Messages

61

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: Too much dynamic range?

« on: November 21, 2012, 09:05:48 AM »

I didn't want to focus only on DR (possible lightness levels) in my initial post, my main idea was to draw attention to color tones reproduction abilities of a sensor.

When there are X stops of DR available, this is lightness range captured, i.e. not matter if each individual pixel has purple / yellow / gray tone. So idea of the topic is to ask everyone whether "there's life outside DR".

As I see it: DR is longitude (or Y coordinate), color tone is latitude (or X in two-dimension representation).

The more gradation steps there are in each dimension the better a sensor is.

So the questions are:
- Should we look at both dimensions instead of referencing DR only?
- Does the initial question about contrast improvement work? (contrast amplification affects lightness level and color tones at the same time, so initial colors can be thrown away when editing an image)
- Why is there difference in color tones reproduction of 1D vs. 5D lines? What do we miss?
- Is that noise at the floor so important? Or there are other things that take part in the game?

62

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Too much dynamic range?

« on: November 20, 2012, 05:48:01 PM »

An interesting thought came to me before I went to bed. Below you'll find an assumption that came suddenly to my head, so please don't take it too seriously.

So... Let's assume there are two cameras with similar color tones reproduction abilities, but with different possible lightness level capturing ability. For example:
- sensor of camera A has 12 stops of DR, 16 billion tones it can distinguish
- sensor of camera B has 10 stops of DR, 16 billion tones it can distinguish

Having a flat scene (i.e. low DR scene) on a shot we'll push an image with, say, 8 DR to be captured with both sensors. And then both images will be edited in post to retrieve lacking contrast. So we need to add:
- 4 stops for 12-stop camera
- 2 stops for 10-stop camera

So my point is: with lower DR camera we'll have lower tone delta (difference of the initial color tone in the scene with reproduced tone by the sensor) when processing the low DR shot made using lower DR sensor. That happens because of decreased amount of modifications made to the file to achieve required result.

What do you guys think about that?

63

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: Just some sample shots taken with my new 1D X in lowlight

« on: November 20, 2012, 09:48:28 AM »

Is there full-size JPEG available?

64

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: Just some sample shots taken with my new 1D X in lowlight

« on: November 20, 2012, 08:24:51 AM »

Thank you Dwight

I have run 3 other shot tests
http://photos.paolotaverna.com/p552754205/h4c4dd62c#h4c4dd632

1- I put in AE mode
2- Shutter is now 1/400 (I assume this is a medium speed shutter)
3- I have used "exterior" light as it's early in the morning (naturally not much light)


When I look at my shots...I'm really concerned - when I look at yours it's like if I have a totally different camera...this is really disappointing...don't know what to do next.

How do you get JPEGs? Is it straight out of the camera or you use Lightroom or another image editing application?

I have noticed that choosing specific picture styles may add big amount of color noise to JPEG. Also sharpening an image makes noise more apparent.

65

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: 5D MARK III with 50 mm f/1.2 performence

« on: November 20, 2012, 06:29:02 AM »

Here's an interesting thread about the 50L: http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=10798

66

EOS Bodies / Re: Has Canon entered the Graveyard Spiral?

« on: November 18, 2012, 03:49:55 PM »

Well, look at the glass lineup Canon has and look at others... Canon Rules on this side!

So i am wondering... is there a Nikon troll who sneak in this forum to start that subject? Or are we all so fans of Canon that we are somehow blind at this supposed declined?

I believe there are small things that we like much enough to close our eyes on things that care others 

67

Canon General / Re: Photography websites. Where are you posting?

« on: November 18, 2012, 10:49:55 AM »

I've removed all my photos from facebook. I found it's too easy to steal from facebook and had issues with a "friend" who had copied some of my photos and posted them on her page and presented them as if she had taken them. All without my consent and no credit given. The security settings on my Photoshop.com albums are set to prevent copying and printing.

There's no way you can prevent copying and printing on internet. I'm familiar with dozen ways to protect your image and none of them work if someone is a professional in web-technologies.

68

EOS Bodies / Re: Has Canon entered the Graveyard Spiral?

