Why do we still use analog gain with ISO invariant sensors?

They can call it what they want if I can get an in-camera Raw histogram.
Pre-gain? ;)
What is recorded in the Raw file.

Iliah, I told you many years ago, but you probably forgot, that you should license RawDigger to the camera companies. Imagine a RawDigger setting for the Playback function... You'd be sipping Ouzo on a Greek island and watching the sunset with your harem...
 
They can call it what they want if I can get an in-camera Raw histogram.
Pre-gain? ;)
What is recorded in the Raw file.

Iliah, I told you many years ago, but you probably forgot, that you should license RawDigger to the camera companies. Imagine a RawDigger setting for the Playback function... You'd be sipping Ouzo on a Greek island and watching the sunset with your harem...
I'd also like to see the DPR studio comparison tool have an option for LibRaw conversions that don't play different demosaic/NR/sharpening games with different cameras, like ACR does.
 
The intended legacy was that we might move away from the whole film-emulation operational paradigm that digital cameras are based on. Alas, we haven't.
That is very true. And a good start would be to replace the ISO's sensitivity, or speed, control with a gain or output level control.
They can call it what they want if I can get an in-camera Raw histogram.
Anybody remember Luijk's shot at that with 'UniWB'?


It was based on Canon's (back then) simple WB diagonal multipliers.

I tried it on a Sigma SD10 but it seemed to be rather defeated by their more sophisticated 3x3 matrix WBs.
 
They can call it what they want if I can get an in-camera Raw histogram.
Pre-gain? ;)
What is recorded in the Raw file.

Iliah, I told you many years ago, but you probably forgot, that you should license RawDigger to the camera companies. Imagine a RawDigger setting for the Playback function... You'd be sipping Ouzo on a Greek island and watching the sunset with your harem...
I'd also like to see the DPR studio comparison tool have an option for LibRaw conversions that don't play different demosaic/NR/sharpening games with different cameras, like ACR does.
Agreed. LibRaw is cool, gets us much closer to what the sensor saw for the purposes of comparison ...

--
what you got is not what you saw ...
 
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They can call it what they want if I can get an in-camera Raw histogram.
Pre-gain? ;)
What is recorded in the Raw file.

Iliah, I told you many years ago, but you probably forgot, that you should license RawDigger to the camera companies. Imagine a RawDigger setting for the Playback function... You'd be sipping Ouzo on a Greek island and watching the sunset with your harem...
I'd also like to see the DPR studio comparison tool have an option for LibRaw conversions that don't play different demosaic/NR/sharpening games with different cameras, like ACR does.
Agreed. LibRaw is cool, gets us much closer to what the sensor saw for the purposes of comparison ...
There are people who actually believe that their cameras don't have chromatic noise, because of the conversions that they've seen.

While we're improving the Studio Tool, we may as well have flexible resampling for comparisons of different pixel counts, including the ability to uspample everything, as showing only one sensor at 100% gives it to much illusory quality compared to resampled pixels.
 
The intended legacy was that we might move away from the whole film-emulation operational paradigm that digital cameras are based on. Alas, we haven't.
That is very true. And a good start would be to replace the ISO's sensitivity, or speed, control with a gain or output level control.
They can call it what they want if I can get an in-camera Raw histogram.
Anybody remember Luijk's shot at that with 'UniWB'?

http://www.guillermoluijk.com/tutorial/uniwb/index_en.htm
I have only shot UniWB Raw ever since I bought my Lumix G1, many years ago. The whole concept of "White Balance" never appealed to me, I don't want to worry about that when I am shooting, and I missed my darkroom... UniWB solves the primaries multiplier distortion, but JPEGs also have all that Gamma de-linearization... But I highly recommend it. Also, the green cast of the viewfinder encourages you to pay attention to composition, not color, which should come later. Here's someone who saw in UniWB green:

 
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The intended legacy was that we might move away from the whole film-emulation operational paradigm that digital cameras are based on. Alas, we haven't.
That is very true. And a good start would be to replace the ISO's sensitivity, or speed, control with a gain or output level control.
They can call it what they want if I can get an in-camera Raw histogram.
Anybody remember Luijk's shot at that with 'UniWB'?

http://www.guillermoluijk.com/tutorial/uniwb/index_en.htm
It was based on Canon's (back then) simple WB diagonal multipliers.

