Still loving the M6II, even more with new DXO

KEG wrote:

One more thing to like with DXO is that it is possible to use Fuji classic chrome with camera with good ergonomics.

LOL, that’s about as close to Fuji as I can venture!  

R2

KevinRA wrote:

Hi R2 - thanks for posting. I had a quick look at the originals - and to be honest struggle to see a huge difference - unlike in Alistair's examples.

E.g. for your images, Deep Prime is doing very very nicely.

Deep Prime (Classic) is indeed still really really good.

DPXD is another tool in the toolbox tho.

R2

KEG wrote:

One more thing to like with DXO is that it is possible to use Fuji classic chrome with camera with good ergonomics.

I’ve used the Filmpack version of Velvia on a couple of old low ISO landscape shots, and really liked the results.

Larry Rexley wrote:

My findings support what you both say: My feeling was that with DPP4 I could only go to about ISO 3200... I was getting pretty messy results at ISO 6400. With DxO PL4 and PL5's Deep Prime I felt that I could get consistently good results to about ISO 12,800 -- about two extra stops.

With PL6 I think you're right --- I'm getting usable full-resolution images at ISO 25,600 or so! Above that the shadows start losing too much detail --- although Deep Prime XD can still clean up the noise, amazingly, and if you're careful, you can still get images that don't look like they were shot at such extreme ISOs with an APS-C camera.

Hi Larry, With these super high ISO shots are you still setting the M6 mkii at 3,200, underexposing, and then "pushing" to your desired exposure?

Thanks very much for continuing to share the results of your testing and procedures!

Rod

Hi Larry, you referred to Deep Prime and Deep Prime XD "intensity" settings. I don't have that slider on my version. I have three sliders: Luminance, Dead Pixels, and Noise Model. Are you referring to the luminance setting? Is it called something different on different versions? I have an intensity setting on my unsharp mask panel. Out of interest, how much sharpness do you think unsharp mask adds to what Deep Prime already gives with its lens sharpness settings? I haven't yet used any unsharp mask on my Deep Prime and Deep Prime XD images, because I find that the lens correction modules, with their associated 'lens sharpness' setting, gives me plenty already.

Alastair Norcross wrote:

Hi Larry, you referred to Deep Prime and Deep Prime XD "intensity" settings. I don't have that slider on my version. I have three sliders: Luminance, Dead Pixels, and Noise Model. Are you referring to the luminance setting? Is it called something different on different versions? I have an intensity setting on my unsharp mask panel. Out of interest, how much sharpness do you think unsharp mask adds to what Deep Prime already gives with its lens sharpness settings? I haven't yet used any unsharp mask on my Deep Prime and Deep Prime XD images, because I find that the lens correction modules, with their associated 'lens sharpness' setting, gives me plenty already.

Apologies, yes I did mean DeepPRIME 'Luminosity' and not 'Intensity' (that's a sharpness setting).

I tend to set the Lens correction Global setting to a standard value for a particular lens (zero for the EF-M 32mm f1.4, 20 for the 22mm f2 and 11-22, 50 for the EF-S 55-250 IS STM for example) and then fine tune using Unsharp mask setting. The reason for that is that the lens correction settings are a black box to me, I don't really know what they do, whereas the unsharp mask settings are more transparent and I'm very familiar with the settings and their effects on the image.

Particularly the 'Edge offset' (which I think is badly named) in the unsharp mask allows you to increase the edge and corner sharpness relative to the center sharpness... the DxO lens corrections don't seem to balance that out and some lenses like the 15-45, Laowa 9 really need it.

The other reason I use the unsharp mask settings is that I tend to use manual focus lenses fairly frequently (Roki 8, 12, 135, Laowa 9, EF-S 55-250 IS STM with the 1.5x teleconverter [no DxO corrections for the TC] and especially a Meade ETX-125 telescope for astro). The DxO lens corrections are disabled for lenses DxO doesn't know about, the only option is unsharp mask for those.

nwboater33 wrote:

Larry Rexley wrote:

My findings support what you both say: My feeling was that with DPP4 I could only go to about ISO 3200... I was getting pretty messy results at ISO 6400. With DxO PL4 and PL5's Deep Prime I felt that I could get consistently good results to about ISO 12,800 -- about two extra stops.

