Sony tells DSLR shooters they're idiots

In article , Gary Eickmeier
wrote:

Alan Browne wrote:
On 2012.12.01 20:12 , Gary Eickmeier wrote:

Sorry. How is this? There is a neat fix for this problem with Outlook
Express, and I found it, but don't always use the correct icon to
open the program. So last time, I simply converted it to rich test
so I could bold my response to show the difference.


Whatever, it seems correct above. Outlook has a poor history where
usenet is concerned (MS refuse to follow comment and signature
conventions). There are several compliant newsreaders - Thunderbird
being one of them (and free).

And have you noticed the gobbledegook symbols you sometimes get with various
readers that place symbols where some punctuations are supposed to be? I
googled up a fix for that one, too, but havd long since forgotten what it
was. As time and progress move on, some strange glitches are left behind.

Set you default encoding to UTF-8. These days that fixes most of them.
It won't always though. You can blame the senders' settings for them.

--
To de-mung my e-mail address:- fsnospam$elliott$$
PGP Fingerprint: 1A96 3CF7 637F 896B C810 E199 7E5C A9E4 8E59 E248

Alan Browne wrote:
On 2012.12.02 14:56 , nospam wrote:
In article , Alfred
Molon wrote:

And a RAW conversion involves much more than just 2 or 3 parameters:

- white balance (at least two parameters)
- contrast, saturation, gamma, white point, black point and more
- shadow and highlight recovery
- selective hue, saturation, brightness etc.
- noise correction parameters
- sharpness parameters
- lens corrections (aberrations, vignetting etc.)

the jpeg would need the same.

Neither need much of those at all in most cases.

True for snapshots, but Alfred is dead on right about photographs.

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

On Sunday, 25 November 2012 08:03:48 UTC, Alfred Molon wrote:
In article , Alan Browne

says...

f/16 x 1/125 - sunny

f/11 x 1/125 - part cloudy

f/8 x 1/125 - cloudy



etc.. ...



As a kid that's all I needed....



Doesn't this rule depend on location and time? The sun in Sweden is

different from the sun in the tropics, and the sun at noon different

from the sun in the evening.

--



Alfred Molon

When I used Kodachrome ASA 10 I had a Jonson exposure calculator which "dialed in" factors such as latitude, month, time of day, film speed, sunny etc, side or front lighting, in sun or shade, type of subject. A bit time consuming but usually accurate exposure. Slide film has similar latitude to digital and negative film rather more - difference is speed of confirmation of exposure accuracy ie seconds compared to days.

"David Dyer-Bennet" wrote in message
...

Yeah, "matrix metering" is my biggest disappointment in camera tech. It
sounded good, but I find I'm going back to manual more and more, even
for apparently stable situations, because I find exactly what you
describe -- slight compositional changes can cause rather startling
exposure changes unexpectedly. (That's why exposure compensation on top
of automation isn't the answer).

I still carry the camera in matrix and program mode since that's the
fastest setting to get me to a record shot in an unexpected situation;
but after those first few shots I switch to manual.

Most-wanted function to assign to a direct button on my cameras: Figure
out the current shutter speed and aperture in program / matrix mode, and
set mode to manual with that shutter speed and that aperture set. This
gets me a slavagable picture instantly (well, nearly always; I'm pretty
good at restoration work, so I can rescue most things if I really need
to) AND sets up the camera to improve the exposure from there, without
my having to remember the settings and manually change mode and manually
duplicate the settings I remember.

Having Live View really helps with manual shooters. You can do exposure and
WB and see your results before you shoot.

With flash, you have to wait until you take a shot, but even there I am
starting to get really disappointed in TTL flash exposure. So I take a few
test shots to see where the ballpark is, and go from there.

Gary Eickmeier

"nospam" wrote in message
...
In article , Gary Eickmeier
wrote:

if you can't see the difference then no need, but others definitely
can.

That is always the argument from the subjectivists, "if you aren't as
perceptive as we, then do what you want" but when subjected to blind
testing
they can't prove any of it.

when have you done a double-blind test? oh right, you haven't.

Many times.


do a test yourself. it won't be double-blind but the differences are
dramatic.

take a photo with the white balance set completely wrong and then try
to fix the jpeg and the raw. one is going to look a *lot* better than
the other and it's *not* going to be the jpeg. have you done that?
didn't think so either.

Well, there you go again. Shooting digital with WB all wrong. Who would do
that?

But they are very good at getting the neurotic
to spend thousands more than they need to for benefits that only others
can
see.

thousands more? what the hell are you talking about?

Audiophiles.

first of all, you *already* have elements and lightroom! you don't have
to spent a single extra cent! it's *free*! what's even more amusing is
that you don't need to change your workflow either. it's *exactly* the
same as jpeg!

second, raw software doesn't cost much, nowhere near the 'thousands'
that you're claiming. elements is generally around $50 or so, aperture
is $79 and lightroom is a little over $100 (and well worth it).

And Photoshop CS4. I have all of the programs I need to shoot RAW. I have
tried it. I will try it again, maybe even experiment to TRY and find
differences.

Gary Eickmeier

"Elliott Roper" wrote in message
...
In article , nospam
wrote:

second, raw software doesn't cost much, nowhere near the 'thousands'
that you're claiming. elements is generally around $50 or so, aperture
is $79 and lightroom is a little over $100 (and well worth it).

You are so right!

I don't get this debate. Shooting RAW only is a no-brainer in all
circumstances.

Memory cards that outlast a battery are cheap. Disks are cheap. Sucking
your images into Lightroom or Aperture is wa-ay faster overall than
selectively playing about with JPEG. You get your shots organised and
classified in a searchable library for free. You get your backups done
for 5 seconds work per shoot (and a fair bit of computer time while you
grab a coffee or 6).