I tried it on a Sigma SD10 but it seemed to be rather defeated by their more sophisticated 3x3 matrix WBs.
 
Sometimes, I would like to undertand this obsession against the exposure triange. But it would be more likely a sociologist study than a scientific study.
It couldn't be a 'scientific study' because the triangle is not a scientific thing. It's a graphic device, a diagram. For myself, I learned my photography before the triangle existed. None of the texts I used mentioned the triangle. I learned what exposure, shutter speed, aperture and film speed was . I learned how to set exposure in different situations with different films and processing and seeking different objectives.

Since the transition to digital, I began to find that many, maybe even most photographers didn't know what exposure is, they didn't know what aperture is. 'ISO' in the digital world is a bit more tricky, and I had to find out what it means these days, then I found the they didn't know what ISO is, either.

I began to wonder why so many photographers, capable intelligent people, no longer seem to know what are the very basic concepts of photography. So I began to look at the resources on the Web that they use nowadays. virtually every one told them nonsense, and most of them used this 'triangle' graphic as the explanation for this nonsense. In conversations on these forums, I found people justifying the nonsense 'because the triangle'.

In the end, the point is simple.

The triangle is not a basic part of photographic theory. It is a simplistic infographic that seeks to illustrate the APEX exposure system, but inconveniently omits the LV component. If it is a piece of pedagogy, then its utility must be in the its results. And since the vast majority of people 'educated' using the triangle have failed to grasp the basics, it seems to me to be useless.

When I learned photography no-one had heard of the triangle and most photographers knew what exposure is and how to manage it. Post triangle, most photographers don't, including those that claim to be experts and teach the stuff.

--
Is it always wrong
for one to have the hots for
Comrade Kim Yo Jong?
 
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We all choose where we spend our time inside this triangle:

5f45ba691cc047fbb48cfb60be3ed5d1.jpg
I had already the opportunity to say that I really like this illustration, not only it is funny but it really shows what the triangle is about.

Sometimes, I would like to undertand this obsession against the exposure triange. But it would be more likely a sociologist study than a scientific study.

There is absolutely no place for nuance in many threads I read, the triangle is necessarily wrong, and nothing else can be written.

It would be much better if the debate could end by simply stating that we disagree, I can perfectly understand that some people may not like it. But no, it is not enough, you have to say it is wrong otherwise it continues with the same arguments again and again.... To be honest, the figure that comes to my mind in these cases is not really a triangle but a circle.

I hope we can end the debate next time by just saying that we disagree.
I disagree with the presentation of the triangle. I prefer to see the sides labeled rather than the vertices:

52d5554c37a641c7865b54f890fc39c5.jpg

Furthermore, the triangle need not be equilateral, so my labeling method can provide better clarity. For example, with some of us it will look like this:

1397e83f661b479ab28e06ad25e98a64.jpg
 
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We all choose where we spend our time inside this triangle:

5f45ba691cc047fbb48cfb60be3ed5d1.jpg
I had already the opportunity to say that I really like this illustration, not only it is funny but it really shows what the triangle is about.

Sometimes, I would like to undertand this obsession against the exposure triange. But it would be more likely a sociologist study than a scientific study.

There is absolutely no place for nuance in many threads I read, the triangle is necessarily wrong, and nothing else can be written.

It would be much better if the debate could end by simply stating that we disagree, I can perfectly understand that some people may not like it. But no, it is not enough, you have to say it is wrong otherwise it continues with the same arguments again and again.... To be honest, the figure that comes to my mind in these cases is not really a triangle but a circle.

I hope we can end the debate next time by just saying that we disagree.
I disagree with the presentation of the triangle. I prefer to see the sides labeled rather than the vertices:

52d5554c37a641c7865b54f890fc39c5.jpg

Furthermore, the triangle need not be equilateral, so my labeling method can provide better clarity. For example, with some of us it will look like this:

1397e83f661b479ab28e06ad25e98a64.jpg
As people will tell you, the problem with the triangle is that it omits the fourth parameter. The fourth parameter is 'sharing photographs'. However, since the length of that side is usually close to zero it ends up looking like a triangle, even though it's a quadrilateral.

