Panasonic LX2/FZ50 firmware petition..

Thanks for your support Brian! And of course all of you who contributed your signatures!

I'm now trying to find a good (reliable) email contact in Panasonic, but unfortunately, all I have for now is only [email protected]

Anyone have a good email contact in Panasonic? Or maybe anyone know someone in Panasonic? Please, let me know if you know someone inside (the best would be a CEO or similar contact.. )

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Have they looked at the images ?

Please check again the pictures and, if anythingh there might be more detail in the low NR than in the RAW or RAW + NN......

I'm sure, that the RAW images can be even cleaner using the higher level of Noise Ninja NR.

I can't tell you how exactly were these RAW images processed (I'm not the original author), but because they were taken at the time when there were no other RAW converters (others than Silkypix distributed with FZ50/LX2), I suppose they were converted using Silkypix with minimal level of Silkypix post processing and then denoised using the mild level of NoiseNinja NR (mainly the chroma noise removed).

The RAW and RAW + NoiseNinja images are definitely grainier than JPEG, but as for me (and my personal taste) I would prefer grainier high ' shots rather than the watercolourpaint-like JPEGs with smeared details. Just see the crops I made for petition purposes. The wall and the shadow parts (in JPEG) are just horrible. RAW conversion is grainier, but in my humble opinion, much pleasant to view rather than smeared details in JPEG shots. It's especially well visible in ISO 400 and 800 shots. ISO 1600 is ugly even in RAW, but I see it perfectly usable for smaller BW prints and web shots. But maybe it's just me...

paulbod3 said:

After opening the images taken at ISO 1600, ORIGINAL size, it took
a few minutes... what I notice is that :

in the circle on the book cover, "COMPLETELY" can be clearly read
in the low NR image, but not so clearly on the RAW and RAW + NN.

Also, on the same book cover, the child is smiling in the low NR
image, but has no expession in the RAW and RAW + NN images.

So, for what concerns preserving detail, low NR works better than
RAW and RAW + NN.

Color cast and noise grain is different beetween RAW and various
NR, how did you develop RAW ?

Click to expand...

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That's strange.. Nobody reported similar problem yet? Could you, please, try it from another PC?

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I understand what you mean, but it looks to me that :

1) there is more detail in the "low NR"

2) the "RAW" has a more even color, duller

3) the RAW + NN is obviously smoother, but with less detail

We cannot ask Panasonic more detail than what is supplied by low NR !

We can ask, as you say, a "more pleasant look", useless IMHO because in printing interpolation in any case smoothens the image.

It is the usual mistake of some reviewer that is looking for more "smoothness", not more detail.

Yes, the RAW files can appear to be "duller", because of no contrast, saturation or sharpness set in RAW files. But this is something very well editable in any postprocessing software as well as noise can be much better cleaned using the Noise Ninja.

But I don't agree as for the level of details in JPEG with LOW NR. I'm pretty sure you can get much more details from RAW shots than from JPEG files with LOW NR. It's especially well visible at ISO 400 and 800 shots. Where the fine details are lost in JPEG, the RAW conversion (if carefully done) can produce much better looking JPEGs. As for me, the wall and shadows in JPEG test shots are simply ugly at all level of ISO, while the RAW+NN looks excellent. Maybe grainier, but not like watercolor paint

paulbod3 said:

I understand what you mean, but it looks to me that :

1) there is more detail in the "low NR"

2) the "RAW" has a more even color, duller

3) the RAW + NN is obviously smoother, but with less detail

We cannot ask Panasonic more detail than what is supplied by low NR !

We can ask, as you say, a "more pleasant look", useless IMHO
because in printing interpolation in any case smoothens the image.

It is the usual mistake of some reviewer that is looking for more
"smoothness", not more detail.

Click to expand...

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In the real world, the camera is used to take pictures of people and landscapes, not walls and puppets.

With walls and puppets there is little color variation in a large area, so noise is more evident, but if the picture is more varied, the Panasonic approach is better, because saves the details.

When printing, up to A4, most of noise is melted.

Previous cameras had only an option up to ISO 400, so, in a way, ISO 800 and 1600 are just an option for emergency.

As you say, starting from RAW it should be possible to preserve more detail, but this is not obvious in the samples you submitted, actually is the opposite.

