James M Hughes
Senior Member
A couple of weeks back there was a long series of posts regarding the Foevan sensor and its ability (or inability) to capture red properly.
I'm still not sure about this, myself. But one thing does seem clear; it's definitely not easy to process RAW images with strong reds in SPP.
I took this image (SD-14 and 28mm f1.8 lens, 100 ISO and no exposure compensation) of my wife wearing a bright red jacket, and had a lot of trouble processing it in SPP. Basically, the red channel was very strong, and I ended up having to use quite a bit of exposure compensation (around -1.7) in SSP to avoid the red channel clipping. I adjusted the image as best possible in SPP, but still ended up with something that needed tweaking in photoshop afterwards. I find this a lot with SPP - the mid tones always seem to be too light, resulting in washed-out images that look 'thin' and lacking in richness and contrast. It's almost as though there's a slider missing - something that would make the mid tones darker. The fill-light was kept at or near it's centre point, incidentally.
Here's the image as it left SPP
And here's the same image after a bit of work in photoshop.
Still not perfect, perhaps, but a LOT better than the first image. The black skirt looks darker, and the red of the jacket matches the density of its real life colour. Maybe it's my lack of skill with SPP, but I almost always find my images need further work after processing - I can't get what I want in SPP alone, no matter what I do. Does anyone else find this, or am I doing something wrong?
J M Hughes
I'm still not sure about this, myself. But one thing does seem clear; it's definitely not easy to process RAW images with strong reds in SPP.
I took this image (SD-14 and 28mm f1.8 lens, 100 ISO and no exposure compensation) of my wife wearing a bright red jacket, and had a lot of trouble processing it in SPP. Basically, the red channel was very strong, and I ended up having to use quite a bit of exposure compensation (around -1.7) in SSP to avoid the red channel clipping. I adjusted the image as best possible in SPP, but still ended up with something that needed tweaking in photoshop afterwards. I find this a lot with SPP - the mid tones always seem to be too light, resulting in washed-out images that look 'thin' and lacking in richness and contrast. It's almost as though there's a slider missing - something that would make the mid tones darker. The fill-light was kept at or near it's centre point, incidentally.
Here's the image as it left SPP
And here's the same image after a bit of work in photoshop.
Still not perfect, perhaps, but a LOT better than the first image. The black skirt looks darker, and the red of the jacket matches the density of its real life colour. Maybe it's my lack of skill with SPP, but I almost always find my images need further work after processing - I can't get what I want in SPP alone, no matter what I do. Does anyone else find this, or am I doing something wrong?
J M Hughes
