At a museum in Japan

This is a gallery at a museum in Japan that features Japanese artist. Please view at full screen.



Kit

digitcallous said:

This is a gallery at a museum in Japan that features Japanese artist. Please view at full screen.



Kit

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The photo is very noisy for such a low ISO. Was it shot in RAW or JPEG? If RAW what RAW developer did you use? As a basis of comparison compare your photo shot at ISO 320 with this one at ISO 4000, also with an RX100Vii.







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Tom

Tom, the picture was a JPEG. I have not really experimented with RAW, and I don't have any tools to take advantage of a RAW file. Do you have suggestions for what I can look into? Thanks.

Kit

digitcallous said:

Tom, the picture was a JPEG.

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I took the liberty of downloading and applying my old faithful copy of Silkypix V10 to it. It has an informative auto brightness feature that when applied brightened the image and indicated that it needed +0.81EV correction.

That means your use of -0.3EV exposure compensation was in fact the wrong choice, the result would have been better with +0.3 or +0.5 exposure correction.

Even the auto fix in the free FastStone Viewer (for Windows) made it look better and brighter, noise can also be reduced but its simple noise reducer does also reduce image fine detail quality. https://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm now at V7.8 for those who haven't been watching the download site.

digitcallous said:

I have not really experimented with RAW, and I don't have any tools to take advantage of a RAW file. Do you have suggestions for what I can look into? Thanks.

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Some tools do work on jpegs and many use the (expensive) Topaz AI to sort out noise and sharpness issues. https://www.topazlabs.com/topaz-photo-ai there is a free trial but you cannot produce results from it, only see the effects on screen with the trial. Pay the US$199 to "own" it and get output.

Years back in the very early days I used to use Neat Image as a noise reduction program for jpegs, it has improved and moved on from those days and is now way better than I remembered. https://ni.neatvideo.com/ and cost would be from $40 for standalone or for the Photoshop plugin. Confusing page, not sure if free trial available or nature (and cost) of various options without reading further there.

Using raw files can fix many sins caused by the camera (and the user), in particular the expensive DxO Photolab V7 Elite with its DeepPRIME XD can really make a difference for those who complain about the inevitable noise in digital images. https://www.dxo.com/dxo-photolab/ and they do have a free trial for 30 days to see if you like it before parting with the $$$.

There are some free raw converters and the best of them would be Capture One Express for Sony - I find it a pain to use after the ease of use of Photolab but with some diligent self-training I would probably get to like it. https://www.captureone.com/en/capture-one-express/sony some say it does skin colours better than Photolab can do.

In my case early on was always jpeg only and later went to raw+jpeg for the maybe difficult shots.

Years later I look back and wish I had taken raw all the time as raw converters get better and better over the years and some old favourite images (and cameras) can get a new life.

To fix that I started on taking always raw+jpeg all the time for maybe the last 10 or 12 years but do not always process the raw files, just use them like I did with film negatives, keep them safe and maybe do better later with them. Maybe only process about 10% of them the rest stay as jpegs only for memory purposes. But I still keep all the raw files.

Storage is cheap now so I do keep a 1TB drive with all the raw files and another 2TB drive with all the jpegs (and jpegs processed from raw) and video clips (not many) - plus of course a few backups of each drive kept separately.

Spending on cameras has slowed dramatically for me compared to say 10-15 years back, so now I can afford to spend on better software and spend on better hardware like more storage and better computers to speed up raw and video processing.

The final answer would be if you like what you get already from jpegs, then stay with it. But if some quality issues do annoy at times then think about shooting raw files and converting to jpeg to fix the problems. Or shoot raw+jpeg and decide later what to use.

digitcallous said:

Tom, the picture was a JPEG. I have not really experimented with RAW, and I don't have any tools to take advantage of a RAW file. Do you have suggestions for what I can look into? Thanks.

Kit

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The photo I posted was processed with DXO Photo Lab. I also use Topaz Photo AI which works on JPEG. With your permission, I would like to see what I could do with your photo and Topaz.

Tom, by all means, see what you can get from my Jpeg. I've got a lot of catching up to do to perhaps improve my photos.

Kit

digitcallous said:

This is a gallery at a museum in Japan that features Japanese artist. Please view at full screen.



Kit

Click to expand...

Aside from the technical issues about noise and whether you should learn to use raw files, my question is - where is that display? If we ever get back to Japan it may be something that we could include in our travels.

Back to the technical issues..... have a look at https://www.widsmob.com/tips/sony-raw-converter.html to start learning about what is available for Sony raw files. Also Google for "free raw converters" and "best raw converters" to get some idea of what is out there.

I did try an online raw converter where you upload the raw image and then download the jpeg result but the result of the first one I tried turned out worse than the camera jpeg. There seems to be no substitute for an installed proper raw conversion program.