All that on top of getting far more latitude for fixing up messes. With
almost any numpty workflow, your starting point is better than
in-camera jpg with a cubic boatload of insurance. F'rinstance, you can
set Aperture to automatically apply presets and local time adjustments
on arrival. For my personal preference, that's auto RGB levels, and 0.2
of definition.

That's non-destructive costless. Most snapshots need nothing more. If
it is getting published to the web, it will get a straighten and a crop
and maybe a skin tone white balance. Say 10 sec total. The cost of
managing in camera jpegs is out of all proportion to their utility.
It's more work for less result.

Aside from that, whenever there is a large format print at the end of
it, there is the sheer pleasure of tweaking it to perfection knowing
that none of the data captured by the camera has been brainlessly
discarded.

Is there any point in taking pride in getting exposure and white
balance 'just so' before the shot walks away? If you got the
technology, flaunt it! It's the result that matters, as most here are
saying. You don't need a hair shirt. You don't have to starve in a
garret.

Numpty workflow?

There is no argument. I just made a comment that I have never seen an
improvement or any difference whatsoever - with RAW. All of the blather
about workflow and correcting poorly shot images came in afterward.

Alfred Molon pointed out that if a shot is exposed correctly and if it ends
up as a JPG or other 8 bit file after all is said and done, there may be no
perceptual difference between the two. Unless sometimes the camera's jpeg
engine is better than your aftermarket RAW processor.

Gary Eickmeier

To summarise it a bit, it seems that you and Alan shoot different things
than I do, and do not optimise so much in RAW processing. Personally,
when processing a RAW file, I find myself fiddling with up to 20
parameters, trying to get the best possible result. Sometimes I will
modify a single parameter 3 or 4 times. And despite all this editing
effort sometimes the final result is not better than the camera JPEG.

I keep the camera JPEG as a reference and compare it to my RAW output.
Often I find myself backtracking, reediting the RAW trying to make it
look more like the camera JPEG.
--

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

In article , Gary Eickmeier
wrote:


Numpty workflow?

It's my numpty workflow. I'm a numpty. I make mistakes with exposure
and framing (and focus) far too often. RAW saves me time, costs very
little money and it rescues so many pictures.

There is no argument. I just made a comment that I have never seen an
improvement or any difference whatsoever - with RAW. All of the blather
about workflow and correcting poorly shot images came in afterward.

OK, you say it, but I don't believe it. Every shot I take looks better
than in-camera jPEG, especially my recoverable mistakes.

Alfred Molon pointed out that if a shot is exposed correctly and if it ends
up as a JPG or other 8 bit file after all is said and done, there may be no
perceptual difference between the two. Unless sometimes the camera's jpeg
engine is better than your aftermarket RAW processor.

You ARE kidding? Right?

That's a silly "if". Everything does not end up in 8 bit. You can push
16 bits/channel through Photoshop to some printers. You can certainly
use the extra bits to better balance highlights and shadows and levels
and curves in Aperture, Lightroom and Photoshop and feed the higher
resolution results off to other software like video editors.

On grounds of cost and mistake insurance alone, shooting RAW is a
no-brainer.

--
To de-mung my e-mail address:- fsnospam$elliott$$
PGP Fingerprint: 1A96 3CF7 637F 896B C810 E199 7E5C A9E4 8E59 E248

In article , Gary Eickmeier
wrote:

if you can't see the difference then no need, but others definitely
can.

That is always the argument from the subjectivists, "if you aren't as
perceptive as we, then do what you want" but when subjected to blind
testing they can't prove any of it.

when have you done a double-blind test? oh right, you haven't.

Many times.

bull****.

do a test yourself. it won't be double-blind but the differences are
dramatic.

take a photo with the white balance set completely wrong and then try
to fix the jpeg and the raw. one is going to look a *lot* better than
the other and it's *not* going to be the jpeg. have you done that?
didn't think so either.

Well, there you go again. Shooting digital with WB all wrong. Who would do
that?

not intentionally, but mistakes happen.

most of the time, auto white balance isn't exactly ideal and you need
to adjust the white balance a little (or even a lot). or maybe you just
want a special effect.

same for other adjustments.

unless you always get it perfect in the camera all the time, you *will*
need to adjust stuff later.

But they are very good at getting the neurotic
to spend thousands more than they need to for benefits that only others
can see.

thousands more? what the hell are you talking about?

Audiophiles.

what does that have to do with raw processing?

as i said, you don't have to spend a cent extra.

first of all, you *already* have elements and lightroom! you don't have
to spent a single extra cent! it's *free*! what's even more amusing is
that you don't need to change your workflow either. it's *exactly* the
same as jpeg!

second, raw software doesn't cost much, nowhere near the 'thousands'
that you're claiming. elements is generally around $50 or so, aperture
is $79 and lightroom is a little over $100 (and well worth it).

And Photoshop CS4. I have all of the programs I need to shoot RAW. I have
tried it. I will try it again, maybe even experiment to TRY and find
differences.

the fact that you say that the controls are clumsy and that it takes a
lot more work to work with raw means you don't know how to use the
software you already have.

it takes *no* additional work and the controls are exactly the same.

In article , Gary Eickmeier
wrote:

Alfred Molon pointed out that if a shot is exposed correctly and if it ends
up as a JPG or other 8 bit file after all is said and done, there may be no
perceptual difference between the two. Unless sometimes the camera's jpeg
engine is better than your aftermarket RAW processor.

*if* it's shot correctly and needs no adjustment, then maybe.

in the real world, that doesn't happen very often, if ever.

if you're that lucky to get every shot perfectly exposed, then go buy a
lottery ticket.