Sony tells DSLR shooters they're idiots

On 12/1/2012 10:45 AM, Gary Eickmeier wrote:

"Alan Browne" wrote in message ...
On 2012.11.30 22:58 , Gary Eickmeier wrote:

I have used the a100 for over 5 years now, and now the a35. I use
both the Photoshop Elements RAW programs and ACR and Lightroom. But
if I ever could discern any big improvement with RAW, I would shudder
at the thought of going through all that processing for each and
every image I shot at a wedding. I do process all of the JPGs, but it
is a lot easier than going through all that RAW rigamarole.

What rigamarole? You open the raw. Get a raw import screen. Adjust
(and for most photos you can "finish" the look right there with 2
controls: exposure and black point). "Accept" the changes and you're in
your editor for cropping, re-sizing. Done.

Better, you can apply the same changes in 1 go to a lot of photos at
once. For example, if you took 25 photos in the same lighting
conditions but all of them are a little underexposed, need the
blackpoint pushed and the saturation boosted a little. "Open" the
bunch, select all, make the adjustments (using one as an example), and
the changes apply to all the images which are then opened in the editor.
(The above is using photoshop).

A whole bunch of time saved. Using Lightroom (or aperture or other 3rd
party programs) - as a wedding photographer is more likely to use, it
would be even easier. Faster.

Reward: Time saved, and a consistent look across the set.

What rigamarole?

Gary, believe me, all the issues you raise were solved a long time ago
making raw capture an immense payoff in processing time saved and image
quality improved well beyond what in-camera JPEG could ever do.

OK OK, you have converted me - maybe. But obviously there is on extra step or set of steps to go through for RAW before you get to Photoshop.

Just one teensy simple question - shooting in RAW (and I know I can shoot in RAW + JPG) but in the RAW exposure, what is the difference in the file between shooting with the wrong WB and the correct one? Do you not still have to shoot as good an exposure as humanly possible and get the WB correct? I know, for example, that if I screw up the WB in JPG I can get so far out that it is uncorrectable because the info is just not there to adjust. But how far can you take this with RAW?

You have LR. Simply correct the WB for all affected images.


--
Peter

On 2012.12.01 10:45 , Gary Eickmeier wrote:

Just one teensy simple question - shooting in RAW (and I know I can
shoot in RAW + JPG) but in the RAW exposure, what is the difference
in the file between shooting with the wrong WB and the correct one?
Do you not still have to shoot as good an exposure as humanly
possible and get the WB correct? I know, for example, that if I screw
up the WB in JPG I can get so far out that it is uncorrectable
because the info is just not there to adjust. But how far can you
take this with RAW?

WB is a function applied between the raw image and the JPEG (or
in-editor) image.

So with raw you can screw up your WB to any and all extremes and bring
it back to the lighting conditions under which the image was captured.

Why? Because a raw image is absolutely void of any correction wrt the
original lighting conditions. It is just the data from the sensor.
[1][2].

Add that error to a photo that was overexposed (a stop or 2),
underepxosed (a few stops) - and still get a really output that would be
near impossible with JPEG.

[1] the WB settings are in the raw file so when you open in (eg) ACR,
the image will "present" per those settings. However, on seeing that
you screwed up you can use the various presets (sunlight, openshade,
flash, cloudy, incandescent, etc) or temperature (K) and tint to get it
to present for the lighting conditions under which the shot was made.
This is childishly easy.

[2] The in-camera histogram on most DSLR's (esp. earlier) models is
based on an in-camera JPEG even when shooting raw. So if you use the
histo to fine tune exposure you are better to do so with a correct(ish)
WB setting. Though if you screw even this little detail up, the
exposure latitude of the raw will likely save your image whereas the
JPEG may not.

--
"There were, unfortunately, no great principles on which parties
were divided – politics became a mere struggle for office."
-Sir John A. Macdonald

On 2012.12.01 10:53 , Gary Eickmeier wrote:

So shooting in RAW and processing in 16 bit etc is kind of like
recording audio at the higher bitrates and manipulating everything
with greater precision before converting back down to the 16/44
format for distribution on CD.

More like multichannel studio recording then mixed (each channel first
appropriately leveled and otherwise adjusted) to stereo for production.
(As opposed to making a stereo recording of many instruments and voices).

Your newsreader is not doing quotes correctly. eg: it looks like
everything I wrote prior is yours.


