Added to which, UK pricing is not usually a representative international value of a product, although it may be the most relevant one to jjj in his circumstances. I wonder if he could do much better ordering it from B&H and paying shippng and taxes. It's very light.

But if you have to calibrate ACR before you can get ACR to work, it's not that perfect a tool is it? And the difficulties some people have had with ACR and Oranges/Reds would not have been mentioned if it was not a problem for some. Also if you use Nikon/Canon/Olympus/Leaf..etc, you may have greater or lesser issues with ACR.
BTW I really like ACR and find it faster/better to use than LR when doing batches of images. And even though I regard myself as being fast/competent with ACR, it still takes more a little more time than a nicely exposed JPEG, so if I need an image quickly....and generally if one needs an image quickly, the last few drops one can get from RAW won't be missed.
The first time I ever used digital professionally was for a CD ROM and rather than shoot on film [this was a few years back], scan in and process and downsize, I used a Camcorder with a stills facility. The pitures weren't exactly ideal for A3 mag spreads but absolutely perfect for the job in hand, that allied to being able to use a LCD screen I could use for framing when shooting in awkward spots and auto white balancing, made a less than exciting job a whole lot easier.
I simply use the best tool for the job. Sometimes ACR is a great power tool and sometimes a JPEG is the perfect hammer, when you want to err, nail something quickly.



And a competent reader would have noticed I shoot RAW + JPEG and I don't advocate the use of JPEGs for ultimate quality. To repeat myself, I use RAW when time permits and I may on occasion use JPEG when time doesn't or if the JPEG is more than good enough.

As for the 'not suitable for fine art period.' What snobbish + ignorant nonsense. Shows how little you know about art. Art photography can very often be very poor when it comes to technical quality.
Fine art is not exclusively high quality, maximum dynamic range, no grain..etc. It can often be snapshot camera in quality. http://www.thedailynice.com/site.html is the site of a photographer who has been exhibited [ever heard of the Tate?] and lectures in photography. Personally I'm not a fan of his work and he eschews technical matters as he doesn't think they are that important. And still he is seen as a fine art photographer.
Plenty of images/exhibitions at the Photographer's gallery in London are of the quality that would be sneered at here by the pixel peepers. I'm pretty sure a Jurgen Teller exhibition I saw a while back was snapshot quality images.
http://www.designboom.com/portrait/teller.html

Some of the most popular images in my A3 print portfolio were taken on an ancient Ixus II a 2.1MP compact with no RAW option. And I once used a really rubbish watch camera to document a dance night. I also seem to recall a Paul MacCartney album used the same watch for the album cover and artwork a short while later. If you are creative, you can exploit the 'flaws' to make something interesting/appealing. I used my S60 to do film stills for a shoot once instead of my DSLR, I could shoot during takes [near silent in action] and the poorer quality, which I exaggerated was perfect for the subsequent artwork/stills.
To quote Anton Corbijn " The idea of perfection is a bit boring and I like the idea of imperfection in a way. And the way I work imperfection is built in" He certainly never worries about getting the maximum shadow detail. Still uses film too I think.
http://www.corbijn.co.uk/frameset_works.htm

As for this sad comment from mistybreeze "When it comes to quality, I'm a total snob, which is why I chuckle when I meet a photographer who shoots JPEG. I can't help my reaction and nor can I ever settle for less than RAW. " Do you also think wearing certain labels make you a better person too? You sound just like the talentless muppets I've come across who wouldn't use anything less than a Leica, as "nothing else was good enough". Didn't make their pictures any less boring.

According to one website selling them, you need to replace them quite often, which I assumed to be bollocks BTW. But it makes it seem even more of a rip off, which is why I mentioned it. And yes I am well aware they are quite high quality. But the cost of them in relation to other items is still very steep. I think it's a useful product, but rather overpriced. You may think it's a bargain, but you won't make me think otherwise.
BTW, being patronising only makes me think less of you. If you think my flippant description of the chart as a bit of card with ink on was meant to be a literal + detailed analysis of its chemical makeup, you are a little naive.




MarkDS - Thanks for the suggestion, but the only time I bought stuff from the US [B+H] I had to pay VAT that was not even applicable to the product I bought. So once I pay that and the more expensive fee for paying that charge [not a joke] it can work out quite punitive. Plus companies don't always charge by the weight as they make a lot of money from postage.
Though I do have to say that as I ordered product on the Sunday, to get it by the Wednesday was very good service.
I would shop in the US more if websites allowed it. Usually Brits are barred from buying products at US prices.

