I'm glad you are reading.
As a S3 veteran perhaps you can shed some more light in here.
Sure you can do that, but the whole point of the S3 sensor is that
you can get in one shot all the goodies, the thing is to find that
key exposure that balance S&R nicely.
snip
I have read through this thread with interest
while I find it a dubious proposition that third party converters
offer great insight into the workings of the S/R sensor, I think
you demonstrated well what I have long advocated about shooting the
S3
Well, I dare to disagree here.
S7RAW is a heck of a RAW software.
AFAIK, this is the only program that at the click of a checkmark allows you to see what is going on with the S & R channels while you are adjusting the RAW settings.
Please, give it a shot. It truly is a great program.
The more I use it, the more I realize how good it is.
We all have this thing in our minds that if is free it must be bad.
Well, S7RAW in one of those exceptions. trust me.
this is a radically different DSLR which requires users abandon
much of what held true for most other DSLRs ...the biggest
advantage of the S3's sensor is indeed in getting all the goodies
in one shot and one conversion ...indeed it is very hard to beat
the S3's jpgs when the settings are aRGB org org off AutoDR 12 MB
Fine and one shoots to the right, even pushing the histogram a bit
up which is to say overexposing
I think Fujifilm's engineers designed the sensor to be used in this
fashion as in life details are lost in the dazzle of highlights
Indeed, too bad the S3 don't have a S and R Histogram, so you can really get the most for the exposures.
But as Leo Terra said, the trick is to expose for the shadows.
Phil Askey said something along that lines too, in the DPR S3 review.
But I believe he kept using the S3 as any other ordinary camera exposing just the S pixels for the sample and test shots.
From my testings I now know the reason why ACR was delivering more noise. It was because most of the time the R pixels were being underexposed.
S7RAW provided that window to see it happening.
it seems they did an outstanding job of combining the output from
the two sensors providing one shoots to push the histogram to the
right ...in RAW of course one can adjust the mix of S & R input
manually, but only rarely do I find this helps with the final
output and perhaps only a bit less rarely shooting jpgs in Auto DR
(in which the camera decides the mix) does one lose any data
Yes, just in RAW, but I'm clueless to why You, the S3 master can't get to see the benefits of the Custom S+R mixing.
Please Arti, go and install the S7RAW and spent some time fiddling with it, try it with shots of different exposures, with Low contrast and High contrast subjects.
Big tip: Use the checkmarks S and R to see those 'channels' directly while adjusting settings and study carefuly the Detail tab. the Detail tab is hugely important for a quality output, so study that one too.
I'm sure you'll like it.
I really think the S3's advantage in jpg stems as much from its 14
bit ADC (presenting better quality data to the jpg engine) as from
the extended DR.
Yeah, have you seen how most if not all of the other cameras struggle to capture flowers accurately.
Flowers are such a difficult subject because many reflect a wide light spectrum running from the Infrared to the Ultraviolet.
Even thoght the S3 is designed for 'visible' light. I think it is the best equiped to deal with such large gamuts.
IMHO the S3 is not much better for the layman, is because to produce compressed HDR in a RGB jpegs, requires a lot of in-camera processing power. Let alone the subjective trade-off that each subject requires
The good thing is that that power is available when using RAW.
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