brainiac wrote:
Thanks denoir, but really, a test of these programmes\' default settings is probably of questionable interest to people here. For a start, the default settings are what you set them to. Your defaults are not my defaults.
These are Adobe, Canon and DxO defaults. The point is exactly that these are neither my nor your defaults.
Secondly, the kind of people interested in spending several thousands on a camera body, and plenty more on lenses, are not going to be casual about raw development . We may apply default or specific settings en masse, but that doesn\'t mean they are likely to be the defaults.
I seriously doubt it. The defaults are set to work with as a wide choice of subjects and lenses. If you deviate from them and then batch process large number of files a lot of them will be crap. You can either tweak the details of a RAW file or batch process them (i.e. keep them as they are and view them with some default settings). There is no middle ground where you half-tweak a file. Well, at least no serious photographer would do it. That means that when you look through the great majority of unprocessed pictures, you will be looking at them with whatever blanket settings you use. Those settings can\'t be much different from the defaults set by the software. If they are then either the programmers of the software were incompetent or you are.
Your test would look very different if you switched off NR, as most people seem to, in DPP, and set sharpening appropriately, again, as most people seem to.
My test would look much worse for DPP if I had turned NR off. The NR in DPP is not unreasonably strong, it\'s just bad.
Really, I just don\'t see the point of this. Maybe you should have used a kit zoom, since that\'s also what the \"vast majority\" use.
No, clearly you have missed the point of it.
The point is actually quite simple - variation in quality due to RAW development within the boundary conditions of the default settings of various RAW-developers is greater than the variation in quality due to difference in sensor size.
The choice of the default values is so elementary that I\'m very surprised that I have to explain it. It is in order to have a fixed repeatable point of reference. It\'s called \"controlling the variables\" of the experiment.It is exactly the same way for instance Bryan at the digital picture does when he processes the images - he has one RAW processing template that he applies to all charts. If I started to subjectively tweak the RAW files the whole test would be completely pointless. It\'s for the same reason why I use the exact same aperture, shutter speed, glass, tripod etc etc
The choice of the default settings as opposed to any other arbitrary choice should be obvious as well. It guarantees that the test was not biased - at least not by me.
I also wonder whether f8 is the best aperture to test 7D resolution potential. F5.6 would be safer from a diffraction point of view.
f/8 and f/5.6 are indistinguishable as far as sharpness go with a 7D using a 70-200 MkII. It was not chosen at random but to keep a couple of trees in front of the building in focus.
Mar 28, 2010 at 11:13 AM
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