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Understanding ProRAW

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Re: Understanding ProRAW

#91

Post by coldtea »

ghaff wrote: post #40
coldtea wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If a pro photographer is on an assignment, sure they're almost certainly going use a high-end camera--probably a full-frame DSLR/mirrorless. But a ton of "serious photographers" aren't always on a photographic mission and, for them, something they have on them anyway that they can take good photos with anyway is pretty attractive. I'm "serious" for some definitions of the word and I definitely don't bother to haul ar…

>If a pro photographer is on an assignment, sure they're almost certainly going use a high-end camera--probably a full-frame DSLR/mirrorless.

And even here, "almost certainly" is the key term. E.g. Alex Majoli shot wars for Magnum Photos with compact digital cameras (this one: https://www.dpreview.com/articles/9257233153/olympusc5060 ) and won awards.

And of course tons of pro photographers have shot with the iPhone and such phones. Even more so in photojournalism, street photography, documentary photography etc.

Now, ad work, wedding, magazine portraiture, etc will of course mostly use their medium formats or $10K mirrorless setups...

Re: Understanding ProRAW

#92

Post by formerly_proven »

vmception wrote: post #89
Auracle wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is going to sound unintentionally confrontational but I’ll put up one of my DSLR portrait shots against your phone shots any day. Good enough? Maybe. Better than a much larger sensor and better lens? No way.

And what do you use those photos for? I’m only going to sound realistic

> The iPhone 12 Pro is better than EVIL & DSLR cameras

goalshifted into "it is ok enough for this single type of photo + light".

Re: Understanding ProRAW

#93

Post by pestatije »

mikece wrote: post #64

"RAW data is usually stored in the DNG file format, which stands for Digital Negative. Some camera makers have their own formats, but those companies are jerks." I disagree with the second part of this quote. The major players (Sony, Canon, Nikon) have their own file formats which reflect the choices their engineers made in deciding how to record the raw sensor information at the time of the exposure. Theoretically y…

Yes, coming from someone who is promoting yet another raw format, that sounds a bit grand. And this is Apple we are talking, which doesn't come across as a very standards based/supportive company.

Re: Understanding ProRAW

#94

Post by rimliu »

altarius wrote: post #11
hughes wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there even any camera companies that even have ambitions of reaching a level like this?

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.

Also Live Composite and friends, focus stacking.

Re: Understanding ProRAW

#95

Post by lmilcin »

mullingitover wrote: post #85
tambourine_man wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh dear. I'm sorry, but you are objectively wrong on so many levels it's hard to know where to start. But I guess I'll try nevertheless :) - Sharpen/noise reduction: If you want to avoid over-denoising and over-sharpening you need RAW, there's no way around it. I find Apple's rendering (and most other phone makers) distasteful. Anything above ISO 800 is just trash on JPG but pretty good on RAW. It's the reason I lef…

> That camera doesn't matter motto never dies, it seems. Tools are extremely important. They don't work on their own, of course, but are definitively part of the equation. I've attended a lot of photo meets, and if I had a dollar for every shooter who showed up with the latest and greatest gear, only to post poorly composed, poorly lit, overprocessed dreck weeks later... I think a better analogy is bicycles. You can…

I give people another example.

All else being equal, I like reading books printed on good paper. But good paper will not make the story interesting and the story will still be interesting even if printed on crap paper.

Of course, if you are an author you would like to make the experience pleasurable for your reader.

BUT.

If you are obsessing with the quality of the paper that you will use to print your book to the point that it detracts you from your work, before the story is even written yet, before you even learned to write interesting stories, you are completely misplacing your focus.

Re: Understanding ProRAW

#96

Post by [deleted] »

mikece wrote: post #70
Dylan16807 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The major players (Sony, Canon, Nikon) have their own file formats which reflect the choices their engineers made in deciding how to record the raw sensor information at the time of the exposure. Reflect how, and why couldn't that data be stored in a DNG?

