Thanks, Don. The new camera came witha program called Digital Photo Professianal which seems designed specifically to handle RAW files. I played around in it but it would cetainly be simpler use only one p.p. program.

Dan,

This may be of help I don't know. They seem to be quicktime tutorials. This was one of the links I posted today in another thread.
http://maclab.guhsd.net/photoshop/intro.html

Don

Dan,

Now I've had something to eat .... yes its that food thing again :) I found this link to your program. Quick Time tutorials.
http://www.photoworkshop.com/canon/d...g_lessons.html

Don

Rob,

I was doing a straight read from the link,and I think the statement made is a bit missleading to say the least. Quote [ Raw Converter Advantage #6: No Compression. ] The inference being that jpeg users are one down at this stage. My check proves that statement to be incorrect in an out of camera image unless in camera compression is somehow turned up. Unless you need to, it is not necessary to further compress the image on you pc, and that is best done using ' save copy as ' to retain the origonal.

Don

Digital Photo Professional

It appears that latest update is 2.1.1.4 plus you can download a manual.

I'll see how I fair with this as it was bought with the camera.

This has been my point - it is dependent on what co-efficient values are used to configure the fine/best quality setting by the camera. By this I mean the numbers fed to the encoder to set it up before compression takes place. This all happens in the background of the program. One of the parameters ranges from 1000 to 0. It's effect is very logarithmic. Values between 1000 and 30 have only a small effect on the file size. As the value tends towards zero the compression becomes more and more extreme.

If this thread continues I may be inclined to getting around to re-installing my compilers on this machine and write a program to compare the image data values after multiple saves in the jpeg format to confirm if it gets degraded as many people infer. My early tests of this suggest that it does not to any degree.

Rob,

Just out of the loft looking for useful stuff for Ron on his B&W thread.

I found some prints.One I made a couple of days after I got Stevie a Coolpix 5700, I was still on film then. So that print reflects TOTAL novice quality. Another is a set oddly enough using the windmill, done just after I got my D100. So anything I do now will be of better quality.

I will take pics of them hopefully later today then post.

Don

Possible worst case JPEG print result.
 

I found this picture in the loft today and the story behind it follows.

For Christmas 2002 I bought my wife Stevie a Nikon 5700 4.9mp camera. At the time we were both using film but she had a fancy.

Christmas for me was spent trying to understand Paint Shop Pro 6, in between going out with Stevie to take pictures. As I had an active darkroom then, it was fairly natural to see how far you could enlarge the digital image before jaggies or other defects started to show. This print was made over that Christmas period on an Hp950 printer.

2 pics are attached taken of this print. The first is a picture of the print, jaggies are now visible in the edges of the diamond pattern. The second is a 100% crop of it. On screen the bulb logo is x2 magnification compared to the print in my hand.

So what does all this say.

The picture was taken using JPEG Fine on a 4.9mp camera. In camera processing by 2002 technology.
Camera was in program mode with default settings for all menu options.
PC processing was minimal due to lack of knowledge but probably included sharpening.

So without screwing things up in post processing, should this qualify as a worst case scenario print of a JPEG Fine image. I think it must come pretty close. Done today I would bin it, as even with my limited knowledge I could do a lot better now.

In real life, this print was the kiss of death for my Bronica medium format outfit, and within 2 months I had traded it for my D100, 2 lenses and flash. I stopped using film soon after that as the D100 images were far superior to those from the 5700 and easier to process than 35mm. Cannot get more real world than that !!

Link to DPR review of the camera http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikoncp5700/


Don

Hi Don, been a bit busy recently, but have been looking in frequently to keep up with things in this thread. TBH I'm a little confused as to where you are at with all this business, though the overiding impression I get is that you are still striving for perfection, going to great lengths to prove the definitive method to achieve it.

My personal feeling is that all this business of 16 bit Tiffs is a little OTT. Onscreen at normal viewing of an image it is totally unnecessary, and you cannot tell the difference. You have infact been to great lengths to prove this in your examples, I was gobsmacked with that :) Even for print purposes I have never seen any advantage. Not only this but the 16bit files use in PS is limited as many of the commands are greyed out.

As for this latest post showing the photo from the 5400, I really can't see the value in photographing an inkjet print then enlarging it to the extreme, what value does it serve? Have you not still got the original file you could compare with one from your D100, that would certainly be more interesting for me.

I have today been printing some images taken earlier in the week on a Canon 20D (8.2MP). They were adjusted to suit in ACR to a jpeg in PS then tweaked as necessary, though this was often just a case of straightening verticals etc. They were printed using the Adobe RGB colour space on my Epson 2100 to full A4 edge to edge. Frankly I would defy you to tell the difference between them and a MF print, and the colours etc are better than most I ever got with film from my pro lab.

Good to hear the news about getting the thumbs up on a new PC. Consider at least a 3Ghz AMD or P4 machine, with a 256mb graphics card and 1GB+ of Ram. At least a 100GB HD would be good. At least 4 USB2 ports and a DVD rewriter. Forget a floppy drive, not even sure they include them these days. Bet you have it all planned already :D

Pity about the software though, suppose it was pushing it a bit ;) Have you considered PS Elements 4, it contains ACR and of course uses similar or same protocols to the full PS. It does lack the Curves tool though there are ways round that. Much better bet IMO than PSP6

Stephen,

Thank you for taking the trouble to do that. I am sure your comments will be of comfort to those who use the jpeg format.

Perhaps now we should be looking at a hints and tips thread in the Digital Darkroom Forum. As previously posted I am a total novice at post processing as I am sure quite a few other members are. Getting your first digital camera involves a steep learning curve. Fortunately Duncan has posted some excellent stickys on exposure control, but once we have the image it requires some degree of post processing. I know this is a bit tricky as there are so many image editing programs and versions of out there.

Mmmmm. needs thinking about a bit.
I said that, and what I know you could write on the back of a postage stamp.:D

Don