5DsR mRaw quality issues

[Frodo]

I've just bought a 5DsR for use as a landscape camera, plus wedding/event camera paired with my 6D.
I am very happy with the Raw files produced by the 5DsR. I ran a series of tests on my existing lenses including a comparison with my 6D using my 35/2IS and the difference was so great that I thought the 6D was misfocused! I reshot the 6D photos, but no change!. I am also happy with the dynamic range, which seems to be similar to that of the 6D.
My intention was to shoot the camera predominantly in mRaw as 28MP is more than enough for most purposes, e.g. shooting guests at a reception, with formal wedding photos in Raw. While the resolution of the mRaw file is great (much better than the 20MP of the 6D) I am unhappy with the dynamic range and colour cast of the mRaw files.
Here is a series of photos using my 5DsR with my 50/2.5 macro at f/5.6 and 400 ISO. Processed in Lightroom 6. Images are all 1600 pixels and the crops are equivalent to 100% of the mRaw file

(1) unprocessed file.
(2) Raw file processed Shadows +100%, highlights -57%, blacks -17%.
(3) Raw crop
(4) mRaw with settings from (2) pasted in.
(5) crop of (4)
(6) mRaw with additional processing: exposure plus 0.75, temperature and tint adjusted to remove colour.

Note in the mRaw image with the initial processing: darker, less dynamic range and (worst of all) green colouration, especially in shadows. I can improve the image somewhat with further processing, but its never quite right. I shot an informal portrait yesterday and the guys fingers around his girlfriend's waist in shadow were very green even after processing.

Your thoughts appreciated. And I don't want to enter into a discussion about shooting Raw all the time.

 

[jaayres20]

I had the same intentions with my 5dsr when I first got it. I also did some testing of the mRAW and found that it is not a good option for me either. mRAW is worse than shooting JPEG in my opinion. As soon as you start to adjust colors in mRAW they fall apart. Here is my test image from a while back. The first one is how the image was exposed. The second is normal resolution RAW processed and the last is the mRAW processed. Notice the terrible greenish tint in the shadows of the wheel well? The same setting are applied. mRAW sadly is not worth anything. Not sure how they can screw it up so bad. You will love the 5dsr. The colors are beautiful. I have a 1dx2 and I have shot a lot with the 5d4 and I much prefer the colors of the 5dsr.

 

[Frodo]

Hi Joshua

Thanks for posting. I was hoping it was just me...

I've now played around with the files in the latest version of DPP. Converting mRaw does not produce the same colour cast, so I conclude that the primary problem is with Lightroom, rather than my camera.

However, I am not familiar with DPP and with the maximum lifting of shadows (5) still produces shadows that are much darker than when I lift the shadows by 100% in Lightroom. If I raise brightness, I rapidly clip highlights that DPP cannot recover with the highlights slider. A DPP expert might be able to offer advice.
I also much prefer options in Lightroom, such as localised adjustments, etc.

So a work around for critical files would be to process in DPP, save as a tiff and process further in Lightroom.
This is not something I want to do with a large number of files, so may have to use full Raw as my default setting. This would mean another 64GB CF card in the short term to cover weddings.

 

[Frodo]

I did a search before posting, but have just found this thread:
https://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=26798.0

This didn't offer any solutions. Problems experienced with Lightroom, but no one tried DPP in that thread.