It would be interesting to know what converter has been used and the position of the sliders, that might be replicated in camera, probably contrast and sharpening have been set lower, as well as some mild color adjustment.

For what concerns the results with Noise N, nobody would buy NN unless it can reduce the noise better than in camera process, at the expense of detail.

I just have a simple question...

There are some realy smart persons out there. Why is it not possible for a good programmer to add this option to the Panasonic firmware?

Ok, this probably expires your warenty, and is completely at your own risk.

But i have seen it done on many other hardware like cd and dvd drives and even on other digital camera's in the past.

It just amazes me, that with so many people wanting this change in firmware, nobody has tried to alter it themself.

Or am i not searching/looking in the right places and is there already somebody or smoe group working on this somewhere?

Everything is possible, but it's much harder to do if you don't have source codes. As you maybe remember, some clever users "hacked" the canon 300D firmware to bring the people some 20D features. But they only enabled some "disabled" functions! And they had the user-upgradeable camera firmware file, released by Canon! But because Panasonic did not released any user-upgradeable firmware yet, there is nothing to "hack". There is no way to get the firmware from the camera, modify it and upload it back. The things unfortunately doesn't work like that

But even if there would be such firmware file released by Panasonic, it wouldn't be so easy to do that change, because this feature is most probably not in the firmware, so there is nothing to enable and it must be implemented. But it's only possible in the firmware source code, which is of course not publicly available Firmware source code is one of the most protected things in the digital still camera industry. So no, there is no chance to get it from somewhere

mkrve said:

I just have a simple question...

There are some realy smart persons out there. Why is it not
possible for a good programmer to add this option to the Panasonic
firmware?

Ok, this probably expires your warenty, and is completely at your
own risk.
But i have seen it done on many other hardware like cd and dvd
drives and even on other digital camera's in the past.

It just amazes me, that with so many people wanting this change in
firmware, nobody has tried to alter it themself.

Or am i not searching/looking in the right places and is there
already somebody or smoe group working on this somewhere?

Click to expand...

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What can be done, is, starting from RAW, study the best settings of Sharpness, Contrast, Saturation and noise reduction and apply them in the menu "image settings"; this is something everybody can do with 30 minutes of patience.

But, IMHO, the manufacturer can only correctly set the camera expecting that the users open the window, go around the world, take picture of friends etc.

A reviewer, apart from taking pictures in the field, and there is nothing wrong even at ISO 800,

http://www.dpreview.com/gallery/panasonicfz50_samples2/

has to take pictures on a scenary that can be repeated, and this means bottles, toys, walls, b+w targets, artificial light etc.

The camera manufacturer should probably add a "reviewer" or "test" mode, with subtle sharpness and contrast and color saturation adjustments so that the wall or the toy may look better, but frankly I think nobody in his mind would use it frequently.

Guess you are right... and that it is a complicated thing to do.
and without any example, almost impossible to do.

Guess we just have to wait voor Panasonics answer to this matter.

When and how is the petition going to be presented to panasonic??

Pavel Kudrys said:

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Click to expand...

The real problem is that Canon is lagging behind with the 10mp CMOS sensor, because they have problems in shrinking the circuitry on the chips. This doesn't mean that other producers, now well ahead, should rest on their laurels...

I'm trying to find a good source inside the panasonic, but without luck yet. So if I don't find someone inside, I will post it by email to Panasonic UK support (the only email I found so far). I also tried to post it via web forms via Panasonic global site, but I only got a server error. And the Japanese form did not allow me to send a non-japanese text It's really hard to reach Panasonic via email

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Look, I fully understand your attitude and comments about the matter of this petition You are quite happy with FZ50/LX2 JPEG results and I'm sure, many other people are quite happy as well. But there is also a large group of people who simply think the JPEG NR is too strong, kill fine details and which want to process the images by their own way and don't want to mess with RAW all the time.

Sure, RAW is an excellent option. But because of the size of FZ50/LX2 RAW files and a relative slow writing speed, it's really not useful for everyday shooting. I'm sorry, but it's not! In RAW you can't use bracketing, you can't use burst mode, etc..etc.. But if there would be an option to turn the in-camera Image Adjustments OFF, I'm quite sure it would make this large group of people really happy!