« on: November 18, 2012, 10:43:52 AM »

green hue ?
what profiles are you using

Do you profile your cameras playback screen? If so how? If Nikon resort to a firmware "fix" to sort it out then I can be pretty sure you can't.......

http://nikonrumors.com/2012/03/27/nikon-d800-issues.aspx/
http://www.petapixel.com/2012/04/22/nikon-refutes-greenish-tint-issues-says-lcd-on-d4d800-is-more-accurate/
http://www.techradar.com/news/photography-video-capture/cameras/nikon-to-issue-firmware-update-to-correct-green-screen-issue-1086098

NO , but the LCD jpg rendition mirrors the chosen profile and settings in the camera

If you look at D3s vs. D800 screen, there's visible degradation in color rendition in the latter. And it happens when you look at the same file.

Am I wrong?

69

Canon General / Re: Photography websites. Where are you posting?

« on: November 18, 2012, 05:41:12 AM »

P.S. I didn't get the percentage of >25 years old correctly from the first sight, because my eyes just didn't believe that. I don't think that's true even now. My personal feeling says the visitors core is in the 17-25 years range.

70

Canon General / Re: Photography websites. Where are you posting?

« on: November 18, 2012, 05:36:03 AM »

Simple, my girlfriend is from Ukraine (ZP)
VK has a great English translation so language isn't a problem and the site in general is light years better (for our taste) than fb.

Not sure about that user info.. according to their data: Audience
Over 190 million users are registered on the site.
Around 2 500 000 000 pages are opened daily (LiveInternet).
Around 67% of visitors live in Russia (LiveInternet).
More than 70% of users are over 25 years old (comScore).

Love your work.

We're from DP, 2 hours away 

As for VK, I feel that people over 25 don't visit the web-site that often, compared to younger people. Audience is interested in something extraordinary these days, so to please them pictures should really stand out of the crowd.

We've got interesting results during this year wedding season, so I'll add you to my friends list in VK to share those as soon as we have time to upload them 

You have very nice works too, but I believe there's always room for personal growth 

71

Canon General / Re: Photography websites. Where are you posting?

« on: November 18, 2012, 04:20:59 AM »

I'm not sure why you've chosen vk.com, as its main audience is Russian-speaking, and most of registered people are teenagers. The reason it works for me is that I live in the area and I'm a wedding photographer, so it's about time for some of them to get marry 

I believe that every photography-related community has specific photography segment that it may be mainly specialized at. So it's up to us to identify what fits our needs 

72

Underwater / Re: 1 5dMK II, 6 Countries, All Underwater

« on: November 17, 2012, 04:11:15 AM »

Impressive video! Thank you 

73

Lenses / Re: Can someone explain the Canon 50mmL f/1.2 "backfocus problem" ?

« on: November 11, 2012, 04:34:53 PM »

So for the 50 mm I would suggest AFMA for the aperture you use when taking 'snapshots' where there's no time to manually adjust the focus...

And don't forget to use the focus point you AFMAed your focus for, as 50L has curved focal plane and focus confirmation differs (in ~14 AFMA steps range) throughout focus points.

74

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: Does anybody think the 1dx price will come down for the holidays...why?

« on: November 11, 2012, 09:43:48 AM »

Just look at 1D IV price history:



Personally I don't see any reasons to wait. It's not about a thousand of dollars, it can be just 2-3 hundreds, but is that something you are going to wait for?

75

Lenses / Re: New 24-70 II, maybe AFMA will help?

« on: November 08, 2012, 11:40:02 AM »

Actually, there's a much simpler test to see if you need AFMA.  Select a flat target with high contrast and lots of detail, oriented parallel to the sensor.  Go into Live View and use contrast detect AF (called Live AF, do not use Quick AF - the mirror should not flip during focusing).  Take a couple of images that way.  Then, turn off Live View and take a couple of shots with phase AF.  If the Live View shots are sharp and the phase AF shots are less sharp, AFMA will help.  If the Live View AF shots are not sharp, it's more likely a lens issue.

Live View magnification can also help. When I do AFMA for primes I follow next workflow:
1. Make sure camera is set on a sturdy tripod.
2. Use Live View with 10x magnification to focus on the target (contrast detect).
3. Move focus ring to minimum focusing distance, focus using regular focusing (phase detect), make a shot.
4. Move focus ring to maximum focusing distance, focus using regular focusing (phase detect), make a shot.
5. Compare, make adjustments, check again.

The only issue I'm having is that the difference between AFMA values (e.g. "-1" and "0") is twice more than I'd like it to be. In my testing I see the same focus shift for two neighboring values, while contrast detect hits somewhere in the middle (i.e., at "-0.5").