The goal of DNG was long-term archival and maximum compatibility; Nikon NEF, Canon CRW, and Sony ARW file formats are meant to capture the point-in-time exposure information. Some of that point in time information involves the decisions the camera made about the exposure (Active D Light for Nikon... I'm sure Sony and Canon have their own settings they are saving) that matter for recording metadata about the image cap…

[deleted]

Re: Understanding ProRAW

#97

Post by zrav »

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 naturally doesn't make you a better photographer, but there are clearly benefits that can result in better looking pictures than what the in-camera JPEG conversion is capable of. Not only that, I even see one of RAWs promises fulfilled: That over time, RAW development programs will improve, resulting in better looking images developed from the same RAW. If I develop a RAW taken 15 years ago with a current development program and compare the result to what I got back then, this is clearly the case.

Re: Understanding ProRAW

#98

Post by bumbada »

mullingitover wrote: post #85
tambourine_man wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh dear. I'm sorry, but you are objectively wrong on so many levels it's hard to know where to start. But I guess I'll try nevertheless :) - Sharpen/noise reduction: If you want to avoid over-denoising and over-sharpening you need RAW, there's no way around it. I find Apple's rendering (and most other phone makers) distasteful. Anything above ISO 800 is just trash on JPG but pretty good on RAW. It's the reason I lef…

> That camera doesn't matter motto never dies, it seems. Tools are extremely important. They don't work on their own, of course, but are definitively part of the equation. I've attended a lot of photo meets, and if I had a dollar for every shooter who showed up with the latest and greatest gear, only to post poorly composed, poorly lit, overprocessed dreck weeks later... I think a better analogy is bicycles. You can…

When I was a kid I bought a cheap mountain bike bicycle from Wallmart equivalent in Europe.

Getting out with friends meant having to go back home after the first jump (usually less than a kilometer away) because the chain derailed, the brake will block and so many horror histories.

When I went to the bikes workshop to fix it,just looking at the weak frame they refused telling me that if they did fix it, it will break again and be responsible. So I had to fix it myself. In practice it meant replacing the entire bicycle part by part.

I bought an expensive bicycle later that never derailed or blocked or anything in its entire life using it every day.

Sometimes expensive gear can save you an enormous amount of time.

Re: Understanding ProRAW

#99

Post by lmilcin »

bumbada wrote: post #98
mullingitover wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That camera doesn't matter motto never dies, it seems. Tools are extremely important. They don't work on their own, of course, but are definitively part of the equation. I've attended a lot of photo meets, and if I had a dollar for every shooter who showed up with the latest and greatest gear, only to post poorly composed, poorly lit, overprocessed dreck weeks later... I think a better analogy is bicycles. You can…

When I was a kid I bought a cheap mountain bike bicycle from Wallmart equivalent in Europe. Getting out with friends meant having to go back home after the first jump (usually less than a kilometer away) because the chain derailed, the brake will block and so many horror histories. When I went to the bikes workshop to fix it,just looking at the weak frame they refused telling me that if they did fix it, it will break…

Nobody says you need to use lego camera.

Obviously, if a camera is defective and it prevents you from making shots you may want a more costly, reliable camera that will not fail on you when you need it.

But I can assume that at some point, when you add to the cost of a bike, you no longer buy reliability. You may even reduce reliability as components are getting lighter and more frail and difficult to replace/repair.

Re: Understanding ProRAW

#100

Post by amluto »

perardi wrote: post #63
pabs3 wrote: post #58

Are there no sensors that natively see in colour without the filter matrix over the top?

The Foveon, which is used in Sigma cameras. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foveon_X3_sensor It hasn’t really gone anywhere. Partly because of technical issues of getting the signal out of the layers of photosites, but also, I think, because of good ol’ Moore’s Law. (Or Dennard scaling, whatever.) Back in the days of 3-megapixel cameras, it would have mattered a lot to have every photosite be a full RGB capture, but no…

I would imagine that Foveon has better sensitivity than a Bayer filter. Using a Bayer filter fundamentally loses a lot of light. (I don’t know how efficient Foveon is in practice.)
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