These are my last images from our weekend at the Neuschwanstein castle. Philippe will for sure post some more. Thanks to all for your interest and your comments.
carstenw wrote:
Which version of Lightroom do you use? Do you have Capture One? Lightroom doesn't have a great reputation for developing M8/M9 images, so perhaps a comparison with another raw developer would be educational?
I use LR3.3 and I will not not start using another RAW converter just for the M8. Either I can live with the shortcomings of this camere or I will sell it in a few month.
At the moment I have a kind of love and hate relationship with the M8. I love the haptics, the solid feel and the clarity of the images and I absolutely hate the framing with the viewfinder escpecially with the ZM18. I often had to repeat a shot 10 times until I got the framing I wanted.
Edgars Kalnins wrote:
Great work and a very interesting project! 5D II seems to give the best images which does not surprise me. M8 is great apart from those strange color artifacts. As the only camera I own form these is NEX-3 I wanted to add that it is quite tricky to postprocess. After years of using canon software I find it difficult to get sony files right. In fact, could it be something to do with the way sony sensor works? I have been wondering about this for a long time. Looking back, I never saw quite the same sharpness in images with ZA lenses as those made with ZF and ZE. Maybe sony files respond differently to sharpening. On the other hand, the last ones by Philber are much better....Show more →
Bobu wrote:
I use LR3.3 and I will not not start using another RAW converter just for the M8. Either I can live with the shortcomings of this camere or I will sell it in a few month.
At the moment I have a kind of love and hate relationship with the M8. I love the haptics, the solid feel and the clarity of the images and I absolutely hate the framing with the viewfinder escpecially with the ZM18. I often had to repeat a shot 10 times until I got the framing I wanted.
Boris
I wasn't suggesting that you start using two converters. I myself also don't want to do that. But a test of C1 would be informative, on a one-time basis. I am seeing a lot of moire in these shots, and C1 is known to handle that better, and also to have better colour and sharpness with M8 and M9 files. I just wonder if it would be worth keeping C1 around for the occasional shot, to process it better.
The M8 clearly shows a bit more detail/clarity over the 5D2, but seeing the colour aliasing even at this (web)size I wonder if the sensor is just too small (crop factor too high) to be really suited for landscape work (esp. here with white snow/dark trees where discolouration shows very quickly). I must say I have not seen the same thing in other M8 shots, or M9 shots for that matter. Bobu, did you sharpen in Lab mode or RGB? Sharpening in RGB mode tends to increase colour saturation at edges, which does not happen in Lab mode.
I'd also recommend trying another raw developer to see what happens to the colour aliasing in the M8 files. (I'm not happy with LR's output anyway because the Adobe Standard profile uses an unrealistic tone curve and the Canon profiles suck compared to DPP's output.)
AhamB wrote:
Bobu, did you sharpen in Lab mode or RGB? Sharpening in RGB mode tends to increase colour saturation at edges, which does not happen in Lab mode.
Edgars Kalnins wrote:
I just use the one that sony gave me free - "image data converter" it is called. I think that once I get a hang of it the files will be ok.
don't count on it. canon and olympus are outliers in that they ship raw converters with their cameras that do quite a good job at extracting details from the files. you will sadly probably never get that much detail from the sony raw processor.
it's a software thing too, because i found i got noticeably more per pixel detail from nex files than canon 7d files in lightroom (the nex files also had more headroom). i was quite surprised because adobe is famous for handling canon/nikon files much better than sony/pentax/olympus/panasonic files (indeed other programs do even better with the NEX files).
Boris and Philippe, really appreciate the excellent comparisons Great shots, beautiful country!
As Carsten and Edgars, eluded to, the RAW convertors are becoming a more important part of the work flow PP. Particularly for Sony and Leica, as Adobe seem to do PP well with the Canon and Nikon files. Personally I am using both ACR/CS5 and C1 Pro, and finding C1 Pro works better for Leica landscapes.
Thanks again to all for the comments!
Boris, your evening shots of Schloss Neuschwanstein are (among others) beyond superb! I wish I had been there...:-)))). So many lessons learned...
philber wrote:
Two pictures with the NEX. One with the 35mm Biogon f:2.8, and one with the 18mm.f:4.0. On this shot there is a strong colour shift which I couldn't get rid of.
I assumed that the colour shift is magenta, and progressively worse in the corners. If thats the case then cornerfix will work, but you need to set up a profile very carefully in order for it to be accurate.
Give it a look(its free BTW), and please let us know how well it works with the 18mm.
It says above the shots... 
- "image data converter" it is called. I think that once I get a hang of it the files will be ok.