My goodness, since when did anyone suggest using Camera Raw improves someone's soul? Furthermore, jjj, what could you possibly know about being a better person?

My dearest jpeg lover, CR won't give you a backbone or buy you manners, no matter how many hours you tinkle on the controls. What is sad are your cheap, stale and obnoxious girlie-rants. Go shoot a jpeg.

For the record (not that you care, of course), I shoot to please myself. If someone wishes to pay me tons of money for my boring but perfect creations then so be it. As for Leica, that's one brand I've never tried. I do have my favorite cameras but they tend to be project specific. My experience suggests that certain cameras out-perform others, depending on the subject. As for designer labels, don't blame me because I leave men drowning in a pool of their own drool whenever I walk by wearing a Versace.

The tool that's imprefect is your camera. IF it responded exactly as Thomas Knoll's unit he used to build the profiles in CR, there would be no need to use the calibrate tab (which IS there to tweak the differences, without the need of a target).

Of you can simply build a user default rendering for your flames, without resorting to a target if you so desire.

There's no universal issue with red's oranges here. YOUR camera or your rendering style may require a different set of rendering settings to produce the color appearance YOU desire. After all, Raw is Grayscale data. Its your job to render the image as you hope it to appear:

http://www.color.org/ICC_white_paper_20_Di...ment_basics.pdf

JJ - there's something you are missing here: you do NOT NEED to calibrate ACR to use it *properly*. Calibration is a feature provided so that IF YOU MANAGE to produce a better profile for your specific camera than Thomas Knoll produced for your camera model, loading that profile will add convenience to your workflow. But you can still get perfectly satisfactory quality from CR without loading a custom profile - it may just mean an additional tweak or two.

We are agreed to use the best tool for the needs of the job.

When I talk about "fine art photographs", I'm not talking ignorant or snobbish nonsense. I have a very specific genre in mind about what defines a fine-art photograph, which does not exclude other kinds of photographs from being art. However I shouldn't blame you for not understanding that distinction since I didn't detail it. But I can blame you for using aggressive personalized language to describe a point of view that you may be able to relate to if that distinction were clear enough to you - get it? Well, if you don't, I'll let you ponder it for a while, and if you think you still want a more detailed explanation, it's your for the asking.

[/quote]

Ever heard of slide film. You had to get it right in camera, no safety net of LR/ACR/PS afterwards? I don't rely on the camera to calculate perfect exposure/WB, I decide exposure. Maybe you'd spend less time in post in you relied less on the camera.
The argument makes perfect sense if JPEGs are good enough for the job. And if you shoot both.....what's the problem?

[/quote]

Referring to the images I attached previously:

If there is a way I could have "properly" captured it as an in-camera jpeg - I'd love to know . . . .

Give me a break. Most amatuer slide shooters had no clue what they were going to get other than noting that some slide films yield stronger saturation than others. If a green or yellow didn't render correctly, big deal. All that matters is that the saturation and faky micotrast detracted from other image problems. Even professional commercial guys stuck with EPP, EPN and EPD till the end, and those films had a color gamut that makes sRGB look like a lite-brite. Also note that slide films *only* record a semi accurate portrayal of the scene under the color temp they are engineered for. Anything other than high noon or flash with daylight balanced slide films = distortion and random number generators.

Back to Mr. Rockwell for a second, I've noticed that the only work on his site of any note are his older DisneyChrome Velvia shots. He doesn't have anything of note taken with dSLR. Given the garish tonality of most landscape Velvia scans you could fit most of the data into a .GIF and not suffer much.

I'll note the same arguement I've had with my film zealots to this day, and what they don't want to admit is they prefer film because it *thinks* for them, and/or they want a random number generator. dSLR capture by contrast is inherently extremely linear and really does require some degree of PP to make it look aethestically pleasing. Canon/Nikon and Olympus are really good at incorporating these curves into their camera parameters, so I'm wondering if the problem really isn't just the conversion to JPEG that causes all the image problems.

Initially I wasn't too sold on RAW because the tools were clunky, but now that converters and workflows are better implemented I don't bother with JPEG unless I'm positive that RAW won't deliver a quantitative return. As soon as you run into an issue you can't fix with a JPEG your habits quickly turn to sticking with RAW though.

