new toys

laughing_bear · Post by **laughing_bear** » Thu May 28, 2009 11:29 pm

Very excited, for the next few weeks I am shooting with a phase one, starting with a P45+ 39 MP digital back, to be swapped for a P65+ 60.5 MP digital back in August.

Lenses I chose are 28, 80, 120, 75-150

Then I ordered a Sony alpha 900 with Carl Zeiss 24-70 and a 70-400mm as a starter kit.

Will be busy up to my eyeballs learning two new cameras at the same time. GREAT FUN

Lorenzo · Post by **Lorenzo** » Fri May 29, 2009 6:05 am

Post by **Sharp** » Fri May 29, 2009 3:29 pm

Sounds like someone will be in heaven for sure.
Your going to love the a900. I bought one about 6 weeks ago with a Sony 70-300G lens. Best camera I've ever used.

I'm also going to get the Carl Zeiss 24-70 but not for a while. Need to sell a few things first to drum up the cash. It's a very expensive lens but at least that will be the end of it then for me. Two lenses will cover all my needs.

Regards.
Sharp.

laughing_bear · Post by **laughing_bear** » Sat May 30, 2009 1:48 am

Where did you buy it? Yes, very good choice James,the 70-300 is exceptional for the money and very light.

I ordered it with the 24-70 and 70-400, vertical grip. While they have three more Zeiss lenses, for wide angle and as a walk around the 24-70 is just perfect.

I can recommend to use capture one for RAW conversion, while it has a price, it does by far the best job on the alpha files.

As you know, what you see on the screen is a JOEG interpretation of the RAW files, hence it is cooked already. Best thing to do is adjust to some sort of Raw accuracy so your cooked JPEG gives you a better idea of what to expect from the RAW.

- turn off DRO completely
- AdobeRGB
- neutral CS
- contrast -3
- saturation -1
- brightness -3
- custom WB (uniWB)

This way spot metering detailed highlights at +3 EV works correct. Alternativly you can spot meter middle grey at +.5 EV I always have a GretagMacBeth Colorchecker with me. As small as a Visacard, and at a crazy price, 50 euro, just ridiculous, but it works very well to have a WB reference for your shooting in various Lightconditions.

In case you use LR, the software does some baseline exposure. To set up ACR/Lightroom to show a RAW histogram as close to reality as possible, you have to flatten the tone curve to linear, then brightness and contrast to zero and add around -0.35 EV to get pretty close. If you import A900 images into LR at its standard settings, and your files do not look overexposed this means that you underexposed at capture.

Another hint, try to set it to ISO 320 as your standard ISO, the reason for that is that it retains the most details in the shadows without clipping at this ISO level, assuming you expose as much to the right as you can without clipping highlights. It is superior to the lower ISO settings and seems to be the sweet spot. The little luminance noise can be dealt with if required for larger prints without hassle.

How do you find IS in the alpha? For critical work, I always shoot from Tripod with mirror Lockup and delay of 3-7 seconds depending on focal length. For less critical work IS is just a dream isn't it?

I find in certain conditions, not always, but particulary with CZ optics, the quality of the prints is close to medium format in some respects, of course, there is a difference, and the larger you rpint the more it becomes obvious, however, this camera has a serious resolution and while not usable at very high ISO, it is equal to Canon 5dMK2 up to ISO 400.

Funny that you bought it too! Congrats!

Post by **Sharp** » Sat May 30, 2009 3:33 pm

Hi Bear.

Where did you buy it ?

The Camera Centre in Grafton Street. I tried a few places on-line first because they where quoiting some excellent prices, but when it came to ordering none of them had it in stock.

It's kind of nice in a way buying locally for something like this anyway because at least if there's a problem I don't have to post it overseas.

Yes, very good choice James,the 70-300 is exceptional for the money and very light.

I wouldn't be someone that knows the weights of many lenses but I find the 70-300G is very heavy. Personally I like that as it feels like your getting something for your 700 Euro

The camera itself is also very heavy so the lens really makes it a load to carry around. Feels bloody fantastic doing it though.

