Sony tells DSLR shooters they're idiots

nospam writes:

In article , Anthony Polson
wrote:

If you own one of the latest Fujifilm mirrorless cameras, you are
forced to use Fujifilm's own software because no-one else's will
decode the RAW files from the non-Bayer sensor.

fuji uses bayer sensors.

One of the Fujis advertises a pattern that isn't "RGBG", and that in
fact isn't regular, it's random. (Fixed, and the same on all cameras,
but not a regular pattern across the pixels.)

This is to reduce color aliasing, and it should work in theory (haven't
played with the camera). But I see how it would cause a bit of a mess
for RAW-processing software; they'd have to know what the pattern was.
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On Sun, 2 Dec 2012 21:07:37 -0500, "Gary Eickmeier"
wrote:


"Alfred Molon" wrote in message
m...
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.

Truth be told, most of the time I am delighted with levels and remove color
cast. The latter is available only in Elements and not the full Photoshop!

"Remove color caste" is another term for white balance, and is available under a
different guise in both Photoshop CS Editor and also in Camera Raw... just look
for the "eyedroppers". I usually use the ones in 'levels'. CS has the advantage
of having not only gray scale but also 'max white' and 'max black'.

I know, it took me a while to find them all as well!

In rec.photo.digital.slr-systems Gary Eickmeier wrote:
Alan Browne wrote:
On 2012.12.01 17:12 , Alfred Molon wrote:

[but the "" attributions are screwed by Gary's non-standard quoting]

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).

It's very easy to discover which images need careful processing and
which simply need a quick tweak, or nothing at all. All you have to do
is try your usual simple jpeg adjsutments. When they fail to satisfy
is when you need to use more and more powerful tools. Of course if
they never fail to satisfy you or your clients then there is no point
in you personally bothering with RAW.

It's funny how you bring up terms like "painful" which may apply to
you but don't seem to apply to most people discussing this here.

As to workflow, simplification is always better - so shoot one format
only and save card space.

I can definitely see a reason to go RAW for portrait photogs who will be
making 20 x 24 canvas wall images, but for wedding especially I would rather
not. The last one I shot 750 images. Most were fantastic, some were low
light and might have benefited from RAW but I would rather get the exposures
right in the first place than rely on fixing it in post.

With perfect exposure there is still a lot more latitude in exposure
range (aka dynamic range) in RAW files than the jpegs. For example, if
you wanted to catch detail in both the shaded areas of a black suit
and a sunlit lace wedding dress you could get a lot more out of a tone
mapped or curve-adjusted RAW file than any ex-camera jpeg. But if
you've never done that kind of thing before you'd need to learn some
new skills in order to be able to do that.

Or you could simply wait for the next generation of camera which has
managed to package some of those methods into a selectable in-camera
jpeg processing mode. But those are of course always limited by
processing power. For example in-camera jpeg high ISO noise reduction
keeps improving all the time. But it's never as good, and never could
as good, as what you can get from dedicated noise reduction software
which takes its time to do the best job, and takes your time to set it
up to do what you want in this particular image.

--
Chris Malcolm

In article , Anthony Polson
wrote:

If you own one of the latest Fujifilm mirrorless cameras, you are
forced to use Fujifilm's own software because no-one else's will
decode the RAW files from the non-Bayer sensor.

fuji uses bayer sensors.

One of the Fujis advertises a pattern that isn't "RGBG", and that in
fact isn't regular, it's random. (Fixed, and the same on all cameras,
but not a regular pattern across the pixels.)

This is to reduce color aliasing, and it should work in theory (haven't
played with the camera). But I see how it would cause a bit of a mess
for RAW-processing software; they'd have to know what the pattern was.

There are currently two Fujifilm cameras with the proprietary sensor,
the X-Pro1 and the X-E1.

both of which are supported by adobe camera raw.

The pattern is not random. The same pattern
is repeated all over the sensor. However, it is a different pattern
to Bayer's.

it's a variant, versus sigma/foveon which is *very* different.

But I see how it would cause a bit of a mess
for RAW-processing software; they'd have to know what the pattern was.

There is real difficulty here; obviously Fujifilm's pattern is
patented and there are intellectual property issues around licensing
Fujifilm's RAW processing code to vendors of post processing software.
Eventually, these issues will be resolved, but not yet. So, in the
meantime, only Fujifilm's own RAW converter can be used.

wrong.

adobe camera raw supports those cameras, which means photoshop,
photoshop elements and lightroom all support raw files from them.

In article , David Dyer-Bennet says...
This is very much not my experience (Nikon D700 and Olympus EPL-2
currently). Particularly exposure; it's fairly frequent for me to
adjust plus or minus 3/4 stop.

Very strange that an expensive camera like your D700 would miss the
exposure so often. Perhaps Nikon does not make good cameras.

I can improve images a LOT with average of a few seconds an image. When
I go on for the images that can support it to try for a first-class
rendition, *that* takes half an hour or anything up to off and on for a
month (well, one extreme case was 30 years, but most of those 30 years I
never looked at it).

