotten around to doing any empirical comparisons but anecdotally I'd have to agree. The 200mm lens on my DSLR seems to give me far more depth of field than the same 200mm lens in Maxwell.

Andrew Novinc.

[jfrancis]

Did you set your film back to the same dimensions as the 1D? It should be 36x24mm for the 1D full frame sensor, to get the right focal length. If you could post some images it would be interesting to see. You should be able to get heavy blur and bokeh effects if you want:

Canon EOS-1D Mark II
Sensor 28.7 x 19.1 mm CMOS
8.2 million effective pixels

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos1dmkii/

[jfrancis]

1D Mark II

or 1Ds Mark II

?