Dancing Girls & G9 Noise
I found out the hard way that the application that comes with the G9 is not particularly good at translating their own raw file. At least not for me. I downloaded Lightroom, found some anti-noise settings at LL for the G9, and was able to have some more control over the conversion - and now I’m easily getting what I want without artifacts at 200 ASA, and at a nice 9 x 12 or 11 x 14. Haven’t tried to go bigger yet.
In other words, I’m making progress with the G9 and even have a very pleasing 9 x 12 from the Buddy at 800 ASA shot. I know that watching this sort of “live” progress can be annoying; went through similar stuff when I was shooting IR, and then with the POD, but I don’t have an editor to put it together and clip out the useless stuff.
HERE’S THE FORMULA AT LEAST FOR 800 ASA WITH G9, though I’ve been using it at 200 ASA as well.
For the G9 at ISO 800, Thomas Niemann (of PTLens fame) has suggested the following settings in ACR (or Lightroom) Details page:
Sharpening
amount=60
radius = 0.8
detail = 30
masking = 0
Noise reduction
luminance = 80
color = 100
Clarity = 25
Courtesy of
I shouldn’t apologize for posting boring test stuff - but I know that when I look back on the process these mistakes will be important. I still have an old version of PS - PS CS, but I guess I’m going to purchase Lightroom soon (I’m using trial version).
* * *
Oh, and since I’m doing so many tests with the dancing girls, I dug up a little info about them:
Three Dancing Maidens by Walter Schott (1861-1938), were executed in Germany about 1910. I was able to find his name on one of the rings of the statue. Resolution surprised me.
Comments
Comment from Craig Nisnewitz
Time: January 22, 2008, 2:06 am
I use a program by Nikon called Capture NX. It converts the Nikon NEF format to tiff or jpeg. Even though Photoshop can read the Nikon format I use this to convert to a tiff because it has noise reduction function.
Comment from Patrick
Time: January 22, 2008, 2:54 am
I know I’ll probably be ashamed for asking, what does “LL” stand for? Thanks
Comment from dave
Time: January 22, 2008, 8:30 am
Oh, just laziness on my part — that’s the Luminous Landscape discussion board.
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t20662.html
Comment from Charles Maclauchlan
Time: January 22, 2008, 9:15 am
just curious, as you own leica lenses did you consider the epson rd-1 when deciding on the G-9?
Comment from dave
Time: January 22, 2008, 2:32 pm
Charles - you know, the rd-1, it never crossed my mind. I really didn’t want a digital Leica.
I was looking for a modern, inexpensive “toy,” with lots of bells and whistles that I could put in my coat pocket and that shot raw.
Actually, I first bought the Ricoh GRD II, but there was something wrong with it (screen was out of whack) and it was too small for my hands - so I returned it and got the G9.
In other words, I wanted to have auto-everything, as well as full manual control.
Face recognition is fun to play with; and the screen with the tic-tac-toe grid always reminds me of my old Rollei TLR and LF cameras etc.
So far - so good.
Comment from Anonymous
Time: January 23, 2008, 9:34 pm
Thanks for posting the high ISO link. During weekdays I can only photograph early in the morning and in the evening. It being winter, light is very low so I’ve been forced to use 400 and 800 (1600 is not worth it). So this is very handy.
> Without a shadow of a doubt, Lightroom has been my best > photography purchase in a long while.
Same here.
Comment from Anonymous
Time: January 23, 2008, 9:34 pm
Should’ve mentioned I’m a G9 owner as well.
Comment from dave
Time: January 23, 2008, 10:24 pm
The subway mosaic 59th street (above) shot at 800 asa. Very pleasing to my eye; and very few changes other than what I did through LR.
I’m really in love with this G9 / Lightroom combination. I have a lot more to show from the last few days; but I’m still learning the ins and outs of LR.
Comment from Chris S.
Time: January 26, 2008, 3:57 pm
Sorry, did you mean the girls were executed or the sculpture was executed (in 1910)? If the girls were then I’m quite curious about why dancing maidens would have been executed…
Comment from Craig Holmes
Time: January 21, 2008, 11:09 pm
Without a shadow of a doubt, Lightroom has been my best photography purchase in a long while. It takes a little while to settle in to, but there are lots of videos on line that explain things well. For most photos I now miss out Photoshop altogether. Craig