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Understanding ProRAW

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Re: Understanding ProRAW

#21

Post by mlyle »

lmilcin wrote: post #13

I find people misunderstand what RAW is about and what and who it is for. If you think your pictures are better, you are deluding yourself the same way audiophiles moan about qualities of their high end, thousand dollar per feet audio cables. I use RAW files and full manual because I have an actual workflow where I shoot a bunch of photos in similar setting and want to be able to create Lightroom preset and apply to…

I think this is a bit of a rant.

Shooting raw lets me save a few percent of photos where exposure is a little wrong. This is huge on its own, and you mention it.

It also lets me stretch things and make scenes work which would otherwise exceed the dynamic range of the exposure and the built in tone mapping would guess wrong.

Storage is cheap these days. If you're not doing something boost-shooting/burst intensive, why not shoot raw? Most of the time the result will be the same, and occasionally it will let you do much more.

And, here, IMO, the rant is particularly off base. A big part of ProRAW is being able to have big linear HDR stacks, which is immensely powerful and absolutely will let you do things you couldn't do any other way.

Re: Understanding ProRAW

#22

Post by coldtea »

jordache wrote: post #2

Very nice write up. However, who is the audience? The demographic that this info is relevant to must be infinitesimal. A serious photographer will try to maximize quality with camera gear that starts out with strong baseline IQ potential - Pro camera, large sensor, quality lenses. People who subscribes to the value prop of iphone 12 pro max, do not lean towards this model for the above reasons.

>Very nice write up. However, who is the audience?

Any pixel-peeping digital photographer, so millions...

>A serious photographer will try to maximize quality with camera gear that starts out with strong baseline IQ potential - Pro camera, large sensor, quality lenses.*

You'd be surprised. There are other elements "serious photographers" sometimes optimize for, including weight, stealth, convenience, and so on.

Re: Understanding ProRAW

#23

Post by SigmundA »

hughes wrote: post #6

If a mirrorless digital camera company ever made their software anywhere near as good as this, or if Apple ever brought their software expertise to a device with a full-frame format sensor and lens mount, they would absolutely dominate that market.

Imagine a Magsafe camera lens / sensor with some kind of high speed wireless interconnect to iPhone:

https://daxpix.medium.com/can-the-magsafe-hold-a-camera-lens...

Re: Understanding ProRAW

#24

Post by rektide »

akuma73 wrote: post #16
altarius wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK a good chunk of digital camera processing is still done in ASIC/hardware and mindshift to GPU/CPU SIMD/software will take time, so it will probably be a while until camera manufacturers even begin to catch up. That said, Olympus does a couple computational photography approaches (handheld multishot high res) and Fuji recently introduced in-camera HDR - but I tried neither.

They should drop their custom ASICs and just stick a Qualcomm Snapdragon as a replacement. They could use Android and create a platform with an app store with APIs to access their sensor. Opening up the hardware in this standard way to developers would really add a lot of value to their cameras. I have no idea why they haven't done this already.

Sony cameras secretly are Android devices. You can write your own Android apps for them[1].

Why this isn't advertised, promoted, & made available? Why digital cameras seem to want to get their lunch taken by phones? Not sure!

I think it was way too soon, but Samsung had a good go with a series of Samsung Galaxy Cameras[2] that were proud Android brandishing devices. Android has gotten better, mobile chips have gotten way better. But even something more like the unofficial OMF that I linked, a Sony camera, that doesn't look like an Android system, it looks like a camera, but is really Android and can run Android? That makes hella-sense to me.

[1] https://github.com/ma1co/OpenMemories-Framework

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_NX

Re: Understanding ProRAW

#25

Post by coldtea »

jordache wrote: post #4
altarius wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I went out to Marin Headlands this morning to photograph the sunrise, brought my 60mpix fullframe camera and some amazing lenses. But while waiting for the best light or long exposures I snap off a couple pictures on the phone. And I was just thinking, if I'd just post to Instagram and not print, I probably wouldn't even bother with the fullframe camera - a nice hike without 20lbs of gear and as great photo…

i don't doubt the use case you brought up. For your use case, are you going to pixel peep and compare RAW file formats differences? As if that knowledge would somehow materially affect your Instagram photo result.

>As if that knowledge would somehow materially affect your Instagram photo result.

People don't just read things that "materially affect" their results.

If we did we would read 10% of what we actually read in HN...

Re: Understanding ProRAW

#26

Post by srsm »

rektide wrote: post #24
akuma73 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should drop their custom ASICs and just stick a Qualcomm Snapdragon as a replacement. They could use Android and create a platform with an app store with APIs to access their sensor. Opening up the hardware in this standard way to developers would really add a lot of value to their cameras. I have no idea why they haven't done this already.

Sony cameras secretly are Android devices. You can write your own Android apps for them[1]. Why this isn't advertised, promoted, & made available? Why digital cameras seem to want to get their lunch taken by phones? Not sure! I think it was way too soon, but Samsung had a good go with a series of Samsung Galaxy Cameras[2] that were proud Android brandishing devices. Android has gotten better, mobile chips have gotten…

Well, only the older ones, the A7iii and onward don't have an accessible Android subsystem. But even for those before the A7iii, it's more of a subsystem and doesn't have access to a lot of functions that are done by specialized chips.

