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Archive 2014 · Lossless RAW files from the Sony A7/A7R?

  
 
Beni
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p.4 #1 · Lossless RAW files from the Sony A7/A7R?


Thing is I went for the A7r because of the poor shadows of the 5D3. So far I haven't seen anything to scare me from the sony but I don't want to have to give up on it for the same reason.


Jan 24, 2014 at 05:59 AM
lsquare
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p.4 #2 · Lossless RAW files from the Sony A7/A7R?


snapsy wrote:
I have published the utility mentioned earlier in the thread. This utility will generate a PNG showing all the high-compression lossy areas from a Sony raw file, allowing you to overlay that PNG within Photoshop against your raw to see if any perceived artifacts are related to the compression. At the present time the only artifact I have positively correlated to Sony's compression are the shadow blobs that Fred had in his raw (reproduced here). This utility will work with all modern Sony raw files, including those from the A7(r), NEX, SLT, and RX1(r) bodies.

Here are the instructions for obtaining
...Show more

Snapsy,

Do you know if Sony is compressing the RAW files from the RX100 II and RX10?



Jan 24, 2014 at 07:40 AM
lsquare
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p.4 #3 · Lossless RAW files from the Sony A7/A7R?


Fred Miranda wrote:
This issue does not seem to get much interest because the worse artifacts like posterization are more pronounced when using the camera's JPEG output.
As we demonstrated here, under certain light conditions, compression artifacts became visible in RAW files after pushing the shadows in post.
Fred


Fred,

I think this issue will garner more interest as more people become aware of the issue. Even Dpreview mentioned that Sony compress its RAW files in its recent A7 review. There's no doubt that this was a controversial decision on Sony's part.



Jan 24, 2014 at 07:42 AM
lsquare
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p.4 #4 · Lossless RAW files from the Sony A7/A7R?


BrianVS wrote:
Until Sony puts in a true RAW option, or someone unlocks it as they did on the M8- hard to know what you are missing. I suspect the main advantage is for high-ISO shots. The Sony falls short in that regard, too bad no one can do a real comparison. It's much easier to store a true RAW file than a compressed one. Are they that worried about write-Speed? That is the reason why Leica left it out of the M8. The High-ISO performance of the M8 suffered greatly because of that decision, as uncompressed Raw files show.


How can Sony or anyone else even call this RAW? I thought RAW was an untouched file taken straight from the sensor?



Jan 24, 2014 at 07:44 AM
lsquare
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p.4 #5 · Lossless RAW files from the Sony A7/A7R?


Fred Miranda wrote:
Rich,
Here is the 100% crops showing compression artifacts. Before and After.
You may print it simulating any paper size. The artifacts shows up in Lightroom, Capture One or Sony's Image Data Converter.
The only post-processing was pushing the "Shadows" in Lightroom. (no change to exposure or any other setting)


Fred,

How hard did you push the shadow slider in Lightroom?



Jan 24, 2014 at 07:47 AM
lsquare
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p.4 #6 · Lossless RAW files from the Sony A7/A7R?


Paul Gardner wrote:
On principle while it may not matter today, but as raw processing improves over the years I do not want ANY degradation of my files. Storage is cheap these days and getting cheaper by the month. 1TB SATAIII drives are under $100.00USD so what is the problem. Personally I don't care if the files are 500MB. If it is internal write speed use the A7 and leave the A7r for those of us whom shoot at maybe 1 frame per minute and wish for max IQ and preferably 16bits. I was just on my way to purchase an A7r
...Show more

I totally agree with you. Storage is very cheap these days and it's getting cheaper. Heck, I have 3 2TB hard drives in the house. I'm still far from filling them up. We should have a choice and I would definitely pick the uncompressed RAW if I could.



Jan 24, 2014 at 07:49 AM
slungu
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p.4 #7 · Lossless RAW files from the Sony A7/A7R?


lsquare wrote:
How can Sony or anyone else even call this RAW? I thought RAW was an untouched file taken straight from the sensor?


Probably, or they had to do a DTC and had to go with this or that device. It was for sure not the fera that the consumer would not have enough TB at home. And BTW, that untouched file from the sensor would be useless until you get some sw to fill in the things that you don't record with the sensor ( one of the reasons why there are differences between converter output ).



