Settings for X100 RAWs taken with DR200 or DR400

[madsec]

Now that we can use the X100 RAWs in ASP (so happy ) I tried to find some settings for RAW development to reproduce the results of JPEGs taken with DR200 and DR400. The RAW file of a DR200/DR400 picture is just underexposed and has to be brightened up manually. Sadly just to increase exposure or fill light doesn't do the job, and there is no easy configuration of the graduation curve, like S-curve, working eighter.

Did anybody find already a solution for that? The best would be some setting that could be applyed by a simple preset, but therefor the settings have to be the same for every picture (I don't think thats the case). Even better would be an automatic correction of ASP after importing the RAWs.

Please let me know your progress with that if you are working on this problem. I will keep trying too, if I find some settings I will let you know.

[grubernd]

drop a raw or two with the fuji incamera jpgs somewhere we can pick them up and play with them..
there are a lot of knowledgable folks here that dont have a x100.

[madsec]

Well thanks for your advice, of course you are right

I prepared a zip-file with six pairs of examples, two of each case DR100, DR200 and DR400. All pairs contain a out of camera JPEG with standard settings and the corresponding RAW file. The zip-package can be downloaded here (100 MByte):

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B33Usi ... 0Zuc0RfQUE

Raising the Exposure by 1 (DR200) or 2 (DR400) gives a good starting point, but looking at the histogram and the colors there is a visible difference. The DR100 JPEGs and RAWs show a difference there too, also it is not so huge here in my opinion. What would you say?

By the way, is there any way to make ASP read the information vor DR setting aut of the EXIFs? It's in the EXIFs for sure, I can read this information with exiftool, but I didn't find an option in ASP for that. Maybe it's possible to read that via plugin SDK?

Thanks very much for any help in advance!

[grubernd]

thanks for pushing me to learn something new..

this was a trip down memory lane.. those dark days of fuji s2 using b4 in no-cm mode. (you dont have to understand this).

anyway.. by taking a look at the the files you provided and the fuji manual, my only conclusion is:

stay away from the DR-settings if shooting raw!!!

DR100 is doing a nice job. really. awesome would be a better word. if you tend to overexpose your images better dial in -1/3 with the classic exposure compensation on the camera. here's my explanation why:

by using DR200 or even DR400 in the higher isos you are compressing your dynamic range even more than what already occurs due to upping the iso. for those not having read the manual: DR200 is available from iso400 on, DR400 from iso800 upwards. so you have less DR due to technical limitations, then fuji does some DR magic but gives you really a raw-file that only uses a part of the available dataspace. some banding will occur. or noise. or both.

then you have all the problems in your workflow.. on location you always think about "what DR setting is best" instead of shooting pictures you care about. back home you have to identify the different settings (dunno of CA-quest could help), treat them all differently etc etc. - as a professional i can tell you that every setting you try to change on location is making your photography more complicated, more technical and less about the result. unless you are shooting highly technical stuff like a reproduction of artwork. but then you wouldnt trust a magic setting of your camera, either.

DR100 would be my choice, because it works across the whole iso range, does an awesome job and makes your outcome and workflow easier and predictable. having choices doesnt mean one has to take all of them all the time.



cheers,
grubernd

[madsec]

Okay, some little update already. With an rather extreme example I discovered now, that a good setting is the raise of half exposure and half fill light to compensate the underexposure in the DR200 and DR400 RAWs. The new example can be found here:

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B33Usi ... GFadkFXVHM

The exmaple is a DR400 case and so I used exposure +1 and fill light +1 (for DR200 +0.5 for both). If you do so and compare the highlights you can see that they look pretty much the same and that the highlights are preserved very well with this settings.

As I expected this settings doesn't work for all pictures that good, but they give a good starting point to do little tweaks in color and exposure.

Now I just would like be able to select all DR200 and DR400 pics to apply this setting at once. I hope the ASP team will put in some option to show this EXIF information, that would be fine enough for me...

[madsec]

thanks for pushing me to learn something new..

You are welcome

Well, the X100 is my first Fuji and I just tried that setting while shooting JPEG (since ASP didn't support the RAWs jet). I saved the RAWs along to compare later and to use them instead, normally I do only shot RAW with all cameras.

My settings in the X100 are Auto ISO and Auto DR, so the camera raises ISO automaticly if a higher dynamic range is needed. I was aware of what the camera was doing all the time, that it makes an unterexposed picture with higher ISO and raises the shadows afterwards. And that worked quite well in JPEGs, so I keep it that way. The X100 does a great job with the JPEGs by the way!

Now that I can use my RAWs you are probably right. I will try high dynamic range situations with "classic" settings and see what happens, also since I already got a bit enoyed by this problem of differently processing the RAW files afterwards in ASP... Thanks for your post!

[jknights]

I'm glad that the X100 support is finally there in the Public domain as I have tested it fairly well in the Beta program.
I dont tend to use the DR function as I suspected that it wouldnt be supported in LR or ASP. I dont like LR so I havent tested it extensively but using the X100 beta support has allowed me to get some very nice effects from the X100 RAW files I had stored over the last year.

If you are shooting RAW on the X100 then its best to stick with the normal level of DR.
If it is RAW then you can do all the adjustments you need later in ASP.

Main thing is to get exposure right and everything else falls into place. Expose so that you highlights do not blow as you can you FillLight in ASP to bring up shadow areas.

Also dont forget that if you are making the same adjustments all the time to your images then save it as a Preset and then select all the images you want to adjust and use the Preset on them. Hey Presto major changes done with one click.