I used 6400 a few weeks ago at a presentation and found it to be very good. Yes, the images needed a little adjustment but they looked good. Dare I say that they looked as good at normal viewing sizes as ISO 3200 did on my old 5D classic?
I wasn't too fond of the patterns in some images at 12,800 but we really have to be realistic - ISO 12,800 is very high. It's a lot of amplification regardless of whether it's done digitally or in analog.
I was shooting at f/2.8 to f/4. Used the 24-70 and 70-200/2.8 lenses. I did have my 135/2 with me, but I didn't have many opportunities to swap lenses. I probably could have gotten away with 6400 for many of the shots, but I wanted some margin. My shutter speeds ranged from 1/30 to 1/200 depending on the lighting (outdoors, under sodium streetlights).
Had I been more prepared, I'd have put the 135/2 on the 5D2 instead.
I probably could have gotten away with 6400 for many of the shots, but I wanted some margin. My shutter speeds ranged from 1/30 to 1/200 depending on the lighting (outdoors, under sodium streetlights).
Blurriness from NR is better than blurriness from camera shake I guess. At least one evil is constantly getting improved upon.
Thanks for sharing this. Very interesting. Were you using the camera profiles in LR2 or just the Adobe profile?
Just the adobe profile. I ended up playing around with colors and tones too much for it to have made much difference; I wasn't going for realism anyway.
+1. This would be very useful to see.
bah! ok, ok, I'll download the Lr3 trial sometime soon, if so many people want to know how it compares. I'll probably add in a new section showing some before/after crops with both IQ and NR being tested.
Thanks for the great tests - I realize how much time it takes to do such testing. One problem with comparing RAW conversions is the difficulty in using like presets for each software package. Over the past couple of weeks, I've been running extensive tests with LR2.5, LR3beta1, C1, DXO v6, and Bibble v5. I'm a registered owner of all of these packages with the exception of C1 which I was using as part of a 30 day trial. I'm processing RAW images from 5d, 5d MkII, and 7D bodies. My test results left me with a different impression of the software packages compared to your results. This is most likely related to differences in the presets you and I used to do our testing. I did my best (as I'm sure you did) to come up with very similar looking presets for comparison. I did a bit less stringent pixel peeping and concentrated more on the overall look of the final image. Several things that I've noticed:
1) I can tell NO difference between LR2.5 and LR3beta1 images
2) LR (2.5 and 3) is fastest followed in order by Bibble 5 and C1. DXO v6 was by far the slowest of these converters.
3) Sharpness and detail were for all purposes equal in LR (2.5 and 3), Bibble 5, and C1. DXO again brought up the rear.
4) Bibble 5 seems to deal with more challenging lighting conditions (ie: backlighting, under/over exposure, etc.) in a more pleasing way than the other packages. However LR and C1 gave me the most consistent pleasing images on well exposed images.
5) I find LR the easiest to learn and use although it is slow as hell dealing with large folders with lots of images. Consequently I use Picasa for EXIF tagging and general cataloging and mainly use LR for RAW conversions and printing.
6) Bibble 5 and DXO 6 were fairly easy to learn and use. C1 is not very ergonomic IMHO and was quite difficult to use relative to the other packages.
7) LR and C1 were stable on Windows 7. Bibble 5 and DXO sometimes crash particularly when dealing with large numbers of files.
So... my current workflow is to run my RAW files through general presets that I've created with LR (2.5 or 3) and Bibble 5. I then go through the pairs of developed images and pick my favorites. I find that I tend to choose the LR images about 3/4's of the time. Bibble 5 may well improve when the stability issues are fixed and when Perfectly Clear is enabled.
What radius did you use for sharpening on the warthog(?) and bird for LR, as it looks too large. I'd be using 0.5-0.7 for radius for these shots. Also what settings did you use for sharpening for the high ISO in LR. Best to set detail low, mask high in these cases to avoid accentuating noise.
Kolor-Pikker - Thanks for the great tests - I realize how much time it takes to do such testing. One problem with comparing RAW conversions is the difficulty in using like presets for each software package. Over the past couple of weeks, I've been running extensive tests with LR2.5, LR3beta1, C1, DXO v6, and Bibble v5. I'm a registered owner of all of these packages with the exception of C1 which I was using as part of a 30 day trial. I'm processing RAW images from 5d, 5d MkII, and 7D bodies. My test results left me with a different impression of the software packages compared to your results. This is most likely related to differences in the presets you and I used to do our testing. I did my best (as I'm sure you did) to come up with very similar looking presets for comparison. I did a bit less stringent pixel peeping and concentrated more on the overall look of the final image. Several things that I've noticed:
...
So... my current workflow is to run my RAW files through general presets that I've created with LR (2.5 or 3) and Bibble 5. I then go through the pairs of developed images and pick my favorites. I find that I tend to choose the LR images about 3/4's of the time. Bibble 5 may well improve when the stability issues are fixed and when Perfectly Clear is enabled. Hope this helps... Scott...Show more →
I didn't really use presets, just tried to push the images around enough to get them away from the default look, and maybe look nice in color.
Edit: Capture One gives a new meaning to the phrase "straight out of camera" - it's really neutral looking which is good for retouch junkies and will probably give better results when furthur processed in PS... which is to be expected really, considering it comes from the medium format segment.
What radius did you use for sharpening on the warthog(?) and bird for LR, as it looks too large. I'd be using 0.5-0.7 for radius for these shots. Also what settings did you use for sharpening for the high ISO in LR. Best to set detail low, mask high in these cases to avoid accentuating noise.
Hmm... don't remember. I rarely use LR, so I wouldn't know the nuances in using the sharpening there. Also, I then did furthur sharpening/editing in CS4 to see how well the files could take punishment, since most converters will look the same untill you start doing heavy PP... so these aren't exactly made to look pleasing.
Have you tried QImage for printing, IMO a wonderful app and well worth trying.
+1 ... one time had to print hundreds of photos (5x7) and each one was a different size and aspect ratio. Qimage rotated, sized, sharpened and printed all of them with almost no work from me.
It does look pretty ghetto interface wise, but once you have everything configured there aren't many better ways to print. Speaking of configuration, always remember to be on top of your color management, nothing worse than making prints that are too blue/green or dark.