With PL6 I think you're right --- I'm getting usable full-resolution images at ISO 25,600 or so! Above that the shadows start losing too much detail --- although Deep Prime XD can still clean up the noise, amazingly, and if you're careful, you can still get images that don't look like they were shot at such extreme ISOs with an APS-C camera.

Hi Larry, With these super high ISO shots are you still setting the M6 mkii at 3,200, underexposing, and then "pushing" to your desired exposure?

Thanks very much for continuing to share the results of your testing and procedures!

Rod

Yes, for my high ISO shots I never shoot RAW with the M6ii at an ISO any higher than 3200, I have that value set as the max in the menu settings. I push to higher ISO in DxO PL6. I explain a little more about that in the post in the DxO thread:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/66710955

When I shoot video (which has no RAW or high quality option) I allow the ISO to float to 12,800 for night videography. I shoot 4k video with f1.4 lenses, process video exposure, contrast, color, and image stablize aggressively clip by clip in Adobe Premier Pro, then export the image as a 1080p video for YouTube to maintain sharpness and reduce the apparent noise.

I believe my results are some of the very best night railroad video that can be found, much of it in extremely low light (streetlight lighting or worse) almost looks like it was shot in daylight!

Here's a link to my latest night video:

https://youtu.be/Uk-SIqsLOfY

I even created a special monopod 'rig' for shooting video with two fast f1.4 primes: one wide angle and one telephoto (here shown with the Sigma 16mm f1.4 and Rokinon 135mm f2.0 with Viltrox 0.71x speed booster making it a 100mm f1.4 lens). In extremely low light I can shoot at 1/40s which still gives steady images with the monopod, but I prefer 1/60 - 1/125 sec minimum when there is enough light to freeze the train better.

This gives me the ability to get a variety of shots with the trains and train crews with 2 cameras simultaneously, as at night I can't use the slow zooms! I can set up and break down this setup in about 30 seconds, and be off on my bicycle with it in my deep camera bag to catch the next spot the train will be! Works like a charm!

Sorry that's a bit off topic... sure wish there was something like DxO DeepPrime for video!!!

Larry Rexley wrote:

nwboater33 wrote:

Larry Rexley wrote:

My findings support what you both say: My feeling was that with DPP4 I could only go to about ISO 3200... I was getting pretty messy results at ISO 6400. With DxO PL4 and PL5's Deep Prime I felt that I could get consistently good results to about ISO 12,800 -- about two extra stops.

With PL6 I think you're right --- I'm getting usable full-resolution images at ISO 25,600 or so! Above that the shadows start losing too much detail --- although Deep Prime XD can still clean up the noise, amazingly, and if you're careful, you can still get images that don't look like they were shot at such extreme ISOs with an APS-C camera.

Hi Larry, With these super high ISO shots are you still setting the M6 mkii at 3,200, underexposing, and then "pushing" to your desired exposure?

Thanks very much for continuing to share the results of your testing and procedures!

Rod

Yes, for my high ISO shots I never shoot RAW with the M6ii at an ISO any higher than 3200, I have that value set as the max in the menu settings. I push to higher ISO in DxO PL6. I explain a little more about that in the post in the DxO thread:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/66710955

When I shoot video (which has no RAW or high quality option) I allow the ISO to float to 12,800 for night videography. I shoot 4k video with f1.4 lenses, process video exposure, contrast, color, and image stablize aggressively clip by clip in Adobe Premier Pro, then export the image as a 1080p video for YouTube to maintain sharpness and reduce the apparent noise.

I believe my results are some of the very best night railroad video that can be found, much of it in extremely low light (streetlight lighting or worse) almost looks like it was shot in daylight!

