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New Old Approach to Dynamic Range

Submitted by LibRaw on

Michal Bednarek (Niserin)

In today's world, "dynamic range" (DR) has become, in the minds of (many) photographers one of the main characteristics of a digital camera.

Unfortunately, the public data on DR is limited to "DD - ISO sensitivity" graphs and tables. With this, the nature of noise (for example, random noise, banding) isn't accounted for, however the noise character is important for visual quality.

In reality, any practicing photographer knows that the degradation of the image in the shadows (or because of low exposure) happens gradually, there is no strict demarcating line. It's just that with the lowering of exposure, small details disappear, the contrast between bigger details diminishes, color fidelity becomes worse. Depending on the quality demanded of the image (which will depend on presentation size, viewing distance, other viewing conditions such as screen resolution, etc.,), the practical dynamic range for the specific camera will be different, even for the same ISO setting.

Monochrome2DNG - File Converter for «Monochrome-Converted» Cameras

Submitted by LibRaw on

Almost all digital cameras that are released today are color cameras. Nevertheless, there is demand for BW (Black and White) cameras because of reduced artifacts and higher resolution of resulting images. And many photographers want BW cameras with the same lens mount as their main (color) camera, so that they can use the lenses they already own.

Converting a color camera to BW is done by removing the CFA (Color Filter array). However, during such conversion, the firmware of the camera doesn’t change, and the camera doesn’t know that it’s become monochrome, which leads to several problems, which Monochrome2DNG - a file converter for «monochrome-converted» cameras - is going to address.

Monochrome2DNG Beta 0.8

RawDigger 1.2.24

Submitted by LibRaw on

RawDigger 1.2.24

What's new:

  • Camera support added:
  • Sony ARQ format support
  • Olympus E-PL9
  • Panasonic DC-GF10/DC-GF90, GH5S, GX9, TZ200/ZS200, G9 (in high-res mode).
  • Fujifilm X-A5, X-A10, X-H1
  • Exiftool updated to version 10.79
  • Bugs fixed: Sigma Quattro H 'AF points interpolation' was not interpolating last AF points row

DPRSplit (Beta) - File Splitter for Canon 5D Mark IV / Dual Pixel Raw files

Submitted by LibRaw on

Canon 5D Mark IV's sensor has a somewhat unusual pixel arrangement: each pixel is composed of two subpixels. If Dual Pixel RAW mode is enabled in the camera, the resulting CR2 file contains two images, or two frames: one composite, made from reading both subpixels, summed; and the other is made out of one set of subpixels.

In essence, in Dual Pixel Raw mode, the camera records into one file some equivalent of two shots, bracketed by (approximately) 1 EV.

The DPRSplit application is intended to extract this additional frame out of the CR2 taken in Dual Pixel RAW mode, and save it as a DNG. Resulting DNG files can then be opened and processed in (practically) any raw converter featuring DNG support.

DPRSplit Beta 0.8.2

SonyPixelShift2DNG (Beta 0.8.4): Convert Sony A7R-III Pixel Shift Mode Shots to DNG

Submitted by LibRaw on

In order to streamline the workflow with the raw shots taken in the new Pixel Shift Multi Shooting mode offered by the new Sony A7R-III camera, and provide a way to use popular RAW converters (Adobe Camera Raw/Lightroom, Capture One, and some others) for processing these shots, we’ve developed the SonyPixelShift2DNG application, which converts Sony A7R-III shots taken in Pixel Shift mode to DNG.

The resulting DNG files can later be processed in familiar applications like Adobe Lightroom / Camera Raw, CaptureOne, Iridient Developer, Luminar, and others.

SonyPixelShift Beta 0.8.4

One Way to Get Spot-On Exposure for Your Shots

Submitted by Iliah Borg on

The shot taken with spotmeter exposure and +3 EV in-camera correction, opened and adjusted in FastRawViewer

Every day one can see threads on photographic forums where members discuss the various different modes of automatic exposure, trying to find the perfect one. As a rule, these discussions result in the same question – what compensation to automatic metering ought one set to get consistently good exposure? It turns out that no autoexposure mode universally guarantees good out-of-box results.

We are planning to demonstrate that one of the ways of getting good exposure is metering while using the in-camera spotmeter on the lightest part of the scene that needs to maintain full detail (white clouds, snow, etc.) and applying the appropriate compensation to the exposure recommended by the spotmeter.

Can you Evaluate Exposure Using the In-camera Histogram?

Submitted by Iliah Borg on

shot 2649 with and without WB

They say that "a histogram is a graphical representation of the pixels exposed in your image" or "when judging exposure, the primary areas of the histogram to be concerned with are the right and left edges".

We are going to demonstrate the following:

  • In-camera histograms don't really allow one to analyze the shadows and highlights zones of an image.
  • An in-camera histogram changes significantly with changes in the camera settings such as contrast, picture style, brightness, etc.

So, no. By no means can the in-camera histogram be used by a RAW shooter to evaluate exposure.

RawDigger 1.2.23

Submitted by LibRaw on

RawDigger 1.2.22

What's new:

  • Camera support added:
  • Canon G1 X Mark III, EOS M10
  • Panasonic DC-G9 (only standard compressed raws, high-res mode is not supported yet)
  • PhaseOne IQ3 100Mp Trichromatic
  • Sony A7R-III, DSC-RX0
  • Preferences - Display Options - Display RGB render in RAW colors replaced with new option Preferences - Display Options - Camera color profile

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