Dimage 7 EXPOSURING

[Torvik]

Hi Ken,

Pls. share we us your the details of your 3 settings, and in what conditions they are used for?

Thankz,
TorviK

People told me the exact same things about my QV 3000 pictures
compared to the D7.. The QV 3000 were much more alive. Changing
the exposure mode helped.

Now, I've saved the settings I use most often in either memory 1 or
2 and then night time settings in 3. Too bad a set of pictures
from Orland weren't exposed very well, but that's life.

When I compare images of my new D7 with image of my old Fuji 6900 and
my Casio 3000 the following occurs :

D7 images are badly exposed , light parts in the image have very
little detail
When I put the contrast on -2 or -3 exposuring is better but I have
hardly
any contrast. When I increase contrast in software the no detail in
lighter
parts comes back again.

I tried 2 wooks long all kind of settings but I cannot really get
it as I want.

It seems to me that there must be something wrong with my camera?

Who else has this problem ????

I'm sorry to have this problems with the D7 , my other camera's are
much
more reliable in getting well expose images

I bought the D7 because I wanted to be able to print A3 , the
sharpness is
ok but the rest is not !

Sorry Stephen ....................................

Marc

 

[Tony Brown62982]

Marc,> My suggestion is to use the EVF for exposure measurement. But, the EVF completely> eliminate the need of this experience. I usually just aim for the> highlight to see sufficient details, and I know from experience> with the D7 that I can get details in the shadow. Go ahead and> give it another try. Shoot some more images with the EVF ONLY. You> may have to adjust the brightness of the EVF up and down to match> the scene better.

When did you come up with this one Stephen? I really do find it a help under the difficult situations. My required ability is to shoot (photographically) my black and white dog in ordinary sunlit conditions. If it can't do that there's something wrong! It should be within the powers of the simplest photographic equipment. Using EVF on manual seems the only way I can get jpgs from it without burnt highlights or blocked shadows.

It is also within the P&S capabilities of my Casio QV3000 without all the technical struggles and kind assistance of you experienced intrepid explorers and highly technical after-users. The D7 HAS AWB and Programmed exposure etc.. It SHOULD be equipped to do what the Casio can and so much more.

You are the most helpful and kind and hard working of contributors but you support the failings of this product like a religious fanatic. It's the firmware of Minolta's that seems to have endless difficulty serving up in jpgs what it clearly captures in RAW.

Will Minolta ever do anything about it? I did photography from Minox to Gandolfi for 50 years and digital with several cameras for the last 2, but I never had this struggle to get a decent jpg from a camera under ordinary sunny conditions even with the contrast at -3. I see it is possible now by convoluted use of DIVU or ICC Profiles or curves or using the wrong Minolta profile - but we're doing the work the Minolta should be doing in-camera. Olympus's of various models from humble to E10 can, my idiot's Casio can (God help me, blaspheming like that! That Casio has been just great and CAN be used fully manually. It's just that I seldom have to. It also downloads the same number of Mb - not images - about 5 times as fast as the Minolta does even when the D7 is issuing RAW data even though they both use USB.)

I sincerely mean no disrespect to yourself, just the firmware. I pray they respond with a significant update. It has all the ingredients of a great camera. They just don't seem to have finished the software before bringing it to market. That includes DIVU. Can you do anything else with your PC while that is saving images?

Tony.

 

[henri56123]

Hi Tony

I've been making an awfull lot of photo's from various dogs in the last 3 years ; I have 2 Golden Retrievers and I'm the "unofficial" pet photographer in a dog training club;

As these are mostly some kind of "actions" shot, I use automatic and multizone metering most of the time; it is also under varying light condition and a multitude of colors going from black black to white with everything in between ; my previous Olumpus 2500 only had center weighted and point, but multizone from the D7 worked far superior to grasp all the colors, shades highlights and dark spots in the dogs;

what it takes: make the dog fill the frame, move the camera a bit around untill you see the correct colors & highlight in the frame,freeze the setting go back and eventually reframe

With the D7 I have practically no highlight burn outs anymore; note: all my camera settings remain neutral
henri

Marc,

My suggestion is to use the EVF for exposure measurement. But, the EVF completely
eliminate the need of this experience. I usually just aim for the
highlight to see sufficient details, and I know from experience
with the D7 that I can get details in the shadow. Go ahead and
give it another try. Shoot some more images with the EVF ONLY. You
may have to adjust the brightness of the EVF up and down to match
the scene better.

