E-300 Raw

[Stacey_K]

Okay Stacey_K, I'd like to be convinced. I have the trial version.
Tell me your workflow & I'll load it & mimick it & do a vs. PSCS1.
I'd like to know if the Studio High Function is better.

Right now, and I'm prepared to change my mind, I'll see a 5%
increase in quality and a 150% reduction in speed of processing.

If your concern is how fast the file is processed use something else. I'm not sure what your point in this post was? If you can't see any difference between PS raw and studio high function, don't use it. I personally can't see how someone could NOT see the difference!
--

Stacey

 

[Raist3d]

Okay Stacey_K, I'd like to be convinced. I have the trial version.
Tell me your workflow & I'll load it & mimick it & do a vs. PSCS1.
I'd like to know if the Studio High Function is better.

It is definitively better. You get more detail.

• Raist

Yes olympus master is a joke unless you use the "edit" trick, which
gives you no adjustments which defeats the purpose of RAW. Olympus
Studio high function is AMAZING with RAW files but it costs $100
from B&H. Well worth the money IMHO.
--

Stacey

--
Raist3d
e-volt 300, and some Zuiko lenses. Fuji F710, Panasonic FZ20
Gameplay Programmer - vid games industry

 

[Raist3d]

Took a couple of shots in RAW to check out Olympus Master and Adobe
Camera RAW and to see how the RAW images look.

First, Olympus Master, bites! It's horribly slow, no preview and
limited adjustments, why even bother "giving" it with the camera.

Adobe Camera RAW is 1000 times better. I will be trying the 30 day
demo version of studio when I take Xmas family photos and comparing
it to Camera RAW.

I have found that so far the best RAW converter for the e-300 is Olympus Studio high function. Excellent detail and low noise comes out as grain.

I WOULD LOVE to work with Raw Shooter Essentials but they don't allow you to tag and move/copy/etc. around with jpegs. To me this is a HUGE drawback.

If Olympus Studio gets upgraded to support background raw conversion I would be really happy.

The Adobe raw converter seems to do a good job, but doesn't seem to match Oly Studio.

• Raist

PS: I haven't tried ACR or Capture one so I dunno if those are better than Oly Studio

Second, ORF seems to be very good. The sharpness is great and the
amount I was able to recover from the shot of the fern. Took
directly agains a bright sky. I didn't take a corresponding JPEG
(dumb) but I doubt I would've been able to recover the green
underside with a jpeg.

Third, I converted in 16bit, saved in lossless JPEG 2000 and then
in 8 bit normal JPEG, I can see very little difference even up to
300%. There is a slight, very slight difference on my monitor (Dell
20" wide screen).

Wonder if there would be more of a difference in large prints?

The following are my two "test" subjects. About all I could find
around the yard.

Thanks for looking.

The banana pod was shot at 150 (300) and wide open.
I think it is nice and sharp even handheld.



This fern came out better than I expected as far as being able to
recover the shadow areas, F4 at 40mm

--
Raist3d
e-volt 300, and some Zuiko lenses. Fuji F710, Panasonic FZ20
Gameplay Programmer - vid games industry

 

[Knight Palm]

After also testing the SilkyPix Initial Release [2005/09/01 Ver2.0.0.3], I would now rank the RAW engines from my brief comparison test as follows:

E-1 RAW engine resolution quality (colour quality not considered here) :

1. Pixmantec RawShooter Essentials ver. 1.1.3.15 (applied sharpening)
2. Olympus Studio High Function ver 1.30 (no sharpening applied)
3. SILKYPIX Developer Studio 2.0.0.3
4. Adobe Photoshop Elements with ACR 3.1
5. Olympus Studio Advanced High Function ver 1.30
6. Olympus Studio Advanced High Speed ver 1.30
6. Olympus Studio High Speed ver 1.30
6. Olympus Master ver 1.31.

E-300 RAW engine resolution quality (colour quality not considered here) :

1. Olympus Studio High Function ver 1.30 (no sharpening applied)
2. Olympus Master ver 1.31 using the "edit" trick
3. SILKYPIX Developer Studio 2.0.0.3
4. Pixmantec RawShooter Essentials ver. 1.1.3.15 (applied sharpening)
5. Olympus Studio High Speed Function ver 1.30
5. Olympus Master ver 1.31
7. Adobe Photoshop Elements with ACR 3.1

Resolution is not always the most important criteria, but can be for i.e. landscape printing on large output formats. For portraits, the colour, contrast and tone quality are more important then resolution quality and pixel artifact problems.

I'm probably giving too much credit to the RawShooter Essentials, since I had sharpening applied to that engine only, and basing this ranking on resolving details only. Considering the colour and tonal quality instead, would send the RSE to the last position of the tested developing engines. ACR seems to handle the E-1 RAW files better then RAW files from the E-300.

The SilkyPix output is really impressive with it's colour and contrast quality, and handles the demanding E-300 RAW files well using the default camera settings. Only when comparing for the resolving details, I find the High Function mode in Olympus Studio to be clearly better. SilkyPix also has loads of good tools for correcting the picture before RAW developing, should you need it. I noted that SilkyPix embeds a thumbnail picture of size 160x120x24, about 56.25kB in each of it's output .TIF files.

My conclusion is that the RAW data of the Olympus E-300 requires more from the RAW engines then for the E-1. The result in my opinion differs more for the E-300, then for the E-1. SilkyPix colours are closely matching Olympus colours and tones. "High Function" mode in Olympus Studio still provides the best colours and clearly brings out most resolution details.

I will continue to use Olympus Studio in "HF" mode as the main tool for developing my E-300 RAW files.

 

[Denis de Gannes]

Thanks for including your comments on SilkyPix, it confirms what I see with respect to the color and tones.