I ordered it with the 24-70 and 70-400, vertical grip

I'm drooling with envy here. That's a perfect combination. Best you could get too.

While they have three more Zeiss lenses, for wide angle and as a walk around the 24-70 is just perfect.

Exactly. That 24-70 has also been getting fantastic reviews. It's a serious piece of Glass.

As you know, what you see on the screen is a JOEG interpretation of the RAW files, hence it is cooked already. Best thing to do is adjust to some sort of Raw accuracy so your cooked JPEG gives you a better idea of what to expect from the RAW.

I have a confession to make

Would you believe I have not taken a single photo in RAW yet. I'm working my way very slowly though all the different modes and settings so I can learn how to get the best out of the camera. It's bloody complicated and a single stetting wrong makes a huge difference.

I need to learn how to walk into a situation and be able to look at what's in front of me and know what settings I should use before I move onto things like RAW.

Focusing is my problem for the moment. There's Manual, Automatic, Single, Continuous, and then there's 3 AF settings for what part of the image the camera selects as focus points.

Getting those right has been difficult for wildlife photography. I've gone out and taken hundreds of photo's of birds in flight only to come home and delete the lot. The distance the objects are away and focal length all come into play here too.

General Landscape I've no problem with, but for the moment I'm heavily focused on getting wildlife correct before I move on.

Thanks for the advice though, I've dumped that into PDF for safe keeping. I will need all the help I can get

How do you find IS in the alpha?

The difference it makes is unbelievable and you can really take a photo hand-held at speeds you wouldn't normally dare. So yeah it's bloody excellent.

That said, it took me a while to learn you can't leave it turned on either. It will actually cause blur if you leave it on and your shooting at high speeds.

It's all the little things like that are causing me to take my time slowly going through all the camera features. The first day I bough it out I nearly cried when I saw the images I had taken because they where so bad. Thought I made a big mistake, but now I'm simply blown away by the camera. It's truly fantastic, but it's not something anyone can pick up and get the most out of without spending a lot of time with it first.

Funny that you bought it too! Congrats

Congrats to you too. You will love it mate, seriously. You will also gel with the camera a lot quicker than I did because you know so much about the technical side of photography and all the settings required for the perfect shot.

Regards.
James.

laughing_bear · Post by **laughing_bear** » Sat May 30, 2009 3:46 pm

Boy I was lucky.... I was soooo temoted to buy the 135mm CZ f1.8, but they did not have it in stock....

Hopefully we see more CZ in the near future.

laughing_bear · Post by **laughing_bear** » Sat May 30, 2009 3:54 pm

I never shoot Jpeg at all, so i can not help with these settings, to me it is a waste James, you leave all the processing to some stoned engineers who cook the Jpegs.

The way I will work is simple.

-Shoot Raw
- White balance, black and white point in Capture one
- Export to TIFF 16 bit
- Open in Lightroom and from there I can do 90% of all work I need
- Rest of 10% in CS3 as well as printing (Lightroom can not softproof ....yet!)

Try to shoot in RAW mate, it opens another door to a quality of the files far superiour than the cooked jpgs!!!!

When you expose, I mostly use M mode, check your histogram and expose as much as you can to the right. The reason for that is that most of the data is contained in the highlights, NOT in the shadows.

So afterwards, you can easily open up shadows and find a lot of detail. The other way around does not work!

Once you shoot RAW, looks at NIK sharpener Pro 3.0. It does a very good job. Sharpen always in 2 stages, capture sharpening, this is what NIK calls RAW Pre sharpening, then process as you see fit, then enlarge or reduce, and only the do the final sharpeneing.

This is true for all cameras!

P.S.

Set camera to continuous shooting, center focus point only, RAW, and shooting mode to S.