Here's a link to my latest night video:

https://youtu.be/Uk-SIqsLOfY

I even created a special monopod 'rig' for shooting video with two fast f1.4 primes: one wide angle and one telephoto (here shown with the Sigma 16mm f1.4 and Rokinon 135mm f2.0 with Viltrox 0.71x speed booster making it a 100mm f1.4 lens). This gives me the ability to get a variety of shots with the trains and train crews with 2 cameras simultaneously, as at night I can't use the slow zooms! I can set up and break down this setup in about 30 seconds, and be off on my bicycle with it in my deep camera bag to catch the next spot the train will be! Works like a charm!

Hi Larry thanks for your prompt and helpful reply! I haven't tried XD yet but you are encouraging me to do it.

I'm now using LR for my PP and DAM. However I send my CR3s from LR to PL6 and back as Linear dng's with 'noise and optical corrections only'. It will be interesting to see how the 'pushing' from 3200 to proper exposure works out in LR.

I get a chuckle thinking about you chasing after trains on your bike. Cool!

Rod

Larry Rexley wrote:

Alastair Norcross wrote:

Hi Larry, you referred to Deep Prime and Deep Prime XD "intensity" settings. I don't have that slider on my version. I have three sliders: Luminance, Dead Pixels, and Noise Model. Are you referring to the luminance setting? Is it called something different on different versions? I have an intensity setting on my unsharp mask panel. Out of interest, how much sharpness do you think unsharp mask adds to what Deep Prime already gives with its lens sharpness settings? I haven't yet used any unsharp mask on my Deep Prime and Deep Prime XD images, because I find that the lens correction modules, with their associated 'lens sharpness' setting, gives me plenty already.

Apologies, yes I did mean DeepPRIME 'Luminosity' and not 'Intensity' (that's a sharpness setting).

I tend to set the Lens correction Global setting to a standard value for a particular lens (zero for the EF-M 32mm f1.4, 20 for the 22mm f2 and 11-22, 50 for the EF-S 55-250 IS STM for example) and then fine tune using Unsharp mask setting. The reason for that is that the lens correction settings are a black box to me, I don't really know what they do, whereas the unsharp mask settings are more transparent and I'm very familiar with the settings and their effects on the image.

Particularly the 'Edge offset' (which I think is badly named) in the unsharp mask allows you to increase the edge and corner sharpness relative to the center sharpness... the DxO lens corrections don't seem to balance that out and some lenses like the 15-45, Laowa 9 really need it.

The other reason I use the unsharp mask settings is that I tend to use manual focus lenses fairly frequently (Roki 8, 12, 135, Laowa 9, EF-S 55-250 IS STM with the 1.5x teleconverter [no DxO corrections for the TC] and especially a Meade ETX-125 telescope for astro). The DxO lens corrections are disabled for lenses DxO doesn't know about, the only option is unsharp mask for those.

Thanks Larry.

Larry Rexley wrote:

Rokinon 135mm f2.0 with Viltrox 0.71x speed booster making it a 100mm f1.4 lens).

I am trying to figure this stuff out.

135 x 1.6 = 216

216 x .71 = 153.36

So on the M6II instead of looking like a 216mm lens on a FF your 135mm lens with a .71 speed booster would look like a 153mm FF lens on a cropped Canon sensor ?

https://www.metabones.com/article/of/faq

Alastair Norcross wrote:

Nice job. Are you sure about the version number? I just checked for updates, and it says I'm up to date, with version 6.1.0.34 being the newest version available. Are there slightly different version numbers for Mac and Windows? I'm running an iMac M1.

Running DxO Photolab 6 this morning on the Macbook, I got an in-app notice that 6.1.1 is available, so I've done the upgrade.

Larry Rexley wrote:

Alastair Norcross wrote:

Nice job. Are you sure about the version number? I just checked for updates, and it says I'm up to date, with version 6.1.0.34 being the newest version available. Are there slightly different version numbers for Mac and Windows? I'm running an iMac M1.

Running DxO Photolab 6 this morning on the Macbook, I got an in-app notice that 6.1.1 is available, so I've done the upgrade.

Thanks for the head's up ... upgraded also.  Any idea what changes have been made?