--
"There were, unfortunately, no great principles on which parties
were divided – politics became a mere struggle for office."
-Sir John A. Macdonald

On 12/1/2012 4:11 AM, David J. Littleboy wrote:

If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. AWB can't possibly work. In principle. It can't
tell the difference between a pink shirt in white light and a white shirt in pink light. (More
generally, it can't know what the subject/scene was supposed to look like, so it can't infer what
the light source was. Are the walls off white or Wedgewood blue? Both will confuse any AWB system.)



I agree, in principle.

But ... what about in practice? I have Canon 30D and 7D cameras. I
shoot exclusively raw, don't save JPEGs. But CR2 format saves the
info the camera uses for auto white balance, and I have DPP set to
show that as default. Its damn good ... I would say very excellent.
ACR also correctly reads this info. I have no idea how it does
it. I can photograph a white flower in the shade surrounded by
nothing but green leaves, so the light must be rather green ...
and the flower comes out looking sort of mild bluish ... just like it should
in the shade.

Usually even in ordinary landscape pictures, or people pictures, shot
in direct sunlight, auto looks better than setting to Daylight, either
in DPP or ACR.

So I use auto and adjust to taste starting from there.

And yes, I have photos where camera .jpg is not adequate. The usual
reason is that the dynamic range is too large, caused by shooting
a subject in the shade with backlit clouds against a blue sky in the
background. Sometimes this needs HDR, but not usually. Usually it
needs setting the camera JPEg settings to the lowest possible
contrast and careful manual exposure looking at the histogram
to get just the tiniest bit
of cloud silver lining into saturation (since "recover" in ACR
will fix this up.) There almost always will be enough signal to
noise in the shadow to fix everything up with skilled use of
Highlight/Shadow and/or unsharp mask in Photoshop.

JPEG is not adequate since it generates "toes" and "shoulders"
for the image, and then reduces to 8 bits. The precision
of the data in the toe and shoulder is then quite inadequate
to avoid banding. Of course if JPEG were floating point then
the only problem would be figuring out exactly how to
undo the toe and shoulder. Even that's not easy.

Wedding photographers don't have this problem since even
outdoors they can use fill flash. This is not possible for landscapes.

I've had pro photogs look at some of my prints and say "how did you do that?".
When I say "the same way you get to Carnegie Hall, just practice
highlight/shadow and unsharp mask instead of violin" they laugh and
say "thank God I'm not a landscape pro".

Somebody wanted such a picture ... here's one.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5310360/IMG_8081g.jpg

In the original 16 bit ACR image sent to PS itself there is almost
nothing visible in the shade areas. What you see in this image is what
I saw when taking the picture. Or rather what I saw 45 seconds earlier
in the bright salmon area in the center: the picture taken then was the first
I took and while the shadow and nearby sunlit areas are OK in that image,
the sky is 90% blown out. The lighting changed in that 45 seconds I needed
to go to manual exposure, so I
fixed this image to agree to the older one; its colorimetrically
accurate! (For a while I thought I'd need to make a composite image,
but it turned out that that was not necessary.)I should add that this
image is about as extreme a Photoshop job as I have ever done. If you pixel peep
you will note the unsharp mask artifacts and a lot of noise in the deep shadows.

Doug McDonald








Doug McDonald

On 12/1/2012 10:47 AM, Doug McDonald wrote:
Somebody wanted such a picture ... here's one.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5310360/IMG_8081g.jpg

Doug McDonald

I also made up a JPEG in DPP that would match what the camera generates.
Here it is

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5310360/IMG...EGsettings.JPG

There's more detail in the shadows than I remembered, and much less
in the highlights. Note the missing salmon colored area.

Doug

On 11/30/12 11:52 PM, in article , "Gary
Eickmeier" wrote:


"Trevor" wrote in message
...

"Anthony Polson" wrote in message
...
"Gary Eickmeier" wrote:
I hate RAW and the processing necessary for it. Just not real
intuitive and
no standard file types and no real improvement over simpler JPEG.


No real improvement?

Do you seriously believe that extracting an additional 1 to 1.5 stops of
dynamic range by using RAW over JPEGs is "no real improvement"?

You're kidding right? A top end camera that does 14 bits RAW loses far
more than 1.5 stops when saving to an 8 bit file! AND you don't have
control over the default curve applied that stops you losing the full 6
stops!!!

You're kidding, right? I am ignorant, but you are shooting digital 6 stops
off?

Gary Eickmeier



And *you* have never misread a meter? Never accidently set the shutter speed
incorrectly? The aperture always correct? Forgot to set the correct ISO?

Oh, WAIT: I forgot that doesn't happen when shooting in auto-eveything
mode...

