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3 questions

Steve McGarrett

By Steve McGarrett
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Steve McGarrett

Steve McGarrett

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Hi guys,

 

Three questions.

 

1) Bad quality in Play mode. Yes, I've searched in the archives and I've selected DNG+(L)JPG, but the image it's still very "pixelated" at mid iso settings, large green or red squares especially in shadows, like a VERY basic, low-res JPG quality. Of course when importing DNGs on the hard drive there is no problem at all, but I wonder if that's really normal...? Any setting could I have messed with?

2) Is there a fast way to return to the center after zooming in and moving the point around the frame?

3) Is there a way to put the Electronic Shutter "on/extended/off" setting in a shortcut key or at least in the Favourite menu?

 

Thank you all

S.

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ramarren

ramarren

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Hi guys,

 

Three questions.

 

1) Bad quality in Play mode. Yes, I've searched in the archives and I've selected DNG+(L)JPG, but the image it's still very "pixelated" at mid iso settings, large green or red squares especially in shadows, like a VERY basic, low-res JPG quality. Of course when importing DNGs on the hard drive there is no problem at all, but I wonder if that's really normal...? Any setting could I have messed with?

2) Is there a fast way to return to the center after zooming in and moving the point around the frame?

3) Is there a way to put the Electronic Shutter "on/extended/off" setting in a shortcut key or at least in the Favourite menu?

 

Thank you all

S.

 

 

- the review quality issue with DNG-only capture sounds like an early firmware is installed. Be sure the camera is updated to firmware 3.0. 

- no

- no. Fast way to get into the Electronic shutter menu: press upper left button, press lower left button, then joystick up, then joystick right. It's pretty quick.

 

(I'm not sure why you'd need the electronic shutter in a shortcut or favorites menu ... it's not really something that you switch in and out of constantly in normal use. I leave it on Extended most of the time and select a different mode when appropriate.)

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Steve McGarrett

Steve McGarrett

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I have a user profile 'Theatre' which includes setting the electronic shutter. I have assigned user profiles to the TR button.

It's a workaround, but it would certainly be better if it could be assigned to a custom button.

 

Yes, I've just figured out that storing it in a profile should be faster... I'm going to do this way.

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ramarren

ramarren

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I have firmware 3.0 already installed, and I've tried DNG+JPG as I was aware of the issue.

Image when in Play is not blurred, I can say if it's in focus, it's just... just like it was poorly demosaiced here and there, pixelated, squares of green/red pixels somewhere etc.

 

 

Hmm. My SL is set to DNG-only, with JPEG settings for L and default imaging options. I took a quick snap of my bookcase and reviewed it on screen, at normal and max magnification, snapped the LCD with my iPhone. At full resolution, the iPhone exhibits all the LCD pixels (which looks noisier than it does to the eye) so I down-rezzed the photos of the screen to 1024 pixels on the long edge, simulating how it looks to my eye: 

 

38988519181_f6fbf83391_o.jpg

 
25117299958_942c945448_o.jpg
 
What you're describing sounds like max zoom on a badly underexposed image. Can you show a photo like the above two? 
 

 

I have a user profile 'Theatre' which includes setting the electronic shutter. I have assigned user profiles to the TR button.

It's a workaround, but it would certainly be better if it could be assigned to a custom button.

 

Yes, that works well ... I don't use it for electronic shutter switching, likely because I almost never go to the full electronic shutter. (I have the user profile menu set to the long-press on the video record button, and the short press on that button disabled when not in video mode.) The few times I've done some theater shooting, the SL mechanical shutter is so quiet it didn't disturb anyone (I checked by doing some test shooting beforehand and asking the theater manager and director to tell me if the shutter was too loud), but I could see if they were recording music it would be good to switch to the electronic shutter. 

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Steve McGarrett

Steve McGarrett

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Hmm. My SL is set to DNG-only, with JPEG settings for L and default imaging options. I took a quick snap of my bookcase and reviewed it on screen, at normal and max magnification, snapped the LCD with my iPhone. At full resolution, the iPhone exhibits all the LCD pixels (which looks noisier than it does to the eye) so I down-rezzed the photos of the screen to 1024 pixels on the long edge, simulating how it looks to my eye: 

 

What you're describing sounds like max zoom on a badly underexposed image. Can you show a photo like the above two? 

 

Yes, that works well ... I don't use it for electronic shutter switching, likely because I almost never go to the full electronic shutter. (I have the user profile menu set to the long-press on the video record button, and the short press on that button disabled when not in video mode.) The few times I've done some theater shooting, the SL mechanical shutter is so quiet it didn't disturb anyone (I checked by doing some test shooting beforehand and asking the theater manager and director to tell me if the shutter was too loud), but I could see if they were recording music it would be good to switch to the electronic shutter. 

 

 

My bad, I stand corrected: it was the EVF the culprit, not the display... I did reviewed the shots in EVF, and I guess EVF resolution is much higher than the rear LCD, so it was simply too much for on-camera JPGs at mid-to-high ISO. When reviewed through the display, such artifacts are barely visible... however, I think it's OK 'cause I don't make any photo editing by looking at the camera EVF and/or rear LCD, just evaluating sharpness, framing and exposure :)

 

As for electronic shutter, while SL's shutter seems to me well dampened and relatively unintrusive, it should be useful switch to ES for total silent shooting and/or for reducing vibration at slow shutter speed while hand-holding the camera.