This way this aperture is chosen automatically and you worry only about speed. Birds, I would use 1/500s or faster. In continous focus mode the camera will track you object, if it goes further away, the focus follows for example. No Idea how good that is on the alpha, but I was told it is decent enough. Then shoot also bursts of shots, 5-10 in a series, and you should have a decent output for each series that is usable. ( I think the alpha shoots 5frames per sec, this does the job!)

Now you do a burst of shots. Then look at the histogram, if it is centered for example, delete the files. You want to go as much as possible to the right with out clipping highlights. Now dial in exposure compensation of +1EV for example, take shots, look at histo and if it is way right without clipping you're all set to take the shots!

P.P.S.

What cards are you using?

I did not order new ones, i still have some 8 Gig Sandisc extreme III, should do the job I think.

Post by **Sharp** » Sat May 30, 2009 7:20 pm

Hi Bear.

I find the a900 can produce exactly what you see if you set the camera to do exactly that. Shooting in Vivid mode will cook the images for sure but the camera can also be totally faithful if you want it to be.

I'm not comfortable with the idea of shooting RAW to be honest because I don't believe I can convert the RAW data to an image better than the guys who designed the camera.

I'm more comfortable going with 3 TIFF exposures and making HDR if I need to as this gives you a dynamic range far beyond anything a RAW file could give you.

Well.... Providing you have the opportunity to take the photo like that in the first place.

What cards are you using?

I did not order new ones, i still have some 8 Gig Sandisc extreme III, should do the job I think

I use this one.
http://mx2.co.uk/default.asp?part=CF16GBU

Having the high speed writes means I get no “BUSY” message after taking lots of images in Bust Mode. The file sizes you see quoted by SONY are a lot smaller than what you actually get in the real world. A JPEG in XFINE mode is upwards of 18MB so if you consider shooting at 5fps that's 90MB/s being generated. All this goes to the camera's buffer and you really do want to get it out of there as quick as possible and the only way to do that is buy the fastest card.

If your going shooting in RAW then you will really need the fastest card you can get for sure. The last thing you will want is to be locked out of your camera when it's flushing the buffer.

Regards.
James.

laughing_bear · Post by **laughing_bear** » Sat May 30, 2009 8:53 pm

OK, in a nutshell, this is a misconception! You waste a tremendous amount of quality by using the internal engine only, seriously.

The dynamic range is only one part of the ingredients that define IQ, image quality. The phase one with the 60.5 MP back i awill be using, has a DR of 12.5 F stops, but that alone is not enough to result in outstanding IQ. By the way, the DR of the alpha is quite astonishing for a CMOS sensor, which is the less desireable sensor to use, CCD is a much better technology, but this is another issue.

The camera simply can not bake the RAW data the way you can do that with modern software. Im Softwareapplications such as C1 or Lightroom you work with the files in 16 bit mode for starters, this is not happening with the so called JPEG engines, of which each manufacturer has his own, some better, some worse or even totally unacceptable to plain ridiculous.

The next part is that you deal with White balance (hence colors!) Noise, Sharpning etc. in your Software much more precise than any existing engine does.

The most important aspect, print output!

Here you want to retain maximum details, particulary in high frequency areas, this is the first that manufacturers JPEG engines cook too soft, all of them, as a result loose quality.

Having said that, while all of the above is true and more reasons not to use JPEG do exist, it is a matter of what one does with his files.

For me personally, the maximum possible print output quality is the only goal I pursue, I dont care that much about how the pictures look on a backlit screen, LCD whatever, other that I convert it into the approriate color Space sRGB and sharpen towards screen output and not print of course.

Anyone you will speak to about printing will agree to that, there is no way they would use the engines from the camera, too much gets lost, or weired looking files are the result, reflecting the "taste" of the manufacturer, but not the maximum possible quality achievable form the RAW material.

Last not least, software gets better every year, so one way to look at it is that your RAW material might even have potential that is not even used yet. One example was the introduction of shadow highlight Filters in Photoshop not that long ago. Had you shot only in JPEG, and not in RAW, well, there you are, the advantage is wiped out as you can not start from sractch developing an older file with newer possibilitites.

