7D Experiment

[briansquibb]

Re: 7D Experiment

Here is an even bigger crop - no softness here either

[briansquibb]

Re: 7D Experiment

I do find that full size raw looks soft in DPP - but when displayed in Windows Live Photo Gallery it becomes much sharper. Perhaps this is the effect that DrJon is talking about?

[MX5]

Re: 7D Experiment

With the 7D ... Am I right in thinking that in SRAW that the DIGIC processor effective combines a 2x2 matrix of pixels and thinks of it as a single (albeit 'super') pixel. Thus reducing the effective pixel count by a 1/4.

If that's the case what happens with MRAW? Is it two side-by-side or two top-and-bottom pixels it uses? I've a feeling it's a bit more involved since the effective pixel count is 10.1Mpx (so not half the 17.9Mpx.)

I've never tried SRAW or MRAW ... might just give it a go to see for myself.

Oh ... my initial 7D 'problems' were totally down to me thinking I knew what I was doing when I tinkererd with the CF's before reading the manual. I know I know. A Hard reset and all was well (with the camera at least ... I've not found my own hard reset switch yet).

I think Jon's thinking is right ... as all the resolutions will out resolve the monitors most of us have (even 30" Apple HD monitors) ... so the display software, graphics card, etc all play a part.

[Oggie]

Re: 7D Experiment

Agreed your pictures look sharp Brian. What size were they shot and what processing actions/software?

[Woolley]

Re: 7D Experiment

I think we're agreed - it's a stonking camera as long as you either learn to use it properly or come from somewhere that's similar - 1D or 5D experience useful.

MRAW seems to produce a native image which is a little sharper than RAW, but applying sharpening in processing can make both the same.

If the jpgs are fine but the RAW isn't, the problem is with processing since if it was a fundamental problem, both would be wrong.

The image that was posted to show the problem is either back-focused or mis-focused? It looks to me as though it was focused on the scene before the figure was present at the point of focus, but I could be wrong.

[briansquibb]

Re: 7D Experiment

Both the pictures were shot in RAW. The second one is cropped to 1080x1620 before resizing to 600x900

Both pictures were both mostly processed in DPP. In DPP I :

- adjust the dynamic range by dragging the left edge of the histogem to adjust the shadow point
- adjust the exposure
- set the sharpness using the unsharp mask - strength and fineness to max (10) and reduce the threshold to 1
- crop the picture using tools/start trimming tool
- adjust white balance (if needed)

The style in the camera has been set so contrast is 1 and saturation is 1

File convert and save to jpeg (unless printing in which case TIFF)

I find that the photo in DPP looks soft - open up in Windows live gallery for the real view which is always sharper.

I then do the final adjustments in PSE

[Oggie]

Re: 7D Experiment

I think we're agreed - it's a stonking camera as long as you either learn to use it properly or come from somewhere that's similar - 1D or 5D experience useful.

MRAW seems to produce a native image which is a little sharper than RAW, but applying sharpening in processing can make both the same.

If the jpgs are fine but the RAW isn't, the problem is with processing since if it was a fundamental problem, both would be wrong.

The image that was posted to show the problem is either back-focused or mis-focused? It looks to me as though it was focused on the scene before the figure was present at the point of focus, but I could be wrong.

Sorry - we are not all in agreement.

I do not have the same issue with my 1D Mk IV or other cameras I use, and converting a large RAW to JPG does not produce a sharp picture. Not even Silkypix which I prefer to DPP can do anything with them.

[Donphotography]

Re: 7D Experiment

Here is an even bigger crop - no softness here either

Lets see the originals before any editing whatsoever.

[Trevoreast]

Re: 7D Experiment

Lets see the originals before any editing whatsoever.

Sorry, I have to agree that that shot looks over sharpened, and noisy.

The image that was posted to show the problem is either back-focused or mis-focused? It looks to me as though it was focused on the scene before the figure was present at the point of focus, but I could be wrong.

