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Forum: Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Other Camera Brands
05-15-2012, 06:31 PM
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There is no less effort than just resizing usable jpgs straight from the camera.
Any RAW processing is at the very least going to involve a conversion to tiff/jpg, which will take significantly more time than a resize pass.
Perhaps I have different needs and thus a different workflow than most.
I shoot many pictures for "story blogs", so I may shoot 1000+ pictures at an event and use 75 of them as part of a narrative. These are all going to be web only, unless someone wants a print, in which case I will have shot RAW+JPG originally (I know by now when to shoot RAW as well), otherwise working from the JPG is OK 97% of the time. Actually 100% of the time because no one is ever as picky as me.
When I process RAW files I do them individually, because each one generally requires some specific color and tonal correction.
If I just batch processed them using a converter I'd end up with the same thing as the in-camera jpgs, actually many times not as good because Adobe/Apple don't necessarily have the same resources as the manufacturer and thus "best guesses" as to what the colors/tone should be. So to get what I get from the camera I'd have to use the manufacturer's supplied software, but what's the point? I end up with the same thing, perhaps with some more inherent headroom, but at a great cost of time that I don't have.
And with Sony's in-camera DRO and HDR even the headroom advantages of RAW are not as important as they used to be.
Perhaps you should evaluate why you are still wasting time shooting RAW when a proper in-camera JPG will give you 99+% of what the RAW file might deliver after hours of work. ;)
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Forum: Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Other Camera Brands
05-14-2012, 06:00 AM
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Unfortunately there's just no perfect camera, not in this electronic era anyway. The more features are added the more controls, menus, buttons, dials, switches and UI software have to be added to access and customize those features, and there's just no way to make everyone happy, because everyone's minds are going to work slightly differently, everyone's hands differently shaped for all those small buttons.
The best cameras I ever shot with on a regular basis were the Nikon FM2N and the Leica M6: simple, direct, all mechanical, no features, no batteries needed. The huge bright VFs of the old Nikons make anything today look like a dim joke, and I'd love it if someone made a modern digital equivalent. Do I take better pictures now with all this automation? No.
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Forum: Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Other Camera Brands
05-14-2012, 02:18 AM
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I believe the purplish blue is inherent in the spectral response of the sensor, since it's too coincidental that both cameras do it and the 7 does not. The sky around here is light cyanish and bland, like it is lots of places, and I think people have a "memory color" of the sky being much bluer than it is, so the manufacturers jazz up the color. I WANT my skies cyanish and bland. If I want them a different color than reality I'll PP in PS.
As for shooting JPG, although it may not sound like it, I'm not very picky about correcting colors, but I'm obsessively picky about the camera delivering 98%+ true colors without spending ANY time in PP.
And yes, the NEX-7's colors are amazingly good out of the box, I'm very impressed by color, dynamic range, highlight retention, and detail. I'm finally going to give in and put some of those old Nikon MF and Leica R lenses on it to see what they'll do.
The function button next to the shutter acts as a lock for the three control dials, so accidentally moving EV around is mostly a non-issue. I just unlock before I start shooting, and if I don't have time to unlock it doesn't matter because the camera will still AF and shoot on the locked settings, so if I'm already at a working aperture of say f/8 and EV +-0, it'll shoot that. When unlocked yes, it is very easy to move, and perhaps it might be nice to offer a switch of the rear dials: inner one control EV and outer aperture, or an option to lock only the EV. But I don't mind it much, shooting JPG I'm constantly adjusting exposure small amounts, so for me it's perfect. Like I said though, habitually using the lock makes it (for me) a non-issue.
What is NOT a non-issue though, is the incredibly poor placement of the movie record button with no ability to disable it, or at least make it "double tap" or "hold for 3s" to activate. I am constantly recording a movie, but that's not the bothersome part, it's that it chews thru the battery. First day I shot with it seriously I checked at the end of the day to see how much battery the 60 shots I took had eaten. All of it. That's impossible I thought, and I'm not going to stock up on 10 batteries just to get thru a shoot! Turns out I had four 30 minute movies stored on the card: inside of my bag, the sky, my fries at lunch etc. This is a huge design flaw that will seriously affect your ability to keep shooting if you eat your battery, fill your card etc and don't know why.
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Forum: Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Other Camera Brands
05-14-2012, 01:42 AM
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That's what all those methods do, just slightly differently. You shoot a Macbeth chart and find out how the camera's result differs from known values, then create a profile that ACR can read.
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Forum: Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Other Camera Brands
05-13-2012, 06:25 PM
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Nope.