Jan 24, 2014 at 09:05 AM
carstenw
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p.4 #8 · Lossless RAW files from the Sony A7/A7R?


lsquare wrote:
How can Sony or anyone else even call this RAW? I thought RAW was an untouched file taken straight from the sensor?


I think those days are long over. I believe Canon sacrifices some detail to get better high ISO performance, for example, and in MFT they even do some distortion correction, IIRC.



Jan 24, 2014 at 09:43 AM
Jonas B
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p.4 #9 · Lossless RAW files from the Sony A7/A7R?


carstenw wrote:
I think those days are long over. I believe Canon sacrifices some detail to get better high ISO performance, for example, and in MFT they even do some distortion correction, IIRC.


I'm not sure Carsten. Canon has used weak colour filters in many of their Bayer arrays to get less noise (red colurs in the 5D cameras for example). Micro 4/3 don't apply distortion correction to the raw files - but that is only if I remember correctly. Sony seem to apply anti vignetting corrections (is it called shadow control?) to the raw files though. I don't keep track of all these things so this is from my shady memory. But raw isn't always exactly raw.



Jan 24, 2014 at 10:16 AM
Steve Spencer
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p.4 #10 · Lossless RAW files from the Sony A7/A7R?


I think what Canon sacrifices is a bit of colour fidelity to get better high ISO not detail, but as Jonas suggests they do this through the Bayer filter, so technically they aren't touching the sensor output, and MTF does do automatic distortion correction but you can extract the uncorrected image from the RAW file it is just that most converters are able to do so.


Jan 24, 2014 at 10:31 AM
Tariq Gibran
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p.4 #11 · Lossless RAW files from the Sony A7/A7R?


Yes, with lens corrections like distortion, vignetting and so forth, I believe it's basically a tag with the raw file that tells the raw converter software to perform the corrections. This can/ may be ignored or even turned off by some raw converters.

I do believe though that in some cases, noise reduction is performed before the raw file is written.



Jan 24, 2014 at 10:38 AM
Fred Miranda
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p.4 #12 · Lossless RAW files from the Sony A7/A7R?


lsquare wrote:
Fred,

How hard did you push the shadow slider in Lightroom?


Using Lightroom "Shadows" slider the artifacts start become visible after "+50". On the example I posted, the shadows were almost at the max (+90).
Remember we are checking this at the pixel level. I usually check my files at around 50% magnification before printing them. Unfortunately these artifacts are visible at this magnification as well.
Fred



Jan 24, 2014 at 12:44 PM
Jonas B
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p.4 #13 · Lossless RAW files from the Sony A7/A7R?


Tariq Gibran wrote:
(...)
I do believe though that in some cases, noise reduction is performed before the raw file is written.


?
A couple of years ago there was some talk about Canon applying noise reduction to raw files. That discussion was based on their clean high ISO files... and then IIRC it turned out their "noise reduction" was the result from clever hard ware wiring. I'm not sure how noise reduction, at high speed, can be applied to raw files. It would be interesting to learn more about this.



Jan 24, 2014 at 12:45 PM
snapsy
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p.4 #14 · Lossless RAW files from the Sony A7/A7R?


lsquare wrote:
Snapsy,

Do you know if Sony is compressing the RAW files from the RX100 II and RX10?


All recent Sony bodies appear to use the compression. Here is a list of bodies who raw files I checked: A7r, A7, RX1, RX1r, A35, A55, A65, A77, A99, NEX-C3, NEX-3, NEX-3N, NEX-5, NEX-5N, NEX-5R, NEX-5T, NEX-6, NEX-7, NEX-F3, RX100, RX100M2, RX10, A3000. There may be others.



Jan 24, 2014 at 12:52 PM
snapsy
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p.4 #15 · Lossless RAW files from the Sony A7/A7R?


Btw, I'm still in the midst of shooting and comparing images between my A7r and D800. So far the only compression artifact I've found is the shadow thing that Fred first discovered. And that only happens in specific cases and is otherwise pretty tame. If that turns out to be the only side effect then I think we're in pretty good shape. My main purpose for creating the compression reporting utility (PNG overlay) was to address all the things people are attributing to compression, like "orange peel" at 800%, stair-stepping/aliasing, posterization, etc.. Based on what I've seen so far all those things are either non-issues or not specific to Sony files. Still looking though...