--
Is it always wrong
for one to have the hots for
Comrade Kim Yo Jong?
 
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The intended legacy was that we might move away from the whole film-emulation operational paradigm that digital cameras are based on. Alas, we haven't.
That is very true. And a good start would be to replace the ISO's sensitivity, or speed, control with a gain or output level control.
They can call it what they want if I can get an in-camera Raw histogram.
I wonder why one would even want a user control, if the camera was properly engineered. A modern mirrorless camera can get all the information that it needs from the sensor to make an automatic choice of gain. The most you'd want to do is bias it towards highlight or shadow protection.
That is certainly a practical approach, but I would still like a manual override.
 
Looking back at it it's fascinating how exactly the same conversation can carry on for twelve years. If you look through those threads they contain everything that's been said in this thread, just about.
I think it's partially because of the efforts to find single analytical measurements (such as SNR or even read noise, all measured after the A/D stage) of differences that in the end either affect or don't affect how the photo actually looks. We tend to forget that part.
One legacy of that whole discussion has become an obsession with 'dynamic range', which again is irrelevant to people hat don't want to take control of processing.
Most of the people who participate in these forums are keenly interested in post-processing, and even those who don't, often care about dynamic range. It's universal. Ansel Adams among many other film photographers was very focused on dynamic range. The painters of the Renaissance were obsessed by dynamic range rendering techniques of paint composition and brush technique. Maximizing dynamic range has always been important in visual arts.
The intended legacy was that we might move away from the whole film-emulation operational paradigm that digital cameras are based on. Alas, we haven't.
Indeed... the Exposure Triangle is an example of that.
The Triangle doesn't work for film any more than it does for digital.
It's actually an invention of the digital age.
It has actually been recognised as a simple fact since the birth of photography.
If you can find a reference to the 'photographic triangle' earlier than Peterson, or to the 'Exposure triangle' earlier than 2005, I'd be interested.

However, it's difficult to see how it could have been around since the birth of photography when standardised speed ratings didn't arrive until the mid 1930's and f-number wasn't formalised until the 1880's.
You are so literal, professor. The exposure triangle isn't a diagram or a teaching aid, and certainly wasn't dreamed up by an academician or an author, any more than evolution is a theory devised by Darwin. Both are simple facts of life that can be observed, and used, in a matter-of-fact way in everyday life.

The exposure triangle is simply the three-way relationship between exposure time, relative aperture and effective sensitivity of the medium. It did not have to be written down to exist. Just as evolution existed and was known to the more observant among us long before it was described by Wallace, Darwin and others.

I must say that I find the idea that the exposure triangle popped into existence when it first appeared in print in 2005 quite hilarious.
 
We all choose where we spend our time inside this triangle:

5f45ba691cc047fbb48cfb60be3ed5d1.jpg
I had already the opportunity to say that I really like this illustration, not only it is funny but it really shows what the triangle is about.
I disagree with the presentation of the triangle. I prefer to see the sides labeled rather than the vertices:

52d5554c37a641c7865b54f890fc39c5.jpg

Furthermore, the triangle need not be equilateral, so my labeling method can provide better clarity. For example, with some of us it will look like this:

1397e83f661b479ab28e06ad25e98a64.jpg
The idea behind the original triangle is that you are at a point inside the triangle where your relative distance from each of the three vertices corresponds to your mix of these three activities.
 
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snip
If you can find a reference to the 'photographic triangle' earlier than Peterson, or to the 'Exposure triangle' earlier than 2005, I'd be interested.

However, it's difficult to see how it could have been around since the birth of photography when standardised speed ratings didn't arrive until the mid 1930's and f-number wasn't formalised until the 1880's.
You are so literal, professor. The exposure triangle isn't a diagram or a teaching aid, and certainly wasn't dreamed up by an academician or an author, any more than evolution is a theory devised by Darwin. Both are simple facts of life that can be observed, and used, in a matter-of-fact way in everyday life.

The exposure triangle is simply the three-way relationship between exposure time, relative aperture and effective sensitivity of the medium. It did not have to be written down to exist. Just as evolution existed and was known to the more observant among us long before it was described by Wallace, Darwin and others.