Re: Understanding ProRAW

#27

Post by unicornporn »

lmilcin wrote: post #17
hughes wrote: post #6

If a mirrorless digital camera company ever made their software anywhere near as good as this, or if Apple ever brought their software expertise to a device with a full-frame format sensor and lens mount, they would absolutely dominate that market.

iPhones make good photos because they stand out from competition. People look at them and see they are different. Soon everybody is going to be fed up with dramatic lighting, extended dynamic range because competition will be doing the same. Good photos stand the test of time because they are interesting, not because they have pumped colors and HDR.

> iPhones make good photos because they stand out from competition. People look at them and see they are different.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbeEkwlTeqQ

Re: Understanding ProRAW

#28

Post by knolan »

akuma73 wrote: post #16
altarius wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK a good chunk of digital camera processing is still done in ASIC/hardware and mindshift to GPU/CPU SIMD/software will take time, so it will probably be a while until camera manufacturers even begin to catch up. That said, Olympus does a couple computational photography approaches (handheld multishot high res) and Fuji recently introduced in-camera HDR - but I tried neither.

They should drop their custom ASICs and just stick a Qualcomm Snapdragon as a replacement. They could use Android and create a platform with an app store with APIs to access their sensor. Opening up the hardware in this standard way to developers would really add a lot of value to their cameras. I have no idea why they haven't done this already.

I’m sorry but I cannot fathom using Android (or iOS) on a professional camera. My Canon gear is extremely fast and responsive and Android is anathema to that. It powers on instantly and I can flip through menus as fast as I can physically turn the control wheel. I can change batteries in less than a second. My cameras will run for years without slowing down. My 7D is ten years old and as performant as the day I bought it. (It’s actually better since a firmware update lets me hotswap memory cards with my 5Dmk3.)

They can process raw images in body and display them at any zoom level without lag, loading or any other issue. My R5 has a touch screen but it’s faster and more comfortable to use the physical controls, especially since you can change settings without actually having to even look. It’s almost identical to my 5Dmk3 except they moved a couple of buttons because of the articulating screen hinge.

This is exactly what most photographers want. Familiar hardware that doesn’t get in the way. That gives the best optical quality that accurately and faithfully captures a scene giving total creative freedom to the photographer not the processor.

The idea of ruining a perfectly good system by pushing Android onto it ‘because apps’ or whatever it is such HN/disruptive nonsense.

Look at any smartphone photo on a large screen and they’re basically mush when it comes to detail. This is fine for most people, these phone cameras are far better than the point and shoot market they have rightfully destroyed.

People edit professional camera photos on large screens and nobody wants to use their camera to edit. Nobody wants their professional camera to introduce computational artefacts onto their exposure. Nobody wants to wait for it to boot. Nobody wants battery life to fall through the floor.

Lytro made a light field camera that ran Android. It was a fun gimmick and is now gathering dust on my shelf. Now Zeiss is making one for $6k and no one who actually cares about photography will buy it.

Re: Understanding ProRAW

#29

Post by altarius »

lmilcin wrote: post #13

I find people misunderstand what RAW is about and what and who it is for. If you think your pictures are better, you are deluding yourself the same way audiophiles moan about qualities of their high end, thousand dollar per feet audio cables. I use RAW files and full manual because I have an actual workflow where I shoot a bunch of photos in similar setting and want to be able to create Lightroom preset and apply to…

RAW is supposed to be the data that the sensor captures (well, today that's more or less true). The actual images saved on phone/SD (JPEG or HEIC or whatever) are just processed RAWs with some destructive presets (WB, contrast curve, sharpening, color tone-mapping, ...) applied and written out to storage. Some of these presets are destructive (gamma curves, bit-depth reduction for JPEG) and cannot be undone.

So of course RAW doesn't make for better photos, but for original input data to do your own edit on. If you don't know how to edit, you're probably better off with the experience/work that the manufacturer put into the in-camera presets.

In my opinion the main advantage is that RAW files save the full color-depth info _and_ RAW files are not gamma-mapped (i.e. linear encoded), that enables all of your use-cases above. You would still get 90% of that advantage if you were to demosaic, color correct to a profile-connection-space but keep the linear encoding and original 12-16 bit depth, even if you were to compress that data via DCT/JPEG to save space. That's sort of what ProRAW is.

Re: Understanding ProRAW

#30

Post by altarius »

hughes wrote: post #6

If a mirrorless digital camera company ever made their software anywhere near as good as this, or if Apple ever brought their software expertise to a device with a full-frame format sensor and lens mount, they would absolutely dominate that market.

Ohh, I just remembered the long-delayed Zeiss ZX1 ($6000 fixed-lens 35mm f/2.0 camera) that has Adobe Lightroom built in. I like the concept, I bet the implementation is quite flawed though.

If I were spending that money on a fixed-lens camera, it'd be a Leica Q (thanks, craigmod :/ ) but the concept is interesting.

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