Another thing nobody has mentioned. Contrary to myth, RAW *does not* bypass all in camera processing unless somebody knows a RAW converter that turns off AA and all that other nonsense than Nikon/Canon use too much. With JPEG, it's a lot more limiting to chew through AA softness an other sensor limitations because those sensor aberations get locked into the file format and can't be filtered out. With RAW, you can far better isolate a proper sharpening technique or tonal adjustment that doesn't bang heads with JPEG artifacts or over zealous AA.

Rockwell recently put up a number of photos taken within the last month from the Eastern Sierra/Yosemite area. Taken with a, I think, 5D. Several of them are, IMO quite nice.

Rockwell takes a lot of crap but the truth is that his site is much more accessable to the everyday hobbist with a camera than many.

I'm entitled to my comments as much as you!!!!!! the post was and still is about calibration as much as it is about slide film, and fine art. Or was it Jpeg v Raw?

just my 2cents worth

one has to remember that the JEPG file comes from the RAW file generated by the camera

the camera give you the option to save the RAW file


The following is typical of a digital processing pipeline

Camera sensor data via a ADC to sensor raw
Linearise
Subtract dark current, flare
De-mosaic

• this can be CAMERA RAW that you get from a RAW convertor. EG DC RAW (Dave Coffin)
Or carry on

Estimate scene adopted white ( illuminant estimation)
white balance

• this can be CAMERA RAW that you get from a RAW convertor. EG DC RAW (Dave Coffin)
Or carry on

Transform to device independent colour space - Device RGB via the camera matrix to
CIEXYZ colour space.

• this can be CAMERA RAW that you get from a RAW convertor. EG DC RAW (Dave Coffin)
Or carry on

This stage the image is scene referred

The next stage is to convert from scene referred to standard output referred -
this is either sRGB, Adobe RGB or ROMM RGB ( Pro Photo RGB)
COLOUR RENDERING
This colour rendering algorithm includes gamut mapping, appearance and preference
and is usually proprietary ie Nikon, Cannon etc

The image now can be encoded to JEPG or TIFF.


What the main problem is in digital photography is that we dont have control over the colour rendering This belongs to the camera manufacturer or even Adobe in Adobe Camera Raw etc


Using the RAW file give you control over the early steps in the pipeline as opposed to the cameras choice but not the rendering algorithms.

so remember JEPG is only a compression method

Yeah of course you are, and I'm entitled to tell you whether I think you are mixing-up issues that have no necessary bearing on each other. But you have a point - this thread is kind of multi-pronged. All the more reason to keep separable issues separated.

Very many digital cameras only allow access to jpeg files wherein the camera has made all the processing decisions (noise reduction, sharpening, WB, contrast, brightness) to produce a jpeg file which the camera maker thinks will be broadly satisfactory to a wide range of consumers. So while jpeg is a file format and a compression method, the main point at issue here of course is control over what goes on behind the scenes, and merits of using raw when offered and when feasible. I'm not sure about your definition of "rendering". Normally one uses this term to describe the process of converting the file from a scene-referred to an output-referred colour space. By this understanding, the rendering of a raw file is not done in the camera. It is done by the raw conversion software. Even so of course you are correct that there are mathematical processes occuring which we do not control; but we certainly do control the appearance of the raw file before it is rendered into a multi-channel output-referred space, and from my experience, that rendering is usually VERY faithful to what one expected having adjusted the image in the raw converter.

In other words shut up and keep out of this thread? Wayne

did I not define rendering

The next stage is to convert from scene referred to standard output referred -
this is either sRGB, Adobe RGB or ROMM RGB ( Pro Photo RGB)
COLOUR RENDERING
This colour rendering algorithm includes gamut mapping, appearance and preference
and is usually proprietary ie Nikon, Cannon etc


Using the RAW file give you control over the early steps in the pipeline as opposed to the cameras choice but not the rendering algorithms. And yes they are good.

The optical low pass filter, which is what I'm assuming you mean by AA, is a filter between the lens and sensor, and:

a ) is not nonesense
b ) is not electronic, not part of the camera processing, and not turn on or offable

Did you mean NR or noise reduction? Yes, sometimes that is applied to the raw data and can sometimes be over-zealous. But long exposure NR, where the same shot is taken twice, once for the picture and then once dark, is very appropriate to do on the RAW data as it's more of a calibration process to increase the accuracy of the data you collected on your image.

