urban ku # 187 ~ variables
Tuesday, May 20, 2008 at 11:02AM 
St Francis of Assisi • click to embiggenA short while ago, I wrote about digital capture as an "immature" medium.
My assessment was based on many factors but prominent amongst them was the fact that there is so little consistency in image capture from one camera manufacturer to another, not to mention the lack of consistency within any given manufacturer's model line up. Add to that the fact that the results obtained from any given camera can vary considerably depending upon which RAW converter software that is used (and how you use that software), what you end up with is a very high tower of digital babble.
That said, I will concede the fact that with enough experimentation and fiddling around one can probably achieve similar results from a wide range of camera and RAW converter software combinations. I use the word "concede" because it would require a monumental amount of time and money to do a thorough comparison of the possibilities.
That said, my experimentation and fiddling around have currently - always subject to a change in the digital weather - led me to the regular use of 2 different RAW converters to get the results I am happy with.
RAW converter #1 - As my primary RAW converter I use RAW Developer by Iridient Digital. This is a Mac only converter and RAW processing is all that it does. No libraries, no web gallery creation, no printing / book making capabilities - just RAW processing. I like it because it produces the most neutral and film-like conversions that I have seen to date. The only thing that it lacks is a good highlight recovery function - an addition that is coming in the next update. So ...
RAW convert #2 - For highlight recovery I use Adobe ARC via Bridge. Overall, I do not like the conversions from ACR - too much saturation and a very un-film-like look, but, in my experience, this software seems to offer the best highlight recovery available. With the current state of the art in digital sensors - less than ideal in dealing with extreme highlight values - highlight recovery is what I most often need.
In today's picture of St. Francis of Assisi, the entire upper right quadrant of the picture had lots of blown out detail - the white siding on the house and the pool sign and building facade were especially bad. ACR brought them back to respectable values.
In order to have the best of both RAW converter worlds, after processing the image in both converters, I lassoed the entire UR quadrant from the ACR conversion (with an 80 pixel feather) and dragged it into the RD conversion file while holding down the SHIFT key for perfect registration.
Merge the layers and, viola - a picture with color negative-like dynamic range.
The moral of this lesson is simple - spend enough time (and some not insignificant amount of money) experimenting and fiddling around and, even with an immature medium, you can find a way to get what you want - at least until the next inevitable and never ending update of one (or all) of the variables in the equation.
Questions; Do you shoot RAW? Do you use only one RAW converter? Have you tried others? Or, with in-camera jpegs becoming better and better, do you just push the button and let the camera do the rest?
Reader Comments (10)
Years ago I came to the conclusion that if you're going to pay the extra cost of a DSLR, as opposed to a point-and-shoot, then you're throwing your money way unless you shoot RAW. Of course, high-speed sports photography may be a reasonable exception to this rule. But my predominant use is for night photography, where shadow detail and noise control are much more important than in daylight photography. Maybe that has biased my preference towards RAW capture.
Andy Frazer
I always shoot raw. At first, that was my ony option anyway with the Sigma SD9. Now with the SD14, I can shoot JPG, but why? I've established my workflow since the SD9. I use the Sigma software only for raw conversion, but I do like Raw Developer too. I only used the demo of the Raw Developer and it crashed a lot. I don't know if it was my version of OSX or if it was because it was the demo version. So, I never put the money down on the Raw Developer. I did like some of the results I got, though.
I'm currently using Photoshop CS2. I considered upgrading to CS3, but there's nothing there that I really want to spend money on other than a RAW converter that supports my Canon G9. So I looked around at the free options and discovered RAW Therapee. (www.rawthereapee.com) It's not as graceful or as quick to use as ACR, but the price is right, it supports my G9, and I find that I can fine-tune things more to my liking. It has worked so well for me that it inadvertently became my primary RAW converter.
Now, I can't tell you how "film-like" my results are as I'm so out of touch with film these days that my opinion doesn't count. I *can* tell you that I'm VERY happy with the RAW Therapee processed prints I'm getting off my Epson 3800.
thanks for the comment on my blog. i haven't stopped posting. in fact, i posted today. in any case, thanks again for the comments. i've been looking through your blog, and i'm enjoying many of the images. it's always nice to make connections with fellow photographers through the blog; it helps to know there's someone out there who finds something worthwhile about what i'm seeing/writing.
