Yesterday’s post comparing studio portraits taken with a Canon 5D Mark II and a G11 elicited a lot of comments.  It was great to read everyone’s guess and their reasoning behind it.

The above image (the one on the right yesterday) is the version photographed with the 5D Mark II.  A few of the commenters (Harley, Nicole, Eric…) touched on what I felt was the obvious “Tell” – the fact that the expression was better in the 5D version.  There are a couple of reasons for this.  The first is that I spent more time on the 5D image since it was to be the “Keeper” for Melinda.  The second reason is that I found it a bit uncomfortable taking a studio portrait with the G11.  Lining up the composition on the back of the LCD was a bit disconcerting.  Even though the G11 has a viewfinder, the fact that it only has ~75% coverage means it cannot be used to properly line up the composition.

As I said yesterday (and the reader comments back this up), it is extremely difficult (impossible?) to discern the difference at this resolution.  If I had shown these images at a size of around 1500+ pixels (long side) the difference in sharpness would become readily apparent.

Lastly, it wasn’t mentioned yesterday, but even though there was a $3,000 difference in camera cost we can’t forget something that was a major factor in the difficulty in telling the images apart – this was a studio shot using a couple thousand dollars worth of lighting equipment.  The four light setup I used definitely helped to even the playing field between the cameras.

Thanks everyone for chiming in yesterday.  It made for a fun afternoon reading the guesses as they came in through the comments and on Facebook.  And thanks Melinda for allowing me to use her headshot session for this experiment.