When did you come up with this one Stephen? I really do find it a
help under the difficult situations. My required ability is to
shoot (photographically) my black and white dog in ordinary sunlit
conditions. If it can't do that there's something wrong! It should
be within the powers of the simplest photographic equipment. Using
EVF on manual seems the only way I can get jpgs from it without
burnt highlights or blocked shadows.

It is also within the P&S capabilities of my Casio QV3000 without
all the technical struggles and kind assistance of you experienced
intrepid explorers and highly technical after-users. The D7 HAS AWB
and Programmed exposure etc.. It SHOULD be equipped to do what the
Casio can and so much more.

You are the most helpful and kind and hard working of contributors
but you support the failings of this product like a religious
fanatic. It's the firmware of Minolta's that seems to have endless
difficulty serving up in jpgs what it clearly captures in RAW.

Will Minolta ever do anything about it? I did photography from
Minox to Gandolfi for 50 years and digital with several cameras for
the last 2, but I never had this struggle to get a decent jpg from
a camera under ordinary sunny conditions even with the contrast at
-3. I see it is possible now by convoluted use of DIVU or ICC
Profiles or curves or using the wrong Minolta profile - but we're
doing the work the Minolta should be doing in-camera. Olympus's of
various models from humble to E10 can, my idiot's Casio can (God
help me, blaspheming like that! That Casio has been just great and
CAN be used fully manually. It's just that I seldom have to. It
also downloads the same number of Mb - not images - about 5 times
as fast as the Minolta does even when the D7 is issuing RAW data
even though they both use USB.)

I sincerely mean no disrespect to yourself, just the firmware. I
pray they respond with a significant update. It has all the
ingredients of a great camera. They just don't seem to have
finished the software before bringing it to market. That includes
DIVU. Can you do anything else with your PC while that is saving
images?

Tony.

 

[Tony Brown62982]

Hi Tony> I've been making an awfull lot of photo's from various dogs in the> last 3 years ; I have 2 Golden Retrievers and I'm the "unofficial"> pet photographer in a dog training club;> As these are mostly some kind of "actions" shot, I use automatic> and multizone metering most of the time; it is also under varying> light condition and a multitude of colors going from black black to> white with everything in between ; my previous Olumpus 2500 only> had center weighted and point, but multizone from the D7 worked far> superior to grasp all the colors, shades highlights and dark spots> in the dogs;

hi henri,

may I ask:-

1) does the lighting include direct sunlight? I would have great difficulty using Contrast =0 under those conditions.

2)I thought I read in this forum yesterday that multizone was unreliable and the recommendation was to use centre weighted or spot.

I am really finding the EVF + manual exposure routine that Stephen described as quite a powerful tool. I will document this in due course when time permits but I took pictures of my dog (B&W) in direct sunlight, with the Casio QV3000 on both normal and low contrast settings at -2, -1, 0 +1 +2 stops so as to get one close to spot on with the highlight details and shadow not blocked.

Then I did the same thing with D7 using manual + EVF. ONLY the Cont = -3 setting was used and a few close exposures were used to get the best there too.

Comparing the images in PS6 and looking at the histograms, while the D7 was spread from bottom to top, the Casio only took about 3/4 and 2/3 of the baseline of the histogram chart to plot all the levels. (That's normal and low contrast settings respectively.)

The above D7 chart was from the unprocessed jpgs. After processing with DIVU, the histogram had visibly bunched up the darks much closer (equivalent to loss of detail in the blacks) but the overall range of brightnesses still occupied the full histogram baseline.

Of course there are many combinations of circumstances, colour profiles etc. and it would take a whole week-end to get all the images for a comprehensive all enveloping documented comparison. I pulled the histogram charts off using Alt+PrntScrn so I could store the histograms along with the images.