If I'm doing family snaps, I might shoot jpeg; but normally I shoot RAW and process in Photoshop CS... which puts me behind the curve technologically. I am pondering a major upgrade.
Uh, chemical photography is "immature" in the sense that people's ability to use it (the RAW conversion for you digital people) varies tremendously. Also, I don't think anyone would expect the same results from Velvia vs Kodachrome or Tri-X vs Bergger BPF 200, not to mention the variables in development. Oh, and don't forget, then there's the printing...
Why would you want everything to be homogeneous? So we can all eat at McDonald's all the time and have the Stupidity Channel on TV 24/7?
Good point, Tom!
My process is very idiosyncratic and I don't recommend it to anyone. I don't use JPEG except for final conversion to web display. On the Raw captures I use the old RawShooter essentials for an overview, but convert linearly with Canon's EOS Viewer Utility for zero information loss. I reach a printable image with successive curve transformations adapted to the individual image.
I'd agree with tom on the comparisons between film development and RAW, except I think the RAW converter is akin to developer & fixer chemicals. Problem is it's much harder to experiment with "film" types - you'd need a set-up from each manufacturer.
As for RAW development, I use a range of tools, depending on the look I want and the dynamic range captured. My favourite for highlight recovery is CaptureOne but I don't use ACR much (I'm also on a really old version).
Shooting in JPEG mode is akin to shooting a generic "store brand" color neg film and accepting whatever output from the local mall's 1-hr kiosk. I have a long history in both B&W and color darkrooms, and with my very first DSLR -- a Canon D60 -- discovered the wonders of RAW. My RAW converter of choice at the time was RAW Shooter Essentials, and later RAW Shooter Premium. I fell in love with their "fill light" tool, and how you could wander over the image with live view from the eye-dropper when looking for a neutral. My world came crashing down when Adobe bought out Pixmantec (RAW Shooter's parent) and turned to Capture 1 LE over then popular ARC. I once did a comparison of several RAW converter programs: ARC, RAWShooter Prem, ARC (CS2), C1 LE, Dribble, Canon's DPP -- anything I could find either as shareware or trial copy. RSP and C1 were tied for 1st with ARC no more than 3rd. The others not worth mentioning. All of that was before the advent of CS3 and Lightroom. RAW Shooter is no more (incorporated into ARC and Lightroom), C1 is into v4.1, and DPP is getting there with their latest v3.2. I still prefer C1 v4 because you can use it as a simple, straight forward RAW converter without all the tagging and other baggage that Lightroom requires. ARC can be used in the same manner, and I can see little difference between the output of C1 v4 and current ARC (CS3). Having not shot a single frame of color negative or transparency in the past five years, I would be hard pressed to say whether or not one converter or the other give more film-like results, nor does it bother me one way or the other. The first hurdle I had to over come when moving to digital was, it isn't film so don't expect it to look like film. Once I got past that, I never looked back. It is what it is, and I'm OK with that. HOWEVER, I must confess that some of the baryta based papers -- like Innova's Ultra Smooth Gloss Max Black -- produce prints from digital files that are as close as I've seen to silver prints when sprayed with an image protector like Image Shield, both color and B&W. It would seem the paper manufactures are moving toward a more film like look -- YEA!
I shoot RAW, and process with Nikon's CaptureNX software, which allows me to take advantage of my Camera's canned colour and B&W profiles (including a pair of excellent low-saturation choices). It's also a non-destructive editor, so I tend to use it for all my edits, saving PS for the few things CaptureNX can't do (mostly the Clone stamp, but also for adding vignetting) I also own Capture One 4, which I use on occasion (It has batch functionality that CaptureNX lacks).
I haven't had major issues with highlight recovery, but that's mostly because of the 1-2 stops of extra highlight headroom that the D300 provides in its RAW files. I've been able to pull detail out of apparently blown clouds on many occasions using selective curves on the sky.
Highlight recovery issues are one of those things that is very manufacturer-dependent, as it relies heavily on choices for metering and the curve that's applied by default. Frankly this is one of those things that will never be standardized across manufacturers, much like different film manufacturers offered very different films and different chemistry provided different results. There never was consistency of image capture across manufacturers with film, but the manufacturers in question were the film and developer manufacturers, not the camera manufacturers. The sensor and in-camera processing replaces the film and the developers and printers are replaced by the RAW converters. JPEG replaces minilabs (and is about as consistently average as a minilab print).