Sounds great Michael. Sleep has been an issue with Lion. With Snow Leopard, it was not an issue. I actually prefer Snow Leopard but eventually it will loose software compatibility. Gotta love that planned obsolesce. Sounds like you built a very fast system.
RPP +1 It really can make a huge difference with certain cameras.
michaelwatkins wrote:
...Back to photography... took a break from system issues to have a quick look at RPP and my initial impression is simply WOW. Am going to try to find a few challenging images and will post some comparisons of GXR DNG files translated by Lightroom 4 and RPP as soon as I finish moving my LR catalog from my former editing machine to this beast.
Michael,
"WOW" was certainly my reaction when I compared RPP to Aperture for raw development: significantly better resolution and much better color rendition — particularly in the relation of colors such a violets and reds next to each other, as I illustrated with some photos here. I also compared RPP with LR3 and while the latter had better color rendition that Aperture, RPP was smokily much better. I started a thread on Rangefinder Forum to which other people added their experience and ideas on how to use RPP. As many people have written me that they changed to RPP as a result of that thread, you might want to contribute your experience as well, as it seems to me, it's worthwhile to support the effort of an individual program developer in this was and also to encourage people to send in their $25 contribution, which obviously is a cheap way to get what I consider the best raw developer around. The Rangefinder Forum thread on RPP is here.
What I find interesting is that while the GXR-M has excellent color accuracy and rendition, these are enhanced by RPP. I have also found that the color accuracy and rendition of the GXR-M are better than that of either the M8 or M8 — and this seems to be confirmed by using RPP, because when I develop my old M8.2 and M9 files with RPP I find that I have to make substantially more adjustments than when I develop GXR-M files. Nevertheless, I find that my results with these old M8.2 and M9 files are better than I was able to achieve with Capture Obe, which I what I mainly used to develop the M8 and M9 files.
I need to wrap my head around RPP to be sure. I've seen some great examples where just opening a file in RPP has done a better job than where I took them to in ACR / LR3 and probably LR4 too.
But I've also seen some - particularly those with really blown out highlights it seems - where I just made matters worse in RPP. As I've not really spent that much time with it yet I'm not raising a white flag for help... yet!
Even if it is only useful on a small or large subset of my images, it'll be well worth it and for sure a contribution to the developer's dinner fund will be on the way.
Wow, you put that machine together fast, you make Speedy Gonzales look like regular Gonzales...
I don't run Lion, I haven't even started running Snow Leopard yet, I am still at the one before, which cat it is I don't even remember. I am skeptic to all upgrades to things that work just fine and usually the new offerings require more and more power to run them. But, there is a whole industry and tens of thousands of programmers that need food on the table. For my stationary computer my main objective is too keep it stable. On my laptop I upgrade on a need to do basis.
Michael; since you have been shooting slides I think you can quickly adjust to exposing to suit the sensor and RPP. Personally I have always tried to avoid clipping highlights in exposure with digital so for me RPP has worked from the get go. Well, I am sure you have too. You can do a fair bit of highlight recovery, but not to the extent of say, ACR.
However, I find that high light recovery does not look all that good in any RAW developer if you've blown high lights more than a stop and a half. With ACR that unnatural look comes as part of the parcel together with the artifacts that I am sure are introduced by ACR.
If you have any severely blown highlight files send me one and I'll see what I can do.
Geekbench (unpaid 32 bit eval only) reports 16,000
Wow; that's already fast. How do you go about enabling 64 bit mode in your setup?
To everyone: I am wondering if everyone who has posted in this thread re. RPP (and other converters you use) to a new thread? There is a wealth of info here, and to have it in one place would be great.
For example, I spent the morning playing with RRP on an interior image and I could not find the post from kosmo that describes the film presets he uses. I can now see why Mitch likes the K64 preset for his Thailand images (which feature a lot of black); this does not work for the interiors so well.
And I re-read the manual again; I realise why my images look so dark (and so blue) now. I have asked Andrey if is is building an Aperture plug-in; stay tuned.
And (@ kosmo): do you have a custom profile for the GXR M module? If so, could you send and let me have a play with this? I am off to Italy tomorrow, with just one lens (the 35 Color Skopar); hope to have some interesting images. Handling-wise, the CV CS is the best fit to the GXR M I have experienced, so far. Focussing quickly is still a hit and miss affair (I was at a kid's birthday party yesterday; the little buggers do move quickly!) and I have not reviewed them yet, but if any are decent, I will post later today.
Kit Laughlin wrote:
...do you have a custom profile for the GXR M module? If so, could you send and let me have a play with this?
Kit,
I gather you're asking about a personal profile, but the latest RPP version has an excellent general profile for the GXR-M. For example before the latest version, i.e. without the GXR profile, I found that I had to crank up Saturation to as much as 50-60; now with the profile I almost never need to add saturation. The main variables that I need to set are Black Point (usually 0.3 - 0.6 for the K64 preset) and the Local Contrast (10 - 30). The latter is easy to overdo.
I use mainly the K64 preset but have used some of the others as well, depending on the color rendition that I want. The RFF thread has examples by other people of a few of the other color (and B&W) renditions.
Perhaps, but the trouble with that thread is that there are some rather strange — and in my view completely incorrect and misleading, conclusions — on RPP's color renditions by a couple of frequent FM posters in the earlier pages, and that is the main reason I have been recommending the RFF thread, which I believe has had a broader range of contributions and a wider readership.
Kit, just as Mitch said, if you are running the latest RPP which supports the GXR M you will have a very good starting point.
For interiors you could try A100 (Astia) as it lowers the black level and contrast a little more than K64. You could also try NC160, but I think Astia 100 as a starting point would be the way to go.
I will check out the RFF thread, right now.
EDIT; this is something I forgot to mention that Mitch has described earlier:
There is an option in the File Menu called "Optimize for post-processing on Save", which saves a file with slightly less contrast to give 5% headroom for further processing in image editing software.
I apply this setting and I think I missed out on passing on the info.
BTW; I find that highlight recovery works pretty well in RPP, I did some spur of the moment tests yesterday with window light/backlight subjects and it fared better than I thought. My workflow for that is similar to what Mitch is describing in the RFF thread.
Among the features, here's one I probably will use after all: Ability to record only the RAW image. The change to raw-only raises 3:2 aspect ratio # of images on an 8GB card from 336 (on Raw+Fine) to 425 (Raw only) if you are curious... but that's not why I'm disabling it. I want to see if shot to shot time improves at all.
On Ricoh's main page for all their digital cameras it does appear a 1.50 version for the GXR, but when I click the link on the right (Win & Mac OS ) I see only the old 1.44 version as the current firmware. I'm missing something.?
They seem not to have uploaded the 1.50 version yet. You can download the new version from the Japanese site, if you can figure out how to navigate it (knowing how to read katakana helps). It's likely they'll have it on their other websites tomorrow.
Mitch you suggested for RPP: 30-50 for saturation and 10-30 for local contrast - I usually keep these very low, I'll see how this works. do you then edit the tiff in aperture? for high iso, how do you deal with noise? thanks.
The 30-50 saturation was what I had to use before RPP had a profile for the GXR-M; now I almost never increase the saturation. But I do add local contrast in the 10-30 range, although you have to watch that you don't go to high.
And, yes, I then edit the tiff in Aperture. It's best to use the option "Optimize image for post-processing on Save" in the File menu. As I am not so bothered by noise, I haven't done any noise reduction.