I don't use a converter, everything is JPG straight out of the camera, maximized for correct color and exposure. I don't have time to individually process hundreds of raw files from the thousand I might shoot over a weekend, so this is the way I work. I tried using three converters on the 16mp cameras as I was figuring out how to get good color, and the results were worse (or no better but with much more time spent) than my final in-camera jpgs.
I haven't tried profiling since I spent a lot of time using ACR and several methods about 5 years ago when I got my 5D. I'll not bore you with details, but I spent over a week evaluating profiles based on 5 methods:
Fraser's manual method, with and without the saturation step
Fors Script
Pacheco's HSB method
Tindeman's modified Fors script
All these methods produced fairly different profiles, how could they all be right? After testing the created profiles under actual shooting conditions, I concluded that profiling was a waste of time.
Why? Because the different methods all produced different results, some of them very obviously wrong using real-world known colors. If they were all accurate then the results would be very similar. Second, because the profiling methods assume a default tone curve. As soon as that curve is changed the results change, so any adjustment to Brightness, Contrast, Exposure etc in ACR is going to render the profile inaccurate. And then there is the issue of color temperature, which also affects the profile. I ended up with many profiles for different situations, but at the of the day the colors were no better than using no profile, so I dumped them.
I see profiling as useful in controlled studio lighting photography, for example catalog product shots where every article of clothing needs to have accurate color, and you can shoot the chart at the beginning of the session and use it under your very specific lighting/color temp setup to achieve a "per use" profile, but for pictorial uses I don't see the reason for it, since you're just going to change the colors anyway as you work the photo.
But this was 5 years ago. Have the methods changed enough that it's worth exploring again?
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Forum: Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Other Camera Brands
05-13-2012, 03:20 PM
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I'm very late to this party, but here's my experience.
I bought both a K-5 and a NEX-5N late last year, and have shots thousands of images through them both, in all kinds of lighting situations. After extensive testing of the various modes and customizations, i wound up with both cameras taking almost identical shots, but with different methods of achieving it. The Sony I expose for the highlights and let the DRO take care of the shadows, while the Pentax I use both Highlight and Shadow modes, and let the camera decide exposure. This is sometimes unsuccessful, because the Pentax has an ornery meter that often needs EC compensation, and behaves Iike a heavily centerweighted meter. Iow the Sony gets more shots right more often,
Six months later, I find I don't like either camera because the (presumably same or similar) sensor cannot get colors right. The blue of blue sky is rendered much too purple instead of the cyan it should be, the Pentax has absurd greens, and yes it's somewhat correctable by settings but at the expense of other colors. For example, a hue shift to correct the blue results in an incorrect red, so if I shoot a red Ferrari against a blue sky it's one or the other, and then I have to run the files through the batch Hue change I set up in PS. The Sony has this aspect less than the Pentax, but it's still there.
I sold the Sony because I could not get used to not having a vf, and bought a NEX-7, which is wonderful. The sensor is much better, and produces just right colors and contrast with just a bit of tweaking, not the weeks it took with the 16mp models just to find a compromise. It holds on to highlight detail beautifully
So I sat down the other day with the K-5 and the NEX-7, and compared every aspect of them. I've used an slr for so long I'm loathe to give up the form factor, but for 90% of what I shoot the Sony is going to be the better choice. The interface is faster, having direct control of ISO and EV comp is more fluid than the modal (switch to ISO mode with a button and then use a dial to adjust) controls of most any dslr, and the camera is much smaller/lighter than the lightest of the semi-pro dslrs, the K-5.
Is the 7 perfect? No. The evf, while it may be the best right now, needs work. It's too contrasty, so you just have to rely on the camera's superb metering and use the lcd to check, and it's extremely grainy under low light. The body is much more solid than the 5N, but it's not going to hold up like the K-5 will for heavy lenses under demanding conditions. I doubt it'll do as well in the rain, so there's room for a dslr in my life as well, but it's not going to be the K-5. Although I like the camera a lot, I just can't get good color out of it.
Hopefully Pentax will either introduce a FF camera this year or just mildly upgrade the K-5 with the 24mp Sony 7 sensor. That would be killer.
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
12-16-2011, 05:38 PM
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Well I've read through this whole thread and what I'm wondering is whether the ee-s changes the visual characteristics of the viewfinder or merely the brightness and DOF resolution?
I come from a Canon 5D, which has a fsr better vf than the K-5: brighter, less contrast, bigger, clearer etc. The K-5, while being an actual prism instead of mirror, still suffers from the same kinds of strange distortions and blurry edges as you move your eyes around the vf. Does the Canon screen mitigate this behaviour, or is it inherent in the prism?
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