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ramarren

ramarren

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My bad, I stand corrected: it was the EVF the culprit, not the display... I did reviewed the shots in EVF, and I guess EVF resolution is much higher than the rear LCD, so it was simply too much for on-camera JPGs at mid-to-high ISO. When reviewed through the display, such artifacts are barely visible... however, I think it's OK 'cause I don't make any photo editing by looking at the camera EVF and/or rear LCD, just evaluating sharpness, framing and exposure :)

 

As for electronic shutter, while SL's shutter seems to me well dampened and relatively unintrusive, it should be useful switch to ES for total silent shooting and/or for reducing vibration at slow shutter speed while hand-holding the camera.

 

 

The above shooting in DNG+JPG-L.

With DNG-only setting, the image visible in review/play is far worse in quality in magnified view, still with the latest 3.0 firmware.

 

 

Yes, the  EVF's far higher resolution will quickly show artifacts in the embedded preview file that are invisible on the LCD at 1/2 -> 1/4 the resolution. 

 

And yes again: if you want the best review image, you need to have JPEG+raw enabled. But I don't bother ... I almost never need the JPEG files so I have my camera set to DNG-only most of the time. 

 

The review capability with histogram is there to evaluate the image, not to be the end-all, be-all perfect rendering. "Did I get the focus right?", "Was there enough depth of field?", "Were anybody's eye's closed?", and "Was my exposure setting in the right ballpark?" are the kinds of questions I ask when I'm reviewing an image in-camera. 

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ramarren

ramarren

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if one sets the camera to DNG only, i thought it shows the embedded DNG preview..Not the full quality DNG

 

It evaluates the DNG file on the fly for display as JPEG data, but it's doing a quick rendering, not the full JPEG rendering that is available when JPEG + raw is enabled. 

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scott kirkpatrick

scott kirkpatrick

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The SL's DNG files include a JPEG preview file at full pixel resolution, and medium coding quality.  They tend to occupy about 2 MB of the DNG file.  I thought that was where the LCD's preview comes from.  There has been speculation that these were also intended for display on phones and tablets that lack raw file decoding capability.  It is not clear that this is accurate for checking sharpness when the preview image is blown up to 100%. 

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ramarren

ramarren

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Hmm. According to EXIFtool, the SL embeds two preview images into the DNG raw file: JpegFromRaw and PreviewImage. I extracted both with the "exiftool -b -{token} > {file}.jpg" command. The data associated with the JpegFromRaw token is a full resolution JPEG binary file, 6000x4000 pixels in size, compressed (in this instance) to 1.2 Mbytes in size. The data associated with the PreviewImage token is a 1620x1080 pixel JPEG binary file, compressed (again, in this instance) to 146 Kbytes in size. They're both actually quite good quality. 

 

Neither of these image files show the artifacts that I see in the EVF on review at maximum magnification. That's why I suspect that the SL is rendering the review image on the fly separately from these review data tokens. Of course, it could just be display artifacts driven by using the same algorithm to output the preview data to the LCD and EVF ... anomalies due to re-sizing differences for the different pixel densities ... but I don't know any good way to determine that for sure. 

 

I do think they're used by the Leica SL app on the iPhone and iPad when browsing the SL ... they look right for that purpose, comparing them one to the other between my iPhone 6, iPad Pro 9x7, and Mac mini with the extracted previews. 

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ramarren

ramarren

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On the T the review image was dependent on the JPG resolution chosen.

 

I would suspect the SL (and probably other recent Leicas)  uses the JPG image if available, and if not a quick and dirty rendering from the DNG. 

 

 

I believe that's correct. 

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Peter Branch

Peter Branch

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I've posted this previously in another thread - but had a lot of messages telling me it was wrong.

 

However: I was told by the staff at Leica Mayfair that if using the camera to evaluate the quality of an image, particularly focus accuracy, then it was essential to use JPEG High only.

 

The reason stated was that if there is a DNG then the camera looks at the low quality JPEG embedded in the DNG.

 

​It is certainly what the staff themselves were doing. 

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ramarren

ramarren

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I've posted this previously in another thread - but had a lot of messages telling me it was wrong.

 

However: I was told by the staff at Leica Mayfair that if using the camera to evaluate the quality of an image, particularly focus accuracy, then it was essential to use JPEG High only.

 

The reason stated was that if there is a DNG then the camera looks at the low quality JPEG embedded in the DNG.

 

​It is certainly what the staff themselves were doing. 

 

 

Well, Peter, it's pretty obvious from what I see by examining my DNGs' embedded JPEGs and watching what the camera is displaying carefully that this isn't what the SL is doing. I'll take what I observe over any store employee's explanation... :D

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Peter Branch

Peter Branch

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Well, Peter, it's pretty obvious from what I see by examining my DNGs' embedded JPEGs and watching what the camera is displaying carefully that this isn't what the SL is doing. I'll take what I observe over any store employee's explanation... :D

 

The whole point is that no DNG is involved.  The camera saves only a JPEG High Res, it does not save a DNG, so there is nothing but the JPEG for the camera to look at.

 

If this post is about the quality of the  JPEG embedded in the DNG then I have misunderstood.

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