I must say that I find the idea that the exposure triangle popped into existence when it first appeared in print in 2005 quite hilarious.
It appears that the conclusions you have documented here about the exposure triangle from personal observations of the photographic world are as meaningful and accurate as the conclusions you have documented by personally observing the natural world before the writings of Darwin who died in 1882. You present a fair analogy.

Dale B. Dalrymple
 
With many if not most systems, the ISO value is set by a digital input to a Programmable Gain Amplifier.
A clear assertion, I can't judge whether it is true or false.
It is followed by an ambiguous negation.
The ISO value is set by doing a lot of things to the image.
Perhaps I should read "is implemented" for "is set"? In the vernacular the ISO value "is set" (I will not hedge with "often") by turning a dial.
You've decided to participate by revealing your own personal false assumption!
Which is what? That it is possible to set the ISO value via a dial? I can certainly do that. It will go from Auto to 100 to 200 et cetera.
In a sub-thread discussing a variety internal implementations, it may be difficult to follow while focusing through the filter of a simple external implementation assumption.
I think you have misunderstood my observation. I am not discussing the internal implementation(s) that may be in play when one turns the dial. I do not know what they are.
It might (and usually does) involve a variable gain amplifier, but quite rarely is the gain of that (or those, there is often two of them)amplifier set directly according to the iSO.
"Directly" powerfully adds to the overall ambiguity. Was xpatUSA right but insufficiently precise in his formulation? It's hard to say.
In the very early days, when the processing chips in cameras were slow, 16 bit affairs without multipliers, dedicated imaging pipelines, SIMD or vector instructions, a bit of analog computing, via the use of a VGA to scale the input to the ADC was a useful thing to do.
We meander down Memory Lane. Many technical terms are mentioned. They don't clear anything up.
There's that false assumption filter at work.
What false assumption? That many technical terms were mentioned without clearing anything up?
More recently, variable gain has been more about optimising the use of the VGA.

The coup de grace, though no particular light is shed.

I fold.

That's what happens when you enter the twilight zone.

This exchange is what I mean by clear as milk.

Please note that I follow these threads in Open Talk with interest.
You've been able to participate without following much, but you did bring lots of milk! You do understand how these things work and know what to do to play along.
I may follow more than you realize. I am saying that many discussions of ISO on DPR do little to shed light on ISO or anything else.
Dale B Dalrymple
 
Sometimes, I would like to undertand this obsession against the exposure triange. But it would be more likely a sociologist study than a scientific study.
It couldn't be a 'scientific study' because the triangle is not a scientific thing. It's a graphic device, a diagram. For myself, I learned my photography before the triangle existed. None of the texts I used mentioned the triangle. I learned what exposure, shutter speed, aperture and film speed was . I learned how to set exposure in different situations with different films and processing and seeking different objectives.

Since the transition to digital, I began to find that many, maybe even most photographers didn't know what exposure is, they didn't know what aperture is. 'ISO' in the digital world is a bit more tricky, and I had to find out what it means these days, then I found the they didn't know what ISO is, either.

I began to wonder why so many photographers, capable intelligent people, no longer seem to know what are the very basic concepts of photography. So I began to look at the resources on the Web that they use nowadays. virtually every one told them nonsense, and most of them used this 'triangle' graphic as the explanation for this nonsense. In conversations on these forums, I found people justifying the nonsense 'because the triangle'.

In the end, the point is simple.

The triangle is not a basic part of photographic theory. It is a simplistic infographic that seeks to illustrate the APEX exposure system, but inconveniently omits the LV component. If it is a piece of pedagogy, then its utility must be in the its results. And since the vast majority of people 'educated' using the triangle have failed to grasp the basics, it seems to me to be useless.

When I learned photography no-one had heard of the triangle and most photographers knew what exposure is and how to manage it. Post triangle, most photographers don't, including those that claim to be experts and teach the stuff.
You are quite correct about the triangle.

So, could you sum up in plain language what people should know about ISO?
 