Hence, what I do, is I shoot only RAW and back that original file up. Then Convert to TIFF 16 bit and DNG. No data is lost in the process, and in 2 years time when xyz technology allows different manipulations, I am always on the safe side, even if sony should not exist anymore and their proprietary file format (as has Nikon, as has Canon and so on) is no longer supported, i am still on the safe side because all my RAW data is embedded in the DNG file.

One equally important aspect is the colorspace, you should immediatly open your connerted RAW files (TIFF/DNG) in ProPhotoRGB, because this has the largest colorspace available, it is even bigger than Adobe RGB (which is quite an old standard).

Here the whole thing becomes more complex, as we deal with color management and the issues of calibration of a variety of devices.

I work on a hardware calibrated NEC Spectraview 30" for wide agmmut applications, and have a small 24" EIZO beside it for chekcing on sRGB related work. Form my Screens to my printers the whole chain is calibrated with Gretag MacBeth device which cost nearly as much as the alpha itself! I perform this calibration once a week and before every major printrun. Then again, you can get somewhat decent calibration tools for less cash. SPYDER 3 for example is pretty much ok for non critical work. Do not get a COLORMUNKI, this thing is a joke!

If you are interested in getting the maximum quality out of your files, and I mean who would not want that, at least you dished out a serious amount of money for a professional camera, then there is no way around RAW and at least a basic setup of color managed workflow.

Trust me, it is not all that complicated once you come to grips with it, but it can be daunting if it is all knew stuff nad pretty confusing.

I can recommend Andrew Rodneys "color management for photographers" as a starting point.

Ok, let me try to summarize the main points why one would prefer to shoot in RAW.

The alpha shoots in 12 bit, hence the RAW data contains:

- The first F/stop (brightest levels) contains 2048 available levels.
- second F/Stop (bright) 1024 levels
- third (midtones) 512 levels ...and so on

! Side note... look at the above data.... from here it is clear why you should expose to the right, the most data is contained in the brightest levels!

Now to give you an idea about an 8 bit JPEG for example.

First F/Stop 69 levels
Sedond 50 levels
third 37 levels

So a RAW file 12 bit gves you 65,536 levels and the above mentioned JPEG only 256 Levels of brightness.

This is a no brainer isn't it?

One more thing, the improtance of RAW and the need to develop the sensor data yourself has been finally taken on board by CANON and their point and shoot department. The CANON G10, an inobtrusive little but very nice camera, can record in RAW, and that's the main Reason I have it as well!

Phewwww.....Really, there is more to explain about all that, this is only in a nutshell.

Hope it makes sense to you.

laughing_bear · Post by **laughing_bear** » Sat May 30, 2009 9:58 pm

On another general note.... I really can not believe that the D3x costs 3 times that much. Ok it has abetter built quality, I am going to miss that, and better high ISO performance. But it has NO dust shaker for example, something which i consider a deal braker these days.

I'd say Sony has become a royal pain in Nikons butt.

If a year ago someone would have told me I would seriously consider a Sony camera, well, I would have laughed, but from November 2008 on i had a close look at this baby and Sonay has done something incredibly right here, last not elast the coopration with ZEISS is a strong reason to buy into it. Would it be Sony (minolta) only, I would have hesitated, but the Zeiss look is something I alwayas liked. Hopefully they come out with a Zeiss macro as well, this would be a no brainer to buy for me.

I probably will get the 16-35mm as well, but first on the list is the 135mm F1.8.... flippin F1.8.... WOW

Post by **Sharp** » Sat May 30, 2009 10:20 pm

Hi Bear.

I understand what your saying, but are these not a lot of the things you should get right looking through the view finder of the Camera in the first place ?.

Why would you need the extended range of a RAW file unless the image taken needed some serious work to be restored to a usable state.

