Chris_Malcolm
Nether Hill in line with circular stone on Calton Hill: 2
Nether Hill is the smaller rounder peak to the right of the summit of Arthur's Seat. In terms of the summer solstice sunset with the sun behind Ben Lawers (my so far unverified suspicion) Nether Hill is I believe a bit closer to the astronomically correct position. The line from there to Ben Lawers passes (at least very close to) through this stone on Calton Hill.
I first posted a quickly cropped ex-camera jpeg of this image, just to show the place. Ex-camera jpegs from my Sony A350 tend to be of very good quality in good lighting conditions, and can't be much improved on by rummaging about in the RAW image file. In this case the ex-camera jpeg was complimented on its excellent image quality, So it's a good text example to see what improvement (if any) processing with care from RAW can do.
This is the result. There is a little more detail resolution present, most obviously in the foreground figure which is in focus. The background is slightly out of focus, so little if any significant extra detail there. In the previous quickly cropped jpeg image I simply downsized by 50% linearly in order to sharpen up the out of focus hill. That inevitably lost some of the detail present in the sharply focused smoker. And in preparing the new image there's more detail in the smoker, but it's at least nearly all lost by the severe downsizing necessitated by the out of focus background.
Hey, it was a quickly snatched shot to get the moment of ignition! To get both figure and hill really sharp I would have had to use a tripod and wait for the figure to stop moving quickly. This is one of those situations where the moment is so important you simply have to make the most the best of what technique and technology can be brought to bear in a split second. So as a fair comparison I've downsized the new image by 50% too. In effect that's turned my 14MP camera into a 3.5MP camera -- just a rather good 3.5MP camera :-)
I've improved the rendition of the clouds, improved the contrast on the hill, and stopped the loss of colour in the bright sun facing parts of the figure's face. There's also more detail in the bright white of the tent in middle distance. So in those specific technical ways I've improved the image quality. However, it's arguable that in doing so I've made the image less natural -- I've lost the glare of the sun which washed out the colour of the face front, the tent, and so on.
So it's really not clear to me that in spending some time rummaging out some aspects of extra image quality from RAW I've actually improved it. Compare this one with the previous ex-camera jpeg and tell me what you think.
Original DSC07558RW2X
Nether Hill in line with circular stone on Calton Hill: 2
Nether Hill is the smaller rounder peak to the right of the summit of Arthur's Seat. In terms of the summer solstice sunset with the sun behind Ben Lawers (my so far unverified suspicion) Nether Hill is I believe a bit closer to the astronomically correct position. The line from there to Ben Lawers passes (at least very close to) through this stone on Calton Hill.
I first posted a quickly cropped ex-camera jpeg of this image, just to show the place. Ex-camera jpegs from my Sony A350 tend to be of very good quality in good lighting conditions, and can't be much improved on by rummaging about in the RAW image file. In this case the ex-camera jpeg was complimented on its excellent image quality, So it's a good text example to see what improvement (if any) processing with care from RAW can do.
This is the result. There is a little more detail resolution present, most obviously in the foreground figure which is in focus. The background is slightly out of focus, so little if any significant extra detail there. In the previous quickly cropped jpeg image I simply downsized by 50% linearly in order to sharpen up the out of focus hill. That inevitably lost some of the detail present in the sharply focused smoker. And in preparing the new image there's more detail in the smoker, but it's at least nearly all lost by the severe downsizing necessitated by the out of focus background.
Hey, it was a quickly snatched shot to get the moment of ignition! To get both figure and hill really sharp I would have had to use a tripod and wait for the figure to stop moving quickly. This is one of those situations where the moment is so important you simply have to make the most the best of what technique and technology can be brought to bear in a split second. So as a fair comparison I've downsized the new image by 50% too. In effect that's turned my 14MP camera into a 3.5MP camera -- just a rather good 3.5MP camera :-)
I've improved the rendition of the clouds, improved the contrast on the hill, and stopped the loss of colour in the bright sun facing parts of the figure's face. There's also more detail in the bright white of the tent in middle distance. So in those specific technical ways I've improved the image quality. However, it's arguable that in doing so I've made the image less natural -- I've lost the glare of the sun which washed out the colour of the face front, the tent, and so on.
So it's really not clear to me that in spending some time rummaging out some aspects of extra image quality from RAW I've actually improved it. Compare this one with the previous ex-camera jpeg and tell me what you think.
Original DSC07558RW2X