Bart van Hofwegen

When I travel in Europe (where I live), I carry the Q, plus a Nikon D810 plus 24mm 1.8 plus 50mm 1.8 plus 70-200 2.8 (a beast...) a hard drive, spare batteries, a power pack, a tablet, a book and some more loose items in my carry on. Always. There is even room for a sandwich... But that's about it, clothes and such are in my suitcase. Security wants to dig it all out now and then, that is a bummer but once you know that you can prepare. So I am not sure what you have been told about carry on in Europe, but check your airline(s) for details to make sure. Don't depend on hearsay. BTW, I was told that the U.S. is much more restrictive than Europe... On the other hand, I have also traveled with just the Q once and I must say I rather enjoyed it. No long lens of course, but depending on the goal of the trip, that can be just fine. And a lot less weight.

I understand what you say, it makes a lot of sense. Depending on the subject matter, MF can be a lot of fun. You are right about the awareness part. I was brought up using manual focus for nearly 20 years, simply because AF did not exist or, later, was too expensive, and that experience made things like visualizing DOF in your mind and selecting the focus point something that is engraved in the brain. So these days, for similar types of work, I still do the same, but I will let the AF do the work when I have chosen aperture and focus point. It saves a small amount of time, but I guess the gain is very limited. But that does not mean that as soon as one engages AF, shooting becomes "spray and pray" of course. And for fast action street photography,which I do a lot, the AF is a wonder. I find that "zone focusing" for street photography with the Q is more like spray and pray, because the plane where things are tack-sharp is still rather shallow, especially close-up. DOF is way smaller than with film. Above that, I prefer shallow DOF from shooting fully open. I like my subject to benefit from the razor sharp lens, and often the only way to do that in fast paced action is to use the AF, better yet, the Q's autofocus is so fast that it is an excellent tool for that type of shot.

EVF? Indeed. Not the best, mildly put. On/Off? Takes getting used to, but indeed, I had that at first. A stop less noise? Don't get me started, there is another thread in the forum where I make a statement. No, the Q is not the best performing FF out there, but mileage varies depending on discipline when it comes to setting exposure and what it is you want to achieve. Hint: Use daylight. Try to avoid having to push more than half a stop in post (better yet, keep it far below)... (ETTR or "overexpose" as far as the camera is concerned (assuming RAW). Experiment. ) The AF is so good and reliable that I stopped doing manual or zone. The lens deserves spot on focus and the AF just nails it. I love this camera for what it is: small, silent, sharp, sturdy. It is not a pixel peepers wet dream, but it gets my job done just fine. Good luck!

To me this would seem like a case of "If it's too good to be true, then it probably is"

True, things are slowly improving at Adobe. I guess -but like you I do not really know due to avoiding it- that Lightroom should offer the same thing, it is basically the same engine in a different wrapper. Or so I've been told...

You are most welcome.

Yes Jaap, I know, thank you. Somehow this discussion became a mixup between the original subject, the camera profile used in ACR and Lightroom (a .DCP file), and the ICC color profile used for encoding the final image, such as for example sRGB. And I have to admit: that was my fault. I believe people like you and me certainly know our way around those things and they are not really hard to understand really, but not everyone. Sometimes it is hard to cater both groups. But I repeat my statement to all: the built in camera profile in Lightroom and ACR as shipped by Adobe is not optimal, mildly put, especially for skin tones. It is worth while to create your own profile or profiles using a color-checker card and the Adobe Profile Editor (preferred by me) or the software that comes with the color-checker when you buy one. Tip: try to light the card as evenly as you can and prevent colorful surroundings when shooting it. This benefits almost every camera that you shoot RAW with, besides the Q. For those who do not want to go through that process, I will send you mine for the Q if you drop me a mail at bartvanhofwegen@gmail.com

Deliberate, yes, but for quality in small size and weight. As many designs show, top quality 28mm with a full 35mm image circle sure is possible, but none of them (Zeiss Otus anyone? ) are near the handsome size and weight of the Q's lens. Not even close. The pixels peepers who peep at edges may find some loss, but what are they looking at then? Photographs? Hardly. I am very happy with the quality of the Q.

Of course, ISO can be set. Easily is another thing, most of my other cameras offer at least the same options for that. All of them offer better auto ISO. "Run and gun" for me is point and shoot with a small camera, and the Q is great for that, especially with the superb auto focus. But in low light I simply cannot rely on setting too high an ISO value, the series might just have that one great shot that gets rejected for (rather annoying) noise and could have been shot three stops lower. That is when auto ISO is useful, and that is where the Q lacks and is not in the game for me. In bright light however, it rocks... so if a simple (because that what it is) software change could make it much better, why not?

