Comment re D800 from Nikonians

http://www.nikonians.org/forums/dcbo...003&page#80124

"A couple of posts up, Per and Marvin have asked to elaborate on the
statement “the extremely high resolution requires different
handling of the camera and also demand much more from post
processing (hardware)… Not everyone will be up to this.”

What I mean by this roughly twofold:

1. The higher the resolution the more every little mistake/fault
gets visible. I'm talking about lens quality, slight miss focus,
camera movement, mirror slap, etc. To prevent all this requires you
to think more about your shots and also use a tripod (with good
tripod technique) even more.

2. Files will be much much larger, demanding extra memory and
computing power. Example, an uncompressed NEF will be around 75MB
(!). A 16 bit tiff without layers is already 200MB, and even when
just using 8 bit tiffs, we're still talking about 100MB files…"


Regards,

Eric Stevens

On 28/02/2012 10:49 a.m., Eric Stevens wrote:
http://www.nikonians.org/forums/dcbo...003&page#80124

"A couple of posts up, Per and Marvin have asked to elaborate on the
statement “the extremely high resolution requires different
handling of the camera and also demand much more from post
processing (hardware)… Not everyone will be up to this.”

What I mean by this roughly twofold:

1. The higher the resolution the more every little mistake/fault
gets visible. I'm talking about lens quality, slight miss focus,
camera movement, mirror slap, etc. To prevent all this requires you
to think more about your shots and also use a tripod (with good
tripod technique) even more.

Easily fixed. Apply gaussian blur to the images to get an equivalent
result to your previous images taken with sloppy equipment/technique -
if they were what met your needs.

2. Files will be much much larger, demanding extra memory and
computing power. Example, an uncompressed NEF will be around 75MB
(!). A 16 bit tiff without layers is already 200MB, and even when
just using 8 bit tiffs, we're still talking about 100MB files…"

16 bit tiffs?

On Tue, 28 Feb 2012 19:32:28 +1300, Me wrote:

On 28/02/2012 10:49 a.m., Eric Stevens wrote:
http://www.nikonians.org/forums/dcbo...003&page#80124

"A couple of posts up, Per and Marvin have asked to elaborate on the
statement “the extremely high resolution requires different
handling of the camera and also demand much more from post
processing (hardware)… Not everyone will be up to this.”

What I mean by this roughly twofold:

1. The higher the resolution the more every little mistake/fault
gets visible. I'm talking about lens quality, slight miss focus,
camera movement, mirror slap, etc. To prevent all this requires you
to think more about your shots and also use a tripod (with good
tripod technique) even more.

Easily fixed. Apply gaussian blur to the images to get an equivalent
result to your previous images taken with sloppy equipment/technique -
if they were what met your needs.

2. Files will be much much larger, demanding extra memory and
computing power. Example, an uncompressed NEF will be around 75MB
(!). A 16 bit tiff without layers is already 200MB, and even when
just using 8 bit tiffs, we're still talking about 100MB files…"

16 bit tiffs?

Why not?

Regards,

Eric Stevens

On 28/02/2012 9:41 p.m., Eric Stevens wrote:
On Tue, 28 Feb 2012 19:32:28 +1300, wrote:

On 28/02/2012 10:49 a.m., Eric Stevens wrote:
http://www.nikonians.org/forums/dcbo...003&page#80124

"A couple of posts up, Per and Marvin have asked to elaborate on the
statement “the extremely high resolution requires different
handling of the camera and also demand much more from post
processing (hardware)… Not everyone will be up to this.”

What I mean by this roughly twofold:

1. The higher the resolution the more every little mistake/fault
gets visible. I'm talking about lens quality, slight miss focus,
camera movement, mirror slap, etc. To prevent all this requires you
to think more about your shots and also use a tripod (with good
tripod technique) even more.

Easily fixed. Apply gaussian blur to the images to get an equivalent
result to your previous images taken with sloppy equipment/technique -
if they were what met your needs.

2. Files will be much much larger, demanding extra memory and
computing power. Example, an uncompressed NEF will be around 75MB
(!). A 16 bit tiff without layers is already 200MB, and even when
just using 8 bit tiffs, we're still talking about 100MB files…"

16 bit tiffs?

Why not?

Because they're about 5 times the size of a compressed (lossless) 14 bit
*.nef.
Sure, there might sometimes be a need (or incorrectly perceived need) to
use them, but they (16 bit tiffs) are really no more of a problem now
than they were when I bought a 12mp camera 5 years ago. At that time my
PC had about 150gb in disk space between two disks, and I went out and
bought some 4gb cards (8gb cards were available, but very expensive), as
the 512mb cards I used with my previous 6mp camera were a bit small (and
slow). The files were still a bit slow to work with on a relatively up
to date but not "state of the art" single core processor with 1gb ram,
(IIRC I upgraded that to 2gb) multi-core machines were still a bit
exotic, and most software couldn't take advantage of more than one core
anyway.
So 3x the resolution(pixel count anyway), about 3x the file size, but in
those 5 years the capacity of drives/cards has increased about 10x, a 4
core processor with 8gb ram is no longer "exotic".
Computers are still following Moore's law. The Canon 5dII has been
around for a few years now, when that was released the file size
relative to "average" computers of the time was much more daunting than
any problem the D800 presents now.