I do photograph other things than the dog - it's just that his coat in sunlight encompasses all the Minolta problems (for me) I am trying to get over. Low contrast subjects are no problem and, in fact get a new, rich and good looking life to them. That's just the other side of the same coin.

 

[Stephen Lau]

Tony,

I am one of those guys who likes to face challenge and gets satisfaction from overcoming hurdles. We all know that the D7 is a technical challenging camera and it is far from being perfect, which I have said time after time again. But, the bottomline is: I can get very decent expsoure from this camera with my method and other users also have certain success with their own methods. Seriously I haven't encountered very big problem with this camera right from day one. Some of my images were shot under indeed very tough lighting condition. I have also seen some very high quality images by D7, which really demonstrates the camera is very capable, despite of its imperfection.

I also believe that if other fellow photographers, who are having problem but willing to try, I am more than willing to share with them my experience. My own experience may work but it may not work for others. One thing I have not done and also will not do is to push any camera to anoyone. Quite frequently, I was asked to recommend which digital camera to buy and D7 was never the one I recommended so far, since I know my friends are looking for 'easy' cameras with no need for post processing. The most recommended cameras from me are the Nikon 775, Nikon 995, Olympus 2100, Canon G1, S110 and S30, depends on the users.

I do understand where you are getting at and no personal offend was taken. Also, there are still so many I have not figured out about this camera. I will keep on working on this myself and along with others. I just hope that you or other D7 users do not get so frustrated to miss out on an uunique camera like the D7. Take care.

Marc,

My suggestion is to use the EVF for exposure measurement. But, the EVF completely
eliminate the need of this experience. I usually just aim for the
highlight to see sufficient details, and I know from experience
with the D7 that I can get details in the shadow. Go ahead and
give it another try. Shoot some more images with the EVF ONLY. You
may have to adjust the brightness of the EVF up and down to match
the scene better.

When did you come up with this one Stephen? I really do find it a
help under the difficult situations. My required ability is to
shoot (photographically) my black and white dog in ordinary sunlit
conditions. If it can't do that there's something wrong! It should
be within the powers of the simplest photographic equipment. Using
EVF on manual seems the only way I can get jpgs from it without
burnt highlights or blocked shadows.

It is also within the P&S capabilities of my Casio QV3000 without
all the technical struggles and kind assistance of you experienced
intrepid explorers and highly technical after-users. The D7 HAS AWB
and Programmed exposure etc.. It SHOULD be equipped to do what the
Casio can and so much more.

You are the most helpful and kind and hard working of contributors
but you support the failings of this product like a religious
fanatic. It's the firmware of Minolta's that seems to have endless
difficulty serving up in jpgs what it clearly captures in RAW.

Will Minolta ever do anything about it? I did photography from
Minox to Gandolfi for 50 years and digital with several cameras for
the last 2, but I never had this struggle to get a decent jpg from
a camera under ordinary sunny conditions even with the contrast at
-3. I see it is possible now by convoluted use of DIVU or ICC
Profiles or curves or using the wrong Minolta profile - but we're
doing the work the Minolta should be doing in-camera. Olympus's of
various models from humble to E10 can, my idiot's Casio can (God
help me, blaspheming like that! That Casio has been just great and
CAN be used fully manually. It's just that I seldom have to. It
also downloads the same number of Mb - not images - about 5 times
as fast as the Minolta does even when the D7 is issuing RAW data
even though they both use USB.)

I sincerely mean no disrespect to yourself, just the firmware. I
pray they respond with a significant update. It has all the
ingredients of a great camera. They just don't seem to have
finished the software before bringing it to market. That includes
DIVU. Can you do anything else with your PC while that is saving
images?

Tony.

 

[Darrin Behm]

That is exactly one of the reasons I ordered the D5 was that it would be a challenge. If I wanted easy I would have gotten one of the below models, but the D5 had all the features I wanted and at the right price. I don't want something I will be bored with easily.

Darrin

Stephen Lau wrote:

Quite frequently, I was asked to recommend which digital camera to buy and D7 was never the one I recommended so far, since I know my friends are looking for 'easy' cameras with no need for post processing. The most recommended cameras from me are the Nikon 775, Nikon 995, Olympus 2100, Canon G1, S110 and S30, depends on the users.