On 2012-12-01 09:13:14 -0800, Doug McDonald said:

On 12/1/2012 10:47 AM, Doug McDonald wrote:
Somebody wanted such a picture ... here's one.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5310360/IMG_8081g.jpg

Doug McDonald

I also made up a JPEG in DPP that would match what the camera generates.
Here it is

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5310360/IMG...EGsettings.JPG

There's more detail in the shadows than I remembered, and much less
in the highlights. Note the missing salmon colored area.

Doug

....but you started from a CR2.

--
Regards,

Savageduck

In article ,
says...

"Anthony Polson" wrote in message
...
"Gary Eickmeier" wrote:
I hate RAW and the processing necessary for it. Just not real
intuitive and
no standard file types and no real improvement over simpler JPEG.


No real improvement?

Do you seriously believe that extracting an additional 1 to 1.5 stops of
dynamic range by using RAW over JPEGs is "no real improvement"?

I have never EVER seen an improvement in RAW compared to JPG. Do you have an
example?

Gary Eickmeier

Gary, here's a set of shots I took with a 30D a while back, all shot raw
using different EVs.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/39383723@N00/sets/72157607585960643/.
Note that there is a recognizable image even at EV 400,000. That's
_one_ think you can't do with JPEG.

On Sat, 1 Dec 2012 10:23:56 -0500, "Gary Eickmeier"
wrote:


"Eric Stevens" wrote in message
.. .
On Sat, 1 Dec 2012 00:45:05 -0500, "Gary Eickmeier"
wrote:


"Trevor" wrote in message
...

"Gary Eickmeier" wrote in message
...
"PeterN" wrote in message
One major advantage of RAW, in addition to the previously mentioned
ones, is that you can easily edit the RAW image, non-destructively.

You can edit anything non-destructively.

Right, but you can't save it back to Jpeg non destructively, so why
start
with a lossy Jpeg in the first place?
I can't see the point myself since you can easily set up PS or LR to
automaticly apply your camera settings when you open a RAW file if
that's
all you want to do. If I really needed to print direct from the camera I
can save RAW+Jpeg, never do though.

I know what they mean by "non destructively" - that all of the edits are
saved in layers and can be undone at all times. But all I am saying is
that
I do not edit on my JPGs and then save it back to the same JPG file I
started with - I save it as a new file, a TIFF, so that the original is
still there.

I'm sorry Gary, but the original was the raw file. It is inherent in
the nature of JPEGs that as soon as you save in that format you lose
image data.

http://zatz.com/connectedphotographe...n-jpeg-images/
explains it reasonably well but only recognizes the existence of RAW
files of up to 12 bits. For several years there have been cameras of
up to 14 bits.

It is correct that as described in the article there are 16 bit JPEG
files. The only problem is that only a very limited range of software
is capable of reading them.

In short, if you have a good camera you are restricting its
capabilities by using JPEG.

OK OK, I understand the theory of it all, but if I were fired up again about
RAW and went out and took a few shots in moth RAW and JPG and tried to show
myself this superiority, I would once again come up empty.

You haven't yet said how you are displaying these files for
evaluation. If it's on an ordinary low-priced monitor which won't even
cope with sRGB, then I agree with you: you won't see a significant
difference. If you have a 'good' monitor but don't look very hard, you
may still not see a difference. If you have a top-quality
colour-calibrated

Can someone out there who has such an illustrative example of the VISIBLE
superiority of RAW please post a link?

Gary Eickmeier

--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

My experience is that with some cameras, if you set them up properly,
you end up using 60-90% of the JPEGs.

In the past I would start processing all RAWs, then when comparing them
to the camera JPEGs would notice that the converted RAWs in many cases
were not better than the JPEGs, despite all effort put into converting
the RAWs, optimising them, choosing the best possible combination of
parameters etc.

At 1 or 2 minutes per RAW conversion, if you process 200 RAW images,
it's 3-6 hours of work to process 200 images. It's a tedious time,
because you are in front of a computer screen playing around with the
sliders, wondering how much you should increase or decrease this or that
parameter.

All this painful work, and in 60-90% of cases you end up with an image
which is not better than the camera JPEG (this percentage of course
depends on the scene - there are scenes with difficult lighting
conditions, where less camera JPEGs will be usable).

In any case the workflow is as follows:

1. Check the JPEGs and determine which need RAW processing
2. Process the RAW images you have identified in step 1.
--

Alfred Molon
------------------------------
Olympus E-series DSLRs and micro 4/3 forum at
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/MyOlympus/
http://myolympus.org/ photo sharing site