Many swear by the free RawTherapee https://rawtherapee.com/ but I found its results for me could not touch what DxO Photolab could do and did it much easier.

As I am used to smaller sensors and the noise that troubles them then it is the noise reduction side of raw converters that makes most sense when in difficult or low light situations and using a higher ISO.

I am still using the "old" DxO Photolab V5 (now at V7) and it still does well enough for me but I will soon upgrade to get its improved noise reduction. Before that I used Silkypix up to V10 as I was so used to it (starting from V2), but it is "different" and does not have as good noise reduction as DxO Photolab even though it is a superbly featured raw converter.

I also play with Affinity Photo but mainly for its image editing abilities. https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/

There's a million choices to get confused with and the random forum advice will all talk about those million choices.

It mainly gets down to what we get used to, or if it has some superb special feature like that DxO Photolab noise reduction.

digitcallous said:

Tom, by all means, see what you can get from my Jpeg. I've got a lot of catching up to do to perhaps improve my photos.

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Here's a recent example shot of mine showing the benefit of shooting raw, particularly in low light. This is an ISO6400, handheld image, from the Grieghallen, Bergen:




OOC JPEG






Processed from raw using PhotoLab 6 Elite

The shot processed from raw has no noise, and is also sharper and more detailed.

digitcallous said:

Tom, by all means, see what you can get from my Jpeg. I've got a lot of catching up to do to perhaps improve my photos.

Kit

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I did two levels of noise removal, normal and strong. What I don't understand is why your photo is so noisy at ISO 320. It looks more like a JPEG at ISO 6400.

Normal





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Tom

Very nice shots, Nigel. I need to understand how I can get better results with my Sony.

Kit

Tom, I like the improvments you obtained. I'll read in detail everyone's suggestions and decide what tools I may add for photo-processing. And also looking at shooting RAW in conjunction.

Kit

Guy Parsons said:

digitcallous said:

This is a gallery at a museum in Japan that features Japanese artist. Please view at full screen.



Kit

Click to expand...

Aside from the technical issues about noise and whether you should learn to use raw files, my question is - where is that display? If we ever get back to Japan it may be something that we could include in our travels.

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This is the museum where the gallery shot was taken. It is named Narukawa Art Museum in the Nakone area a few hours outside of Tokyo.


There is a large picture window in this museum facing towards Mt Fuji (seen in the above link) except that it was overcast the day we were there so we couldn't see the mountain on that occasion.

Kit

digitcallous said:

Guy Parsons said:

Aside from the technical issues about noise and whether you should learn to use raw files, my question is - where is that display? If we ever get back to Japan it may be something that we could include in our travels.

Click to expand...

This is the museum where the gallery shot was taken. It is named Narukawa Art Museum in the Nakone area a few hours outside of Tokyo.

https://hakone-japan.com/things-to-do/museums/narukawa-art-museum/

There is a large picture window in this museum facing towards Mt Fuji (seen in the above link) except that it was overcast the day we were there so we couldn't see the mountain on that occasion.

Kit

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Ah, thanks for that.

Brings back memories as on our first trip to Japan in 2009 we stayed at some resort style place at the top of Lake Ashi and caught the "pirate ship" boat down to Hakone, then (vague memory) bus plus train plus bus plus cable car back (called "rope way" in Japan) to the other end of the lake.

Here's the view from the cable car at the top of the lake, did the ride up to the top station and back before going on the boat trip.


Inevitable grey smudge of pollution.

Next the ride on the boat and at the Hakone end of Lake Ashi...


Japanese like kitsch. Fuji lurking in the distance.

We wandered around Hakone before catching the train and missed seeing that museum.

Not being able to read the language didn't help at all when faced with the map...



That was a nice trip in 2009, after the GFC so tourism had quietened down thus was easy to get around, catch buses and trains etc. More crowded in 2011 and then horribly crowded in 2014. Our planned 2020 trip got wiped by Covid and so far no planning to get back.

digitcallous said:

Very nice shots, Nigel. I need to understand how I can get better results with my Sony.

Kit

Click to expand...

In my Hakone post I was using my Panasonic LX3 and in those early days was only shooting jpeg files. That limited me to ISO 400 as the upper limit as it got a bit tragic above that.

With Photolab and DeepPRIME noise reduction on raw files it became a new camera and now I have set the upper limit to ISO 3200. The really nice LX3 has a new lease on life.

Of course with the 1" sensor of my RX100M6 and the 4/3" sensor of my M4/3 gear the upper ISO limit has pushed up even further.

In my opinion, most cameras have the top two ISO settings there as some sort of bad marketing joke, but raw+Photolab actually makes those joke settings useful.