Sure, maybe we should ask for smaller RAW or bigger/faster RAW writing buffer instead of crying for "useless" OFF switch. But these things are rather dreams, and even the smaller RAW is surely achievable by a firmware update, adding the simple OFF switch to JPEG is much faster and easier way. If there is a (very little) chance they will listen us, then only small and uncomplicated requests have some chances. So this is why I started the petition about simple OFF switch instead of smaller RAW or better noise reduction.

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How can a petition asking for more details can be presented when the samples presented with petition from RAW show less detail?

What can people understand ?

Also :

there is no such thingh as NR on its own, particularly in bayer, it is just a smoothening-contrast-sharpening adjustment.

there is no thingh as smaller RAW, RAW is 3 different images, each one RGB, each one indicating the luminance in the photosites of its color. Any "compressed RAW" is simply not RAW and doesn't allow to reconstruct 100 % the original image. The rest is just marketing. Compressed RAW has all the same properties of JPEG, where we can change all parameters in PP, but is not the original image, be it NEF or whatever.

So, our choice is very simple :

RAW = original image = slow buffering = adjustment in PP

JPEG = smaller file = fast buffering = adjustment of parameters in menu before taking or in PP = lower DR (12bit vs 14 bit)

That's all !

Still I am very curious about the converter and settings used in the sample images You submitted.

Please put yourself in the shoes of the Panasonic CEO, and wonder :

what are these people asking for ?

A smaller RAW = impossible.

More definition = not from the samples they supply.

Smoother pictures = pls reduce contrast/sharpening/saturation and HIGH NR. Or use food scene....

But, when taking landscapes the setting they propose give poorer settings than the original one.

No NR = we call low NR = no NR it's the same, in any case picture has been processed.

A toy, bottle, puppet "scene", no problem, but who will use it ?

paulbod3 said:

How can a petition asking for more details can be presented when
the samples presented with petition from RAW show less detail?

Click to expand...

Well, that's your point of view Me and other 1480+ petitioners says that the RAW without in-camera NR and postprocessed using the NoiseNinja brings more details (and more pleasant to view results).

paulbod3 said:

there is no thingh as smaller RAW, RAW is 3 different images, each
one RGB, each one indicating the luminance in the photosites of its
color. Any "compressed RAW" is simply not RAW and doesn't allow to
reconstruct 100 % the original image. The rest is just marketing.

Click to expand...

I'm afraid, you are wrong Lossless compression of RAW is possible and it preserves all details from the original file. Did you for example try to compress any of the Panasonic RAW files using just simple ZIP? It's lossless compression and the size of resultant file is about half of the size of the original RAW! But yes, it's slow. However, I'm quite sure, there are methods, which can reduce the size of RAW file without loosing anything, because Canon and Nikon and other big players are able to compress their RAW files and without loosing the information or significant slow-downs. So if they can do this, Panasonic should be able to do it as well.

paulbod3 said:

Still I am very curious about the converter and settings used in
the sample images You submitted.

Click to expand...

If you check the below link, you can contact the author (Gobo) of these test shots (via his profile). But I'm almost sure these FZ50 RAW files were processed by SilkyPix (as it was the only RAW converter capable to open FZ50/LX2 RAW files at that time). But I can be wrong of course
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1033&message=19847081

BTW, if you need even better proof of destroyed details in JPEG (cause by too strong V3 NR), check this sample... I did not use it in the petition, because of blurred ISO200 RAW shot. But maybe I should add this comparison here too, because it's a very good example of V3 NR smudging. This comparison (even with blurred ISO 200 RAW shot) is a good example of how good could be the JPEG output in case of NR OFF switch. If this doesn't convince you, then I'm afraid, I don't have more arguments



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Are the ISO 200 shots blurred or inverted ?

How have they been processed ?

Is there any difference in detail in ISO 100 RAW and low NR ?

paulbod3 said:

Are the ISO 200 shots blurred or inverted ?

Click to expand...

ISO 200 RAW is accidentally blurred by a camera shake.

paulbod3 said:

How have they been processed ?

Click to expand...

Just Silkypix with all settings to standard (as mentioned in description of this comparison).

paulbod3 said:

Is there any difference in detail in ISO 100 RAW and low NR ?

Click to expand...

The difference at ISO 100 is very subtle. Almost not noticeable.

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wow that iso800 raw is so much better, I´m almost buying the fz50 over this test!
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