First nine days with R6II

Canon_Guy wrote:

Congrats to a new camera.

There seem to be quite a learning curve of working with R6II files. Please do not take it personally, I only write it openly.

That's fine. Feedback is always appreciated, even when not agreed with.

Colors of the first photo are scary

I did wonder whether to adjust the white balance for this one, but that is how it looked in the restaurant. This one (also in my OP) was taken at the same time, but facing the other way (the woman was the one who took the one of us):

The lighting facing us was different. Here is the version of us, taking the white balance off the white lettering on my shirt:

And here's one taking the white balance off the mat:

I agree that both are less 'scary' than the first version I posted, but they are also less like what the lighting actually looked like facing us. On balance, I prefer the look of the first of these two reprocessed ones, though, so thanks for prompting me to make the change.

and majority of pictures are way oversharpened (glowing halos around edges, washed out colors on edges).

Now this I don't see at all (except maybe a little in the last shot). Sharpening halos are caused by USM sharpening, which DXO doesn't use (at least I don't use it with DXO). All these just use the standard DXO lens corrections, which incorporates their own sharpening (not USM, which they include as an option if you want to use it). I don't add anything to that. I've examined all these at 100% on my monitor, and see a lot of detail, but no sharpening artifacts, and no sharpening halos. I think what you're seeing is the very good amount of detail that's possible with the R6II and DXO. Coming from different combinations, it can be easy to see actual good sharpness as oversharpening. A couple of the shots have a bit of glow on some edges, but not on the plane of focus, so not caused by sharpening. What you're probably seeing there is a bit of LOCA.

The last one shows it the most evidently.

Yes, this one might need a bit of toning down. Although DXO is an excellent processor, one thing it doesn't do as well as Lightroom is show you exactly how an image will look before you process it (because the processing takes a lot of power). You can only see small previews of bits of the image with all the settings applied. I adjusted a couple of settings on this one (turned down the smart lighting from medium to slight, turned down the clear view (PL's version of LR's dehaze) a bit, and turned down the microcontrast (PL's version of LR's clarity) a bit too). This is what it looks like now:

Compared with the earlier version:

I'm actually not sure which of these I like better. It's up to individual taste, but thanks for pushing me to at least try it differently.

Or is it the DxO what performs that badly? Also the HDR on the last picture is patchy in the sky and trees and poorly handled

I think what you're actually seeing here is the patchy clouds in the sky. Notice the difference between the trees closer to the sun, and the ones on the left near the top. The top left corner was the only part of the sky with no wispy clouds in it at that time.

- most probably it is the DxO thing too.

Looking on the DPR's samples gallery I am sure R6II can deliver WAY better results. It is just about a good SW and its correct using. Which can be learned at the end quite easily.

Thanks for the feedback, even though I disagree with most of it. It's also possible, of course, that the images look different on different monitors. I've had the experience before of one or two people saying my images looked oversharpened, and others saying they didn't. So it could be a difference in viewing medium. A lot of it is also down to individual taste. I've been processing digital images for over twenty years, with Photoshop and Lightroom, and DXO. My tastes change a bit, but I've got my DXO settings to where they mostly give me the results I like. I know what oversharpening, for my taste, looks like, and I know what detail extraction looks like. I'm happy with the detail that DXO gives me.