The subject walked into the MFD of my lens, more or less 5 Ft
Trev

[briansquibb]

Re: 7D Experiment

Noisy? - that is what happens to the blurred background when a very big crop is taken. What you see on the screen is about twice life size

Here is the photo as it came out of the 7D - no sharpening, no playing with levels, just resized and converted to jpg. The background has the typical smooth bokeh - but of course the shot was at f4 so isn't as blurred as when it is wide open. I have a load more, sharper shots than this from the 7D - this was the 400 with a 1.4 extender on a 1.6 crop - so the 1/1000 shutter speed is marginal as the bird had just landed and moving. ISO is 200 - no noise there then.

[DrJon]

Re: 7D Experiment

Resizing kills noise (and sharpness generally), so perhaps not really a fair comparison. Also depending on what algorithm you use to resize it has other effects. (It's scary how many tools don't say how they resize stuff, plus that people don't seem bothered... then again, as I said, I started out doing Image Processing in a Research Lab, so may well not be "typical" here.)

The original image does look to have some noise and too much contrast to me. Perhaps more of a case that there isn't the detail to go with the contrast, if that makes sense. I confess I messed with the images here quite a bit...

http://www.eos-magazine-forum.com/showthread.php?6683-Some-300-f2-8-questions&p=50935&viewfull=1#post50935

Although only to help with it being such a gloomy day (no editing, just global changes to the rendering in the raw tool). Was ISO 800 though. The reason I like it so much isn't that's a great shot, they aren't doing anything interesting enough, just that the conditions were impossible and I got something I think isn't bad, except for the posing by the subjects. (I took the shots just for the post.)

I'll see if I can find the article I want on resizing, no luck so far, but here's a pic from it:

http://www.dpandi.com/hj/qimage/

...and this is very similar to it:

http://ddisoftware.com/tech/articles/january-2006-interpolation-magical-or-mythical/

Ah, I remember this article well:

http://www.americaswonderlands.com/digital_photo_interpolation.htm

Some other stuff:

http://ddisoftware.com/tech/articles/march-2010-smart-photo-printing/

http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage/quality/

http://www.ddisoftware.com/testpics/new-pyr.htm

I suspect if my life depended on it I'd start with QImage's Fusion algorithm, but as I only have the Pro version of QImage I don't have access to it. I find the Irfanview Lanczos seems a bit better than the one Mike uses in his examples.

John

[briansquibb]

Re: 7D Experiment

DrJon,

When you have a blurred background and you do a big crop this magnifies the blur - giving the impression of noise. Try it on any photo and you will find it to be true - I can tell the amount of cropping by the 'size' of the blur. The 'noise' is an optical illusion. In the blue tit photo the blur is very fine in the original so with a big crop it looks like noise. That is obvious from your example with the 300 2.8

I would be very surprised if an ISO200 photo with the 7D has any significant noise where the levels haven't been played about with.

[Donphotography]

Re: 7D Experiment

There is a great book for you to read it has 481 pages and is available now 2011,
the book is called
Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS5
it is by
Jeff Schewe and Bruce Fraser

[briansquibb]

Re: 7D Experiment

It is good to see a useful book.

I wonder though how many 7D owners have CS5? and use ACR instead of DPP?

I am a DPP and PSE9 user.

Brian

[Donphotography]

Re: 7D Experiment

It is good to see a useful book.

I wonder though how many 7D owners have CS5? and use ACR instead of DPP?

I am a DPP and PSE9 user.

Brian

I know what you mean Brian and it is a good point to bring up, though the post was mainly about the raw files and I guess I jumped the gun and assumed you would be using Photoshop in order to extract the best possible image from the raw file, I don't think DPP or PSE9 is up to that,.
I have been using CS6 for a while that has adobe camera raw version 7 with more excellent tweaks to use.

BTW to all 7D users any chance of seeing some of your best images taken with the 7D