I understand that this website is dedicated to Sigma and Foveon Lovers, however reading the ‘burden we three-layer lovers have to bear’ does make me smirk.

I do own a Sigma DP1 (in part due to this website ; ) and a Canon EOS 5D MKII … true, maybe the Sigma’s raw output sometimes features saturated colors, and sometimes some nice richness in detail … but in my opinion and taking into consideration some decent postproduction there’s absolutely nothing to it that the 5D wouldn’t be capable of if used with professional grade optics and a decent raw developer.

Trust me, I worked with Imacon, and later on Hasselblad backs and these files, coming from high-end, professional backs also look disappointingly flat and ‘boring’ when first opened in a raw developer, this is because they are recorded in a ‘neutral’ mode … you can take the colors and saturation any way you want afterwards through the settings.

Then … on the downside the DP1 (as well as the DP2, DP14) is painstakingly slow and VERY unreliable (without getting into the sub-par resolution) the way highlights and reds are handled is just wrong … it really speaks for your talent as a photographer that you manage to crank some decent looking shots out of it.

The funny thing is that your website makes people believe that the Sigma cameras (and let’s not forget that Sigma is a producer of semi-professional budget lenses) are the ‘highest end’ choice of true image aficionados … I think this is a gross misrepresentation .

Maybe some people love Sigmas’s cameras in the way that people love Polaroid films or Lomo cameras, maybe the files produced by these cameras do have a certain touch to them, but in any case and speaking on a pro-level these are negligible details that fall veey, very short of compensating for the massive downsides of these lines of cameras.

Kind regards,
Marc

http://vimeo.com/7118904

7D too

Does require some thinking to get good footage.

The only thing Capture One handles weirdly is the noise filters (Color & Luminance) where it tends to go a bit strongly on the pixels with artifacts showing up sometimes, so these settings need to be adjusted manually, I usually turn down the luminance noise filter and all is fine.

Now, the Canon isn’t mine but for other readers this info is great. And I do lend Nikanons from time to time for jobs and I haven’t been satisfied with how Adobe is handling those raws..

However if you are using Capture One you get incredible image quality, incredible sharpness and images seem nicely modeled and very 3D. I work in Paris in the field of fashion (altough not as a photographer) but Capture One is definitely the application most Fashion / Beauty photographers prefer. It just makes images pop off the page and renders skin textures to the finest detail. You should definitely give it a go.

Another favourite of mine is Raw Developer … it makes images softer and dreamier and gives them a nice ‘film-like’ quality . I use both applications depending on the result I want.

Thanks for your lengthy reply, helps both me and Martin it seams.

Anyway you’re both correct when I shoot JPEG I basically let Canon decide how my photo looks. Thanks to you I already switched to MRAW.
It sure means more work but it’s worth it.

If you care about the result then shooting JPG is nonsense. Here is a long but really good article that explains it all (and is valid for Foveon sensors as well):

http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/family/prophotographer/pdfs/pscs3_renderprint.pdf

Using JPG is useless if you want to post process. With JPG you throw away much of the information that the sensor was able to capture. This information is lost forever.

About SRAW: The quality of SRAW is really good and if you want to save space you can use it, but even then I would only use the M(edium) size and not the S just to have better cropping options. Size S really kills resolution that was available (depending on lens quality, shake and focus).

Again, if space doesn’t matter, use full RAW at least for those images that you will KEEP in your archive. As you may know, RAW converters are evolving, there are even several products from different vendors that all produce different results. A good example is Lightroom 3, which will have a complete new (bayer) algorithm inside that will improve heavily in detail and noise handling. The problem with SRAW is: it is not RAW anymore. If you shoot SRAW you hand over the demosaicing responsibility to the Camera’s firmware (=software). So this part of the development process can no longer be influenced in post processing. If you think that Canon’s (in case of the 5D2) implementation of the bayer demosaicing algorithm is the best you can find, this would not be a problem. But if there will be RAW converters available in the future that do a better job with the demosaicing, you cannot re-develop your SRAWs to take advantage of this.

Finally, I want to add that we are talking about only small differences in final image quality if we compare SRAW (M) to RAW. So go use it if space or speed matter. Beside that there is no other argument against using full RAW.

Disclaimer: I’m a hobbyist photographer (and software developer btw.), so if you are a pro just don’t listen to me :)