With many if not most systems, the ISO value is set by a digital input to a Programmable Gain Amplifier.
A clear assertion, I can't judge whether it is true or false.
It is followed by an ambiguous negation.
The ISO value is set by doing a lot of things to the image.
Perhaps I should read "is implemented" for "is set"? In the vernacular the ISO value "is set" (I will not hedge with "often") by turning a dial.
You've decided to participate by revealing your own personal false assumption!
Which is what? That it is possible to set the ISO value via a dial? I can certainly do that. It will go from Auto to 100 to 200 et cetera.
That your dial observation has any relevance to this subthread discussing internal implementations.
In a sub-thread discussing a variety internal implementations, it may be difficult to follow while focusing through the filter of a simple external implementation assumption.
I think you have misunderstood my observation. I am not discussing the internal implementation(s) that may be in play when one turns the dial. I do not know what they are.
If you are not discussing internal implementations, why are you posting in a subthread that is?
It might (and usually does) involve a variable gain amplifier, but quite rarely is the gain of that (or those, there is often two of them)amplifier set directly according to the iSO.
"Directly" powerfully adds to the overall ambiguity. Was xpatUSA right but insufficiently precise in his formulation? It's hard to say.
In the very early days, when the processing chips in cameras were slow, 16 bit affairs without multipliers, dedicated imaging pipelines, SIMD or vector instructions, a bit of analog computing, via the use of a VGA to scale the input to the ADC was a useful thing to do.
We meander down Memory Lane. Many technical terms are mentioned. They don't clear anything up.
There's that false assumption filter at work.
What false assumption? That many technical terms were mentioned without clearing anything up?
So is this a failure on your part to follow the discussion of internal implementations or a successful troll?
More recently, variable gain has been more about optimising the use of the VGA.

The coup de grace, though no particular light is shed.

I fold.

That's what happens when you enter the twilight zone.

This exchange is what I mean by clear as milk.

Please note that I follow these threads in Open Talk with interest.
You've been able to participate without following much, but you did bring lots of milk! You do understand how these things work and know what to do to play along.
I may follow more than you realize. I am saying that many discussions of ISO on DPR do little to shed light on ISO or anything else.
If they are not trolling, people who are confident that they are following the conversation yet , like you, fail to follow what the topic being discussed really is can seldom see much light in these discussions.

None are so blind as those who will not see.
 
You are quite correct about the triangle.

So, could you sum up in plain language what people should know about ISO?
ISO controls the relationship between exposure at the sensor and the lightness of the final image. The smaller the exposure the higher the ISO that will produce an image of normal tonal range.

--
Is it always wrong
for one to have the hots for
Comrade Kim Yo Jong?
 
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Looking back at it it's fascinating how exactly the same conversation can carry on for twelve years. If you look through those threads they contain everything that's been said in this thread, just about.
I think it's partially because of the efforts to find single analytical measurements (such as SNR or even read noise, all measured after the A/D stage) of differences that in the end either affect or don't affect how the photo actually looks. We tend to forget that part.
One legacy of that whole discussion has become an obsession with 'dynamic range', which again is irrelevant to people hat don't want to take control of processing.
Most of the people who participate in these forums are keenly interested in post-processing, and even those who don't, often care about dynamic range. It's universal. Ansel Adams among many other film photographers was very focused on dynamic range. The painters of the Renaissance were obsessed by dynamic range rendering techniques of paint composition and brush technique. Maximizing dynamic range has always been important in visual arts.
The intended legacy was that we might move away from the whole film-emulation operational paradigm that digital cameras are based on. Alas, we haven't.
Indeed... the Exposure Triangle is an example of that.
The Triangle doesn't work for film any more than it does for digital.
It's actually an invention of the digital age.
It has actually been recognised as a simple fact since the birth of photography.
If you can find a reference to the 'photographic triangle' earlier than Peterson, or to the 'Exposure triangle' earlier than 2005, I'd be interested.

However, it's difficult to see how it could have been around since the birth of photography when standardised speed ratings didn't arrive until the mid 1930's and f-number wasn't formalised until the 1880's.
You are so literal, professor. The exposure triangle isn't a diagram or a teaching aid, and certainly wasn't dreamed up by an academician or an author, any more than evolution is a theory devised by Darwin. Both are simple facts of life that can be observed, and used, in a matter-of-fact way in everyday life.
Please do feel free to give some examples of the observation of the exposure triangle in everyday life.
 

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