MJWong wrote: Makten, looks like we have both been slowing down with the Zeiss thread.
Yeah, I still haven't touched the Zeiss stuff since I bought the X100. If I want to shoot more "seriously", I grab the Pentax 67 anyway. Maybe I should sell the D700, I don't know. Too much of everything.
Your second pic is great by the way! I love patterns and worn surfaces.
Care to share your sharpening technique for this camera? I'm still using step on shots that benefit it.. but it can be an arduous process even as an action, and I have a feeling there are tools that would do a better job. Additionally whilst I have it mostly down for screen.. print sharpening is still an issue for me.
Hehehe, Martin, love your second shot. Guess we're both suckers for those.
I don't know about Martin but I have been trying to adapt my Photoshop resize/sharpening actions I normally use for Zeiss shots. I think it might be over-sharpening right now. Are you using the same thing Martin? Its the one Denoir shared.
MJWong wrote:
Hehehe, Martin, love your second shot. Guess we're both suckers for those.
I don't know about Martin but I have been trying to adapt my Photoshop resize/sharpening actions I normally use for Zeiss shots. I think it might be over-sharpening right now. Are you using the same thing Martin? Its the one Denoir shared.
Don't you change a thing, your shots look fantastically sharp while not going over the top.
My sharpening is slightly less aggressive than when I sharpen D700/Zeiss images. I don't think the Fujinon lens has a character that benefits that much from extracting the smallest details. Instead I tend to process for something that looks a bit like slide film, with deep shadows and a bit cold colors and "just enough" sharpness.
I'll look up my settings just in a little while, because I have some stuff here to process. Stay tuned.
Alright, some PP settings coming up! I suppose some people think this is "over the top", but I think it suits the subject very well and and this is close to what I do to most images from the X100. Let's have a look at the final result first.
Now, the contrast is severely enhanced by applying a custom curve (Edit: Note that I do this completely different for every single image!). In many cases this also boosts color to an unacceptable level, but not in this particular example. If it does, I just decrease the saturation.
The histogram then looks like this (you can see above how it looks in the unprocessed file), with nice tones from black to white with only minor clipping of highlights in the shiny doorhandle and lock.
Sharpening is set to zero. That's right, zero. The reason is that ACR gives nasty artefacts from sharpening, and that smart sharpen in PS does the job better. Or at least better looking. Here's a 100% crop before going from ACR to PS.
Not very sharp, but with plenty of detail and nice color separation.
In PS, I just run a script that looks like this:
– Convert to LAB color.
– Sharpen the L channel with smart sharpen, 100%, 1 pixel radius, remove lens blur.
– Resize to 1700 pixels on the long end (so, I have one script for horizontal images and one for vertical).
– Sharpen the L channel with smart sharpen, 68%, 0.4 pixel radius, remove lens blur.
– Resize to 1024 pixels (if you want smaller or larger images, you'll have to tweak the above steps).
– Sharpen the L channel with smart sharpen, 46%, 0.2 pixel radius, remove lens blur.
– Convert to RGB.
– Convert from 16 bits (which is chosen in ACR) to 8 bits per channel.
– Convert from AdobeRGB to sRGB for webdisplay.
– Save (happens automatically when the script is done).
As you can see, the sharpening is quite mild. But the weak AA filter of the X100 and the sharp lens, makes it look very natural. This particular example was also straightened up a bit in ACR, which gives lower sharpness.
Some images, like the scroll thingie in my post yesterday, wasn't sharpened at all before resizing to 1024 pixels. It came out way too crisp with the script. Of course you could do a bunch of scripts for different styles of scenes, but I'm just doing it manually whenever I have to.
... so yeah, no point in me posting my lame workflow now.
Martin's is way better then mine as its tailored to the X100 files and not Zeiss.
Going to play around tonight and see what I can come up with.
Thanks Martin.
MJWong wrote: ... so yeah, no point in me posting my lame workflow now.
Martin's is way better then mine as its tailored to the X100 files and not Zeiss.
Going to play around tonight and see what I can come up with.
Thanks Martin.
Oh, come on. A complicated workflow doesn't mean it's a good one. Your results look very good to me, so if your flow is simpler, that's a great reason for using it and telling us about it.
Martin, thanks so much for taking the time to go through that. That is not far off from what I have been doing (thought I haven't posted here any shots where sharpening was of importance to me particularly).. but I definitely think you have refined it to a much better level. I agree that the contrast needs to be boosted out of cam, pretty significantly usually.
Thanks again for taking the time, I know that wasn't a super fast thing to post, and appreciate your generosity with both your time and skill.
How has everyone been dealing the Dynamic Range setting and shooting RAW?
Do you set DR to 100%? Has anyone found any tricks to using it with RAW that benefits you?
So far I have found that using ISO800 with a DR of 400% you can shoot moderately back lit subjects and still be able to pull up the shadows and mids in post resulting in an even exposure. The camera will under expose by -2ev to protect the highlights throwing everything else into shadows but you can easily pull them back in post using Fill Light. I guess you could also do this manually by using exposure comp. So is there even a benefit to using DR?
h00ligan wrote:
Martin, thanks so much for taking the time to go through that. That is not far off from what I have been doing (thought I haven't posted here any shots where sharpening was of importance to me particularly).. but I definitely think you have refined it to a much better level. I agree that the contrast needs to be boosted out of cam, pretty significantly usually.
Thanks again for taking the time, I know that wasn't a super fast thing to post, and appreciate your generosity with both your time and skill.
Sharing knowledge is the least one can do to make the world a better place.
MJWong wrote:
How has everyone been dealing the Dynamic Range setting and shooting RAW?
Don't mind it at all, because you don't have to. Just keep the exposure as high as possible without clipping the highlights. Then lift the shadows as much as you want. Maybe you could crank ISO to 400 or so, because funnily enough most cameras have slightly higher DR one stop above base ISO. Don't ask me why.
ovredal73 wrote:
Me too. Crazy prices, and what a cheat to force you into buying their adapter to get a hood. I will wait for the usual Chinese manufacturers to get going on a cheap replacement for the adapter, then I will use one of my old rangefinder 49mm hoods.
The ones for $50 seem to have a better finish... more brands are starting to pop up. It's a matter of time before these can be bought for $20 and match perfectly.
Here are the results of playing around with Martin's process. I like it a lot as it brings out way more detail then presented in the raw image. Thanks again for sharing that with us Martin. Very much appreciated.
Makten, looks like we have both been slowing down with the Zeiss thread.
If I want to shoot more "seriously", I grab the Pentax 67 anyway. Maybe I should sell the D700, I don't know. Too much of everything.
I love patterns and worn surfaces.
