Chuck wrote:
> I don't use RawShooter but I'll second skipping the DiMage
> software. There are lots of other and better options
> available. I also love my A1. It's cool.
There are two things the Dimage Viewer software does extremely
well: Color tones and batch resizing. The coloring of the
images--especially skin tones is best when done through DV.
Also, B&W's have a nice tonal depth to them without blowing
apart the mid-tones--Very HP5-ish. I also use DV for batch
resizing a bulk of images. I can select the images to convert,
define the scaling (ie 25%), apply a saved set of processes
(saturation increase, sharpening, WB correction, etc) and let em
rip. The conversion ain't the fastest as it takes maybe 15
seconds per image on my ancient desktop, but still not aweful.
I will do a converter test and comparison one of these days and
post it on my website. I've got a couple example pictures that
are good for comparison and I know them well, as I've spent
nearly a hundred hours PP them. It should be quite revealing as
to how each RAW converter has specific advantages over the other
in different areas. In one of my images, I've actually gone and
merged layers using two different conversion engines--RSE for
luminance and DV for color.
BTW, I made a reference to in-camera JPEG shooting and in-camera
sharpening. This is one of those things I stumbled upon recently
with the E-1. Based on some testing and analysis of pictures
shot, I discovered that if you keep the in-camera sharpening
turned off, the noise will stay muted. Do the sharpening in an
editor, not the camera. The Minolta in-camera processing engine
(JPEG or Tiff storage) totally trashes the image as the JPEG
engine is choking on the sharpening artifacts. End result is
that you get sharper images with personalized and adaptive
sharpening than what the camera applies. By keeping the
in-camera sharpening off, any noise-reduction algorithm you use
during PP doesn't need to fight the artifacts and you'll get
less fringing.
Based on this discovery, I can now shoot in-camera JPEGs without
fear. In fact, ISO 800 in the E-1 remains remarkably
clean--providing essentially noiseless 8x10s. This is even using
HQ mode, not even SHQ. ISO 1600 shots clean up very well for
print use, by just adjusting the curves which whacks the shadow
noise. A quick pass through a NR program will further clean the
images up, but neither me nor my clients have needed to do that
for anything appearing in print. Dot gain essentially wipes out
most noise in the pictures.
I can shoot the A1 at ISO 400 (640 actual) in RAW mode and when
processed using RSE using the pattern noise reduction or the
color noise reduction (either, not both), along with a nice dose
of shadow contrast increase the pictures are totally usable for
publication. Totally a non-issue.
Back to DV for a second. The A1 (and A2) has extensive in-camera
controls for contrast, color, saturation, and a few other things
that can make the in-camera shots just jump with color. It's
amazing how configurable and customizable the settings are.
Unfortunately, when shooting RAW, all of those settings go to
waste as no RAW converter uses them except DV. The A1 will give
really awesome color to the pictures--every realistic, yet
zippy.
All that said, I must put everything in context--A good day with
the A1 produces image color that just matches an average day
with the E-1.
AG
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