The problem with your few seconds per image is that you have no time to
edit anything. No time to look at the image and think how it should be.
A few seconds is nothing.
--

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

Alfred Molon writes:

In article , David Dyer-Bennet says...
This is very much not my experience (Nikon D700 and Olympus EPL-2
currently). Particularly exposure; it's fairly frequent for me to
adjust plus or minus 3/4 stop.

Very strange that an expensive camera like your D700 would miss the
exposure so often. Perhaps Nikon does not make good cameras.

Yeah, right. Ask anybody these days. Nikon is making the best DSLRs in
the market.

I can improve images a LOT with average of a few seconds an image. When
I go on for the images that can support it to try for a first-class
rendition, *that* takes half an hour or anything up to off and on for a
month (well, one extreme case was 30 years, but most of those 30 years I
never looked at it).

The problem with your few seconds per image is that you have no time to
edit anything. No time to look at the image and think how it should be.
A few seconds is nothing.

I'm not sure if we're having a terminological difference or an actual
difference here. A few seconds per photo *average* often means picking
the 6 or 8 photos near each other with the same exposure and then
adjusting exposure once for the group. This doesn't give time for a
perfect job, but I'm in no doubt that I've made an improvements. I use
this kind of thing for web proofs of high-volume events (event candids
and sports photos, mostly). And maybe I'm overly optimistic, maybe the
group takes me a minute rather than 30 seconds.

The *previous* step is classifying the shots as 0-3 stars (very very
occasionally 4, but mostly 4 only gets assigned later after I've lived
with the photo a while), and I'm working with a list filtered to 2 stars
and up. This step is traditionally what "editing" means of photos; it's
what a photo editor does, for example. Unfortunately it now clashes
with the computer usage where an "editor" is a powerful tool for
modifying a particular class of file (text editor, photo editor, video
editor).
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In article , David Dyer-Bennet says...
Yeah, right. Ask anybody these days. Nikon is making the best DSLRs in
the market.

If they are the best, why is there is 3/4 stop exposure mistake?
--

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

On 2012-12-04 14:45:42 -0800, Alfred Molon said:

In article , David Dyer-Bennet says...
Yeah, right. Ask anybody these days. Nikon is making the best DSLRs in
the market.

If they are the best, why is there is 3/4 stop exposure mistake?

Easy! The same reason there are exposure errors with any other make of camera.

Using spot or center weighted metering, all it takes is to be slightly
off with an aim point. Also consider matrix metering is not foolproof.
You have certainly experienced this yourself when faced with areas of
strong contrast, shadow, and light when contrast boundaries run through
the focus/metering points. I can think of some of your ancient building
shots.

This can be particularly true if you don't have the time to prepare,
set up and meter carefully with the camera, or a hand held lightmeter.

These have been times you have resorted to HDR, or perish the thought,
RAW processing.

--
Regards,

Savageduck

In article , Alfred
Molon wrote:

Yeah, right. Ask anybody these days. Nikon is making the best DSLRs in
the market.

If they are the best, why is there is 3/4 stop exposure mistake?

so canon gets it right 100% of the time?

On 12/4/2012 2:18 PM, David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
Alfred Molon writes:

In article , David Dyer-Bennet says...
This is very much not my experience (Nikon D700 and Olympus EPL-2
currently). Particularly exposure; it's fairly frequent for me to
adjust plus or minus 3/4 stop.

Very strange that an expensive camera like your D700 would miss the
exposure so often. Perhaps Nikon does not make good cameras.



Yeah, right. Ask anybody these days. Nikon is making the best DSLRs in
the market.

...... and we are unanimous in that opinion.



I can improve images a LOT with average of a few seconds an image. When
I go on for the images that can support it to try for a first-class
rendition, *that* takes half an hour or anything up to off and on for a
month (well, one extreme case was 30 years, but most of those 30 years I
never looked at it).

The problem with your few seconds per image is that you have no time to
edit anything. No time to look at the image and think how it should be.
A few seconds is nothing.

I'm not sure if we're having a terminological difference or an actual
difference here. A few seconds per photo *average* often means picking
the 6 or 8 photos near each other with the same exposure and then
adjusting exposure once for the group. This doesn't give time for a
perfect job, but I'm in no doubt that I've made an improvements. I use
this kind of thing for web proofs of high-volume events (event candids
and sports photos, mostly). And maybe I'm overly optimistic, maybe the
group takes me a minute rather than 30 seconds.

The *previous* step is classifying the shots as 0-3 stars (very very
occasionally 4, but mostly 4 only gets assigned later after I've lived
with the photo a while), and I'm working with a list filtered to 2 stars
and up. This step is traditionally what "editing" means of photos; it's
what a photo editor does, for example. Unfortunately it now clashes
with the computer usage where an "editor" is a powerful tool for
modifying a particular class of file (text editor, photo editor, video
editor).