Hi Don, On Sat, 03 Dec 2005 15:00:52 +0200, Don Williams wrote:
<snip> >This is what I found. The RAW and TIFF >snow scenes were all very good without >exception. The histograms showed that >the five stops the camera is capable of Actually, it may be close to 6 stops ... >were to be found between 1 and about >160. Spreading them using levels gave a >close match to what it actually looks >like outside. OK, it may be better to compensate if there is mainly white (snow) in the image, that will push the histogram to the right, and as long as you are not blowing any highlights 'off the edge' there, this will give much better definitions in the shadow areas ... <snip> >The RAW converter is a plug-in for >Photoshop 7 that I found on the web some >time back and saved for the day I'd get >an *ist D. AFAIK, that is just a 'plugin' version of the Pentax RAW converter. It works, but not that well ... >I'm working with a rather >superficial idea of what needs attention >in digital and I need a lot of practice. >In other words I don't know what the >hell I'm doing. :-) >I could have set the >white level on snow I suppose, but left >it at automatic. I didn't want to make >too many changes at once. Oh yes ... I >noticed something else which would >confirm what you say above. The output >from the converted RAW files in >Photoshop are sharper than the TIFF >images. That may depend on RAW converter settings as well, but I do not know that converter (using CS2 myself). Also the Pentax Browser software >is better than Windows for uploading >images from the cards. > >* This also reduces the very slight blue >cast. Using auto color makes them a tiny >bit too red. But the result is almost >the same and by this stage highly >subjective anyway. Manually altering the >color with the sliders can give a result >indistinguishable from the levels >dropper manipulation. In 'snow only' >pictures the camera tries to put >everything in at about 109 -- a >beautiful bell curve. I guess that's >where the *ist D thinks Neutral Gray >(18%) lies 18% gray on snow only would result in rather 'dark' snow, hence the compensation :-) Try to get the histogram as far as possible to the right without clipping the highlights. The histogram shown in the RAW converter may be more accurate than the in-camera one, since that averages over all channels and may not show clipping in just one channel. Regards, JvW ------------------------------------------------------------------ Jan van Wijk; http://www.dfsee.com/gallery