Regards.
James.

laughing_bear · Post by **laughing_bear** » Sat May 30, 2009 10:59 pm

It is not about extended Range James. It is about using the exiting DR and sensor data to the maximum possible.

I understand what your saying, but are these not a lot of the things you should get right looking through the view finder of the Camera in the first place ?.

No, because parameters, like white balance, contrast, brightness, white point, black point, tonality,sharpening, etc., are not controlled by you looking through the VF but by your artistic choices when you develop the picture. Otherwise you comeptly give that artistic choice up, and deliver it to Sony/Canon.Nikon etc. to develop your work according to their taste. that's what Jpeg is apart from the reduction in quality.

If you look at a scene, you make a choice in terms of aperture, speed and ISO settings, then you compose the image and press the shutter.

The sensor now has recorded the data and it is this pure state that you want to work with, I mean, you do not NEED TO, of course you are free to use Sony Jpegs only.

But in terms of IQ, there is no other way. See this is why the also deliver it with that IDC programm (which is crap btw! and tells you something about their knowledge of postprocessing, pretty poor!) , so you have access to your RAW data, even if you do not have any other post processing program on your computer.

See, it is a little like with samples. If I can access 24 bit 96Khz samples to work with, or can get 8 bit 22 Khz, there is no question what I would choose.

One way to look at a raw file is to understand it from analog photography. It is your negative! Just in this case a digital negative.

Working with RAW utilizes all the data you recorded. Using JPEG is like throwing 70% away.

Then again, of course, if you do not need the best possible IQ from your files, JPEG might just be right for you. It is just a little like, buying an OASYS and leaving KARMA switched off all the time.

P.S.
What are they teaching you in the photoclub where you are member since some time?

I think I come over as a guest lecturer for a weekend.

Seriously though, I start teaching photography and printing from next year on in smaller groups. Something like 4-5 people sessions with field work, and afterwards in my studio postprocessing and printing. Just need to convince apple to make me a special price on a few iMacs.

P.P.S

In the years since 2003 that I do DSLR and medium format photography on a daily basis, I have never used jpeg at all, not even once I tried it or looked at it. If it would be possible to get the same camera cheaper letting out every Jpeg feature, scene features etc. I buy that in a heart beat.

laughing_bear · Post by **laughing_bear** » Sat May 30, 2009 11:16 pm

oh btw... one more important thing... working with programs like Lightroom or Aperture has another massiv advantage.... it is non destructive!

You can start from scratch again and develop your shot entirely different! As often as you want!

Post by **Sharp** » Sun May 31, 2009 12:21 am

Hi Bear.

I get ya now.

It's a lot of work but then again I guess a camera costs so much it seems only wise to get the most from it.

I don't think I'm at that point myself yet though because to cater for such level of control I'd have to worry about other things like calibrated printers and the accuracy of my monitors just to get the most from the images.

I know you have the setup for this so it only stands to reason why you are shooting in RAW then.

What are they teaching you in the photoclub where you are member since some time?

They are not so much into the technical aspects of file formats, RAW or even equipment. It's mostly about composing the shot and teaching you want settings will work best in each situation.

The idea shared is that anyone even with a Pocket Camera can take an award winning photo if it's composed right and it tells a good story. It's not a very “Technical” club from the point of view of Computers, file formats and equipment but it's a great club.

I think I come over as a guest lecturer for a weekend.

Seriously though, I start teaching photography and printing from next year on in smaller groups. Something like 4-5 people sessions with field work, and afterwards in my studio postprocessing and printing.

I'd love that. When your up and running in the new year let me know and I will see what I can do here. We could book you in and do an open invitation here to all the surrounding clubs. I don't remember what we pay out exactly but it's enough to get people to come over from England.

Regards.
James.

PS: Thanks for the chat. Really enjoyed this thread more than you know.

laughing_bear · Post by **laughing_bear** » Sun May 31, 2009 11:30 am

You're welcome!

Now go and shoot RAW