On Wed, 29 Feb 2012 09:06:00 +1300, Me wrote:

On 28/02/2012 9:41 p.m., Eric Stevens wrote:
On Tue, 28 Feb 2012 19:32:28 +1300, wrote:

On 28/02/2012 10:49 a.m., Eric Stevens wrote:
http://www.nikonians.org/forums/dcbo...003&page#80124

"A couple of posts up, Per and Marvin have asked to elaborate on the
statement “the extremely high resolution requires different
handling of the camera and also demand much more from post
processing (hardware)… Not everyone will be up to this.”

What I mean by this roughly twofold:

1. The higher the resolution the more every little mistake/fault
gets visible. I'm talking about lens quality, slight miss focus,
camera movement, mirror slap, etc. To prevent all this requires you
to think more about your shots and also use a tripod (with good
tripod technique) even more.

Easily fixed. Apply gaussian blur to the images to get an equivalent
result to your previous images taken with sloppy equipment/technique -
if they were what met your needs.

2. Files will be much much larger, demanding extra memory and
computing power. Example, an uncompressed NEF will be around 75MB
(!). A 16 bit tiff without layers is already 200MB, and even when
just using 8 bit tiffs, we're still talking about 100MB files…"

16 bit tiffs?

Why not?

Because they're about 5 times the size of a compressed (lossless) 14 bit
*.nef.
Sure, there might sometimes be a need (or incorrectly perceived need) to
use them, but they (16 bit tiffs) are really no more of a problem now
than they were when I bought a 12mp camera 5 years ago. At that time my
PC had about 150gb in disk space between two disks, and I went out and
bought some 4gb cards (8gb cards were available, but very expensive), as
the 512mb cards I used with my previous 6mp camera were a bit small (and
slow). The files were still a bit slow to work with on a relatively up
to date but not "state of the art" single core processor with 1gb ram,
(IIRC I upgraded that to 2gb) multi-core machines were still a bit
exotic, and most software couldn't take advantage of more than one core
anyway.
So 3x the resolution(pixel count anyway), about 3x the file size, but in
those 5 years the capacity of drives/cards has increased about 10x, a 4
core processor with 8gb ram is no longer "exotic".
Computers are still following Moore's law. The Canon 5dII has been
around for a few years now, when that was released the file size
relative to "average" computers of the time was much more daunting than
any problem the D800 presents now.


All of which is very nice but it doesn't answer my question.

There are (a diminishing number of) occasions when it is necessary to
use 16 bit TIFFs to transfer partly processed image data between one
application and another. Even now the file size is huge but it will be
gargantuan if it starts from a 36 Mp RAW.

Mind you, file compability problems means its not always a good thing
to have to do.

Regards,

Eric Stevens

On 2012-02-28 16:46 , RichA wrote:

BTW, who uses TIFF now?

I still use TIFF for original scans and the archiving of them. These
are often 450 MB when from 6x6 and 140 MB for 35mm.

--
"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did.
I said I didn't know."
-Samuel Clemens.

On 2012-02-27 16:49 , Eric Stevens wrote:
http://www.nikonians.org/forums/dcbo...003&page#80124

"A couple of posts up, Per and Marvin have asked to elaborate on the
statement “the extremely high resolution requires different
handling of the camera and also demand much more from post
processing (hardware)… Not everyone will be up to this.”

What I mean by this roughly twofold:

1. The higher the resolution the more every little mistake/fault
gets visible. I'm talking about lens quality, slight miss focus,
camera movement, mirror slap, etc. To prevent all this requires you
to think more about your shots and also use a tripod (with good
tripod technique) even more.

2. Files will be much much larger, demanding extra memory and
computing power. Example, an uncompressed NEF will be around 75MB
(!). A 16 bit tiff without layers is already 200MB, and even when
just using 8 bit tiffs, we're still talking about 100MB files…"

Computer processing power keeps rising along with ram and hard disks.
Storage cards are fatter and cheaper too.

Where it will show up more, perhaps, is for people who do offline
backups to DVD's and even tape.

For someone forking over $3K for a camera body, updating the computer
equipment won't be a huge outlay.

--
"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did.
I said I didn't know."
-Samuel Clemens.

On 29/02/2012 12:12 p.m., Alan Browne wrote:
On 2012-02-28 16:46 , RichA wrote:

BTW, who uses TIFF now?

I still use TIFF for original scans and the archiving of them. These are
often 450 MB when from 6x6 and 140 MB for 35mm.

Does the scanner software offer any compressed (lossless) 8 bit format?
Or alternatively, perhaps you could use 16 bit TIFF with LZW (lossless)
compression, batch processing them after scanning if the scanner
software doesn't have this option. Although because of the presence of
grain, I guess that film scans aren't going to compress down as well as
low ISO digital camera files. LZW compression seems to compress a base
ISO digital camera origin Tiff file by 25-50%.