Jan 24, 2014 at 12:58 PM
Tariq Gibran
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p.4 #16 · Lossless RAW files from the Sony A7/A7R?


Jonas B wrote:
?
A couple of years ago there was some talk about Canon applying noise reduction to raw files. That discussion was based on their clean high ISO files... and then IIRC it turned out their "noise reduction" was the result from clever hard ware wiring. I'm not sure how noise reduction, at high speed, can be applied to raw files. It would be interesting to learn more about this.


The Sony A700 initially used noise reduction on the raws. A later firmware allowed that to be disabled. Here is what DxO said about it:

"When we first analyzed the Sony A700, our preliminary tests showed that it made use of green-channel RAW NR (Noise Reduction). To ensure fair ranking on dxomark.com, we only score cameras that do not exhibit any sort of spatial signal filtering, taking care to test every camera we report on. With the latest A700 firmware version (rev.4) that disables noise reduction on the green channel, it is then possible to publish all its measurement results and DxOMark ranking."

http://www.dxomark.com/Reviews/DxOMark-review-for-the-Sony-Alpha-700

I'm not positive which other cameras have heavily manipulated their raws but if I had to guess, Fuji would be way up there as a suspect.



Jan 24, 2014 at 01:07 PM
philip_pj
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p.4 #17 · Lossless RAW files from the Sony A7/A7R?


'I was just on my way to purchase an A7r when I came across this discussion. So now I have to rethink my purchase. I also have never seen the problem discussed in my D800E.'

This is exactly what we need to hear. People formulating their priorities and acting accordingly to buy the camera that suits them the best. Many users find that in longer shoots with large numbers of files, it can be very restrictive on transfers as well as drives.

'A7r, A7, RX1, RX1r, A35, A55, A65, A77, A99, NEX-C3, NEX-3, NEX-3N, NEX-5, NEX-5N, NEX-5R, NEX-5T, NEX-6, NEX-7, NEX-F3, RX100, RX100M2, RX10, A3000.'

And it has become a matter of concern for exactly how many of these models? Let's hope all other makers' models will be subject to equal scrutiny, if the matter is of such importance.

One view is they all do something the consensus of purists here would not like, and the interesting part is they know much more than anyone else about it, including how to hide it. At least with the Sonys file size is the aim and it's very transparent.



Jan 24, 2014 at 05:02 PM
BrianVS
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p.4 #18 · Lossless RAW files from the Sony A7/A7R?


lsquare wrote:
How can Sony or anyone else even call this RAW? I thought RAW was an untouched file taken straight from the sensor?


They don't call it raw, I think most people refer to it that way. Leica calls it compressed DNG and uncompressed DNG. Nikon- calls it NEF. The "unlocked" files from the M8 are called ".raw" and have to be converted to DNG. The Leica will store two 20MByte files when in unlocked mode for slow shutter speeds, the Raw image data and a "BLA" file for noise removal. Basically a "dark current" file. These two files are used in-camera to produce the DNG file. It would be interesting if more companies went open source, Leica did NOT do this, the details of a "diagnostics mode" were released.



Jan 24, 2014 at 09:27 PM
douglasf13
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p.4 #19 · Lossless RAW files from the Sony A7/A7R?


Tariq Gibran wrote:
Yes, with lens corrections like distortion, vignetting and so forth, I believe it's basically a tag with the raw file that tells the raw converter software to perform the corrections. This can/ may be ignored or even turned off by some raw converters.

I do believe though that in some cases, noise reduction is performed before the raw file is written.


I believe that, with the RX1, distortion correction is a tag for the raw converter, but the shading correction actually writes it to the raw, although there is the option to turn it off.



Jan 24, 2014 at 09:41 PM
lsquare
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p.4 #20 · Lossless RAW files from the Sony A7/A7R?


snapsy wrote:
All recent Sony bodies appear to use the compression. Here is a list of bodies who raw files I checked: A7r, A7, RX1, RX1r, A35, A55, A65, A77, A99, NEX-C3, NEX-3, NEX-3N, NEX-5, NEX-5N, NEX-5R, NEX-5T, NEX-6, NEX-7, NEX-F3, RX100, RX100M2, RX10, A3000. There may be others.


Even the A99? I thought someone mentioned that the A99 have uncompressed RAW?



Jan 26, 2014 at 03:00 AM
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