I understand what you mean, and for those that import with naming "as is" it could be useful, but I always rename files to a meaningful name when importing (or scanning), so I am not tied to any one cataloging program (such as LR or PH1). Renaming for me is usually as such: "mm-dd-yyyy-hh-mm-ss-description of session-original file name". This helps in sorting and searching for sessions by name, even from OS level. And every session import goes into a folder named "mm-dd-description of session", under a parent folder for the year. Never missed one single pic, after about 35 years of shooting.

Indeed, sad. Only very few really useful changes in general, and the one I would like the most is not there: an auto ISO function that works, instead of being utterly useless. In fact, I do not bring the Q to run and gun gigs where light is low anymore because of this. The Q is not such a great performer on high ISO, so a good auto ISO could really be an asset, to be able to squeeze out the best when there is no time to fiddle all the dials.

For what it's worth, some answers. All these issues are very subjective of course, there is no right or wrong. Many will disagree with what I have to say. Filters: I never use them for protection, only for effects. I always use the hood for this, on all my lenses, in every situation. This serves as protection but also gets you better contrast. It is big misunderstanding to think that hoods are only useful when you have the sun (or other light source) in front of you. That's were they are the most beneficial of course, but in other situations they often lead to better results and protect at the same time. I have not damaged a front element for more than 20 years, and the last one was actually fit with a filter. The shards of the damaged filter badly scratched the front element. Of course, without the filter the lens had also needed repair but now I also lost a filter. If you have many lenses (with hoods!), the savings of not using filters could at some point even make up for one repair. Please note that this is my way of working, and that I do not accept any responsibility for damages to lenses when following my procedure. Being careful is probably the best advice. If you know that your way of working is risk-prone, by all means add more protection. Sharpening: if you use ACR, cut back or completely switch off the sharpening in the Adobe RAW converter, that might help. But indeed, the Q files do not need that much sharpening, the lens is already very good. There are many opinions (that sometimes may come across as religions) on sharpening. I find that what many call "capture sharpening" is hardly ever really useful. Maybe only for cameras with an anti-aliasing filter, but please note that that ACR already compensates for that, even if you dial down the sharpening completely, ACR will still perform some behind your back, somewhat stronger for camera's with AA. I only apply edge sharpening at the last stage, when I have scaled the image to its final size (and have saved a copy just before that!) and use sharpening that targets the intended size and medium (screen or print). Profiles: I also use Nikon and know what you mean, I also was very disappointed. My advice is: start making your own! Buy a ColorChecker target and do some experimenting. It may take some time to get the hang of it and come up with good profiles (even lighting of the target is essential), but is worth the effort in the end. I found the profile for the Q in ACR (the other is embedded in the DNG so strictly speaking not made by Adobe) to be pretty bad indeed, way too red in many cases. I made my own for the summer sun that performs better in the reds but not so in the blues. I do this for all my camera's and sometimes even for one shoot in a particular type of light. A quicker method is to use the HSL tool in ACR to tweak the color balance, but beware to only use small shifts there, the tool is notorious for artifacts when overdone, mostly banding. Camera calibration is another useful tab, albeit less so. I could send you my profile for free if you drop me a mail at bartvanhofwegen@gmail.com, and if you search the net you will find others offering profiles, mostly commercially. But the Q is not sold in huge volumes of course, which makes the availability low and maybe that is also the reason that Adobe did not really make an effort here. If you stick with the Q, you will have to invest some time in this field, but it will pay off. I make my own profiles for a lot of camera's nowadays.

The DNG always holds uncorrected data, the out-of-camera JPG always has the correction applied by the camera firmware. The DNG also includes what is called an "opcode", a set of instructions for correction, that most raw converters such as Adobe's Lightroom and ACR automatically apply. With Adobe, there is not even a way to turn this off. But if you open the DNG in tools such as FastRawViewer, RawDigger or RPP, then you see the image stored in the DNG without correction.

When using DNG RAW from the Q in Lightroom, the lens profile, that is embedded in the Q's DNG (!), is automatically applied. (And even if you would not want this, there is no way to switch it off, other than using another RAW converter such as RPP)

The out of camera JPG's are already corrected in the camera itself, so I would say no correction needed anymore.