On 29/02/2012 10:05 a.m., Eric Stevens wrote:
On Wed, 29 Feb 2012 09:06:00 +1300, wrote:

On 28/02/2012 9:41 p.m., Eric Stevens wrote:
On Tue, 28 Feb 2012 19:32:28 +1300, wrote:

On 28/02/2012 10:49 a.m., Eric Stevens wrote:
http://www.nikonians.org/forums/dcbo...003&page#80124

"A couple of posts up, Per and Marvin have asked to elaborate on the
statement “the extremely high resolution requires different
handling of the camera and also demand much more from post
processing (hardware)… Not everyone will be up to this.”

What I mean by this roughly twofold:

1. The higher the resolution the more every little mistake/fault
gets visible. I'm talking about lens quality, slight miss focus,
camera movement, mirror slap, etc. To prevent all this requires you
to think more about your shots and also use a tripod (with good
tripod technique) even more.

Easily fixed. Apply gaussian blur to the images to get an equivalent
result to your previous images taken with sloppy equipment/technique -
if they were what met your needs.

2. Files will be much much larger, demanding extra memory and
computing power. Example, an uncompressed NEF will be around 75MB
(!). A 16 bit tiff without layers is already 200MB, and even when
just using 8 bit tiffs, we're still talking about 100MB files…"

16 bit tiffs?

Why not?

Because they're about 5 times the size of a compressed (lossless) 14 bit
*.nef.
Sure, there might sometimes be a need (or incorrectly perceived need) to
use them, but they (16 bit tiffs) are really no more of a problem now
than they were when I bought a 12mp camera 5 years ago. At that time my
PC had about 150gb in disk space between two disks, and I went out and
bought some 4gb cards (8gb cards were available, but very expensive), as
the 512mb cards I used with my previous 6mp camera were a bit small (and
slow). The files were still a bit slow to work with on a relatively up
to date but not "state of the art" single core processor with 1gb ram,
(IIRC I upgraded that to 2gb) multi-core machines were still a bit
exotic, and most software couldn't take advantage of more than one core
anyway.
So 3x the resolution(pixel count anyway), about 3x the file size, but in
those 5 years the capacity of drives/cards has increased about 10x, a 4
core processor with 8gb ram is no longer "exotic".
Computers are still following Moore's law. The Canon 5dII has been
around for a few years now, when that was released the file size
relative to "average" computers of the time was much more daunting than
any problem the D800 presents now.


All of which is very nice but it doesn't answer my question.

There are (a diminishing number of) occasions when it is necessary to
use 16 bit TIFFs to transfer partly processed image data between one
application and another. Even now the file size is huge but it will be
gargantuan if it starts from a 36 Mp RAW.

Mind you, file compability problems means its not always a good thing
to have to do.

I was asked to submit some files for publication in a brochure, the
publishing dept sent me their strict requirements for minimum file size,
16 bit tiff format.
So I emailed them about 30 jpegs from the shoot, resized to about
1800x1200, asked them to choose the ones they wanted, and I'd send them
the tiffs. (No way was I emailing them 30 16 bit tiffs). Sure enough,
next thing I'm presented with a hard copy of the brochure - after they'd
printed over 100,000 copies using the jpegs. They looked okay (largest
photo about A5 size, perhaps a bit more, on a4 sheets) but not
brilliant. These were printed on a 4 colour offset press on inexpensive
coated art paper (about the quality of paper/printing as the inside
pages of a glossy magazine - not the cover) - 16 bit tiff was overkill,
as is the insistence on 300dpi. I suspect that there are a lot of
people working in publishing who learned what the minimum requirements
for print should be, without understanding what's behind it. But rules
are rules.

On Tue, 28 Feb 2012 13:46:20 -0800 (PST), RichA
wrote:

On Feb 27, 4:49*pm, Eric Stevens wrote:
http://www.nikonians.org/forums/dcbo...ic&forum=190&t...

* "A couple of posts up, Per and Marvin have asked to elaborate on the
* *statement “the extremely high resolution requires different
* *handling of the camera and also demand much more from post
* *processing (hardware)… Not everyone will be up to this.”

* *What I mean by this roughly twofold:

* *1. The higher the resolution the more every little mistake/fault
* *gets visible. I'm talking about lens quality, slight miss focus,
* *camera movement, mirror slap, etc. To prevent all this requires you
* *to think more about your shots and also use a tripod (with good
* *tripod technique) even more.

* *2. Files will be much much larger, demanding extra memory and
* *computing power. Example, an uncompressed NEF will be around 75MB
* *(!). A 16 bit tiff without layers is already 200MB, and even when
* *just using 8 bit tiffs, we're still talking about 100MB files…"

Regards,

Eric Stevens

Boo hoo. They spend $3000+ on a body and worry about the cost of
storage...BTW, who uses TIFF now?

In theory TIFF has the ability to carry images with multiple layers
without requiring that they be merged or collapsed. Unfortunately the
whole issue is so complicated that many applications lack either the
ability to construct such files or to read such files compiled by
other applications. In fact some applications cannot read even simple
16 bit files.

Regards,

Eric Stevens