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

Blown Hight lights
 

I had a free couple of hours this morning and the light was good so I trotted of to my local lake to get some shots of tuffed ducks. The male with it's white flanks often cause me trouble with blown highlights. I had the camera set to raw + jpeg so that I could try each method. Sods law they all come out OK. Walking back home a yellow flower on the bank caught my eye in the bright sunlight. I took a quick snap as I was now running short on time. A quick look at the preview it seemed OK and I headed home.

Normally I would never take a flower shot in full sunlight as often the colour is very dull and the risk of very high reflections.

I was hoping to post this in the gallery but it's been nomimated for Don's thread.

This is an example where such blown highlights the raw version does not save the day. The first image is the raw version with the exposure in ACR set to -3 ( I assume that is -3 stops ? ) You can see the highlights are still white. Second shot is the jpeg from the camera. Both version only fit for the bin.

It's a shame I did not have time to take more shots at different levels of under exposure.

How can RAW help recovery highlight detail?

It depends. I have Bruce Frazers excelent book Real World Camera Raw, which I can strongly recommend to anyone use Adobe Raw Converter. In that he says (pp35 for anyone who has the book) If the particular pixel is clipped to white in all three channels (R/G/B) then there is no highlight detail to recover. If however a single channel (or better two) still contain some information, ACR will do its best to recover detail.

He goes on to say, in practice most camera will let you recover 1/4 stop of data/detail and some up to 1 stop. Also (at this goes against conventional digital expose wisdom) while he doesnt advocate deliberate over exposure, if you are shooting in changing lighting conditions, the linear nature of digital capture (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tu...se-right.shtml shows that 50% of your data is in the brighest 1/5th of the image) makes it preferable to err on the side of slight overexposure rather than underexposure, because underexposure will make your shaddows noiser tahn they need be. In these situation he says ACR highlight recovery provides a usefull safety net.

In the case of your flower Rob, it looks as though all 3 channels have burnt out completely

Yes Gidders this is a classic example of no hope. I was chatting to a guy who works at Jessops and has been a keen photographer for many years. I bumped into him on our local lake getting birds shots. He said he now shoots raw and fine jpeg on his 20D. More of a case for an insurance policy especially when shooting weddings. I was interested to hear him say that many Pros shoot jpeg only because they don't want the over head of processing raw.

So in this example the insurance policy was worthless.

Great link Gidders,

Lots to read.

This statement applied to me until we started looking at the differences discussed on this thread [ Some people think of digital imaging as solid state film. This isn't the case. ]

Trying to get my head round histograms. Very poor light here - highlight to shadow range 2 EV. So for now I will have to read up instead.

Don

Rob,

I was just reading of a guy who has gone back to film. Reckons going digital was the biggest mistake he had made. Anyone who was having film processed by a professional lab before a switch to digital, would probably find they had picked up lots of work they did not have before.

I think a lot of talk on the RAW v JPEG has created the an expectation that if you are a pro you have to shoot RAW.

The other day I saw this arguement elsewhere, with JPEG being refered to as the equivalent of a Polaroid. As we are starting to truely understand the differences so I believe we are starting to understand where JPEG is a perfectly acceptable format and its limitations in post processing of high contrast scenes.

In view of some pros requirement for faster processing I can see that the in camera proccessing engine on pro grade cameras will improve. Through this thread I have been doing a fair amount of net reading. For weddings I would think that within the Nikon range for example, a D2HSs equivalent at 6 mp, with the D2X processing engine will give great out of camera JPEGS. Again its horses for courses. Fine for a lot of press work as well, but absolutly no good for what Stephen shoots.

Don

File size
 

I posed a question in the darkroom thread about file size that Rob very kindly answered. As it also has relavence here I am posting a link.

Copy a comment I made in reply [ Now as mr. average ( no specialist knowledge of the workings of computers ) I would assume that in digital photography, bigger file size = more available actual image information in that file. Obviously now an incorrect assumption. ]

This begs the question as to how much of what we read on the net is based on incorrect assumptions wrapped up as fact.

I am posting a link here
http://www.worldphotographyforum.com...=6703#post6703 If you go to post 77 for Robs explanation.

Don

Jim visited today, and this subject and others within the thread reared their head.
I am bumping this so he can have a quiet read when his brain has relaxed. :D :D :D

Don

For me micrometer it is obvious the raw image has had more sharpening.

Well a lot of water has flowed under the bridge in terms technology advances in respect of In Camera Processing of Jpegs since Feb 06 when I started this thread. For those using or considering buying secondhand older cameras this thread still has relavence.

Firstly let me say that NO SHARPENING was added to the RAW file.

The whole purpose of the thread was to highlight that with some of the cameras available at the time this was an issue. At the time with Nikon the D100 was affected by soft jpegs whereas the D50 was known to have a good jpeg processing engine. So obviously not all cameras from any manufacturer would suffer from soft jpegs. It was Foxy that twisted my arm to try raw :rolleyes: and my amazement at the difference inspired the thread. Needless to say this whole episode cost me a beefier pc in order to be able to do everyting in RAW. ;) :)

Your comment that it is OBVIOUS the raw image has had more sharpening suggests that what you are seeing in terms of sharpness/resolution here is not comparable with the results you are seeing from your own camera WITHOUT SHARPENING. That is a seperate issue, and you are free to start a thread on that as there are a number of variables involved, lens quality being the primary one.

In fact anyone with access to a Nikon D100 and 55mm f2.8 Ais Micro Nikkor lens or a lens of comparable quality could exactly replicate the results from post #1 or any of my other image attached posts in this thread.

To exactly replicate the results in this thread here is the kit used :
Nikon D100 camera ( 6mp ).
55mm f2.8 Ais Micro Nikkor lens.
Cable or other remote release.
Slik Professional Tripod ( Weight with head 6kg. ). I would not expect you to have similar, but none the less your tripod should be more stable than a lot of what is around.
Nikon SB80-DX and Multiblitz252 flash - but any other flashguns would do.
Raw taken at default settings and a straight conversion using Nikon Capture 4.4, but the more up to date NX1 or 2 will give the same result. Note that other raw processors DO NOT give the same result as Nikons software with this camera or my D2X.
In camera Jpeg was set to Jpeg fine, with all other options set to default.
ISO was at base, so for the D100 that is ISO200.

Don