RAW is both uncompressed (usually, and even if compressed, less so than the JPEG, and compression on RAW can work a lot better than compression on a processed image) and un-matrixed. The matrixing process for colour balance and colour space intermingles the data from the red, green and blue elements of the sensor, and this can make it hard to do some image corrections. Then of course, a non-linearity is added to the data to make it perceptually pleasing. You cannot correctly matrix on none-linear data, so again, it would be very hard to "undo" this to get back to the linear data to re-do or change the matrixing.

Some image processing and compositing works much nicer in linear light than in a gamma space, and these techniques are more commonly used in the motion picture effects industry. I for one, would like to see and be able to work with image data in Photoshop say, in linear light, but through an optional viewing LUT to give me a perceptually nice image to see, if needed.

Graeme

Do you call yourself *sniper* for a reason? Don't stuff words into my mouth. There are no *other words*. I said exactly what I meant.

I'll give the sad snobs a good example of why I now shoot RAW + [the apparently only used by incompetents who know nothing] JPEGs.
I did stills for a film shoot a couple of years back - all on RAW as RAW is much better than JPEG [and before picture styles]. But when it came to showing the producer all the images, there was a big problem. How the heck does he view them. He's 3hrs away, he's not a photographer, so he doesn't even know what a RAW file is let alone what to do with it. He's certainly not going to pony up for some RAW viewer. So I got him to download some 30 day trial software, Photshop Elements I think [as the cataloguing in it is pretty good/easy], so he could view them and then sent him the RAW images, but he decided that he didn't want to learn how to use another programme, too busy and not really interested. And he had other people equally bereft of LR,C1, ACR, Bibble etc and asked for JPEGs.
Batch processing the files via Bridge into JPEGs isn't that difficult to implement, but it took several days to render all those images. Several days! And several days of not being able to use vital software for anything else on that machine. Not to mention the performance hit. What a waste of time compared to simply shooting RAW + JPEG and giving the client the JPEGs to select from. He was aware that they aren't the final product, so isn't concerned about the slight lack of dynamic range, not that he was technically savvy enough to know what that is.

Oh - and for clarity in case it needs clarifying - what I meant was by no means to stifle any discussion, but just to keep related matters related and unrelated matters unrelated in this discussion, because it is easy in a multi-pronged discussion to comingle things that don't deserve to be comingled. It doesn't mean they shouldn't be discussed or that people don't have a right to discuss them.

I wanted to make sure we understand the same thing by "rendering" because - I think different from what you say above - the colour rendering algorithm is lodged in the raw converter, not the camera, when working with raw files.

I'm called sniper because thats was I was in the army. It's called a nickname. Wayne

What's properly? What you think makes for a nice exposure, I may not like. Personally I like contrasty images. I see a lot of images these days that capture all the DR and have oodles of shadow detail, yet so often, I just don't like them as much as those where there are deeper blacks. The Colour JPEG setting I use produces quite contrasty shots, certainly not the best tonal range, but I like it from an aesthetic point of view. The old fashioned if it looks nice, it is nice approach.
Besides as I use RAW + JPEG there isn't even an issue if the JPEG is not up to a difficult scene. Not sure why there is so much frothing at the mouth, because some people think JPEG does a good job, when used appropriately.
The only time I do not shoot RAW is if the camera doesn't have RAW.

Ah, now I get it, being pompous and patronising are what increasingly seem to be the accepted good manners on this forum. Along with not being able to correctly read/parse a post before replying in an ignorant + condescending manner. But you did get one thing spot on, you are a complete snob.

Also maybe anyone who comes on here pontificating about photography yet doesn't have a link to examples of their work should be assumed to be a troll. It's so easy to sneer from an anonymous platform.

By the way does your signature refer how you get work?

Speaking of pompous and patronising posts. Funny how I had less problems with WB with film, when I shot outdoors before or after noon. The plus side to film is that when it's not technically perfect it can still look good. Digital needs to be technically better I feel before you start and when it's not right it usually looks horrid. Poor quality film can have a nice aesthetic, poor quality digital has a nasty look and that is where film is superior to digital in my eyes. Not that I've used film for some time now, as overall I prefer digital and I really loathe scanning film.
BTW, do the amateur shooters, you sneer at, know the difference between RAW convertors or even use RAW?

Funny I liked using Kodachrome or Provia as they were nice and consistent. More so in one sense than using a camera which has a variable ISO and WB or even colour or B+W as an option. And I chose specific films/developers/papers as they gave me a look I liked. Which is no different from PPing a RAW file to give me a certain look. I don't ever recall a film thinking for me or even telling which type of film I should put in the camera. But maybe the film sneakily wiped my memory of it doing so!!