[edit, this post is bumped (brought to top) every time there is an important update being made on the X3F Quick look plugin. The original post was made back in 2008 and bumped a couple of times since then. Now it's time again!].

Jeff Sickels, the creater of Sigma X3F quicklook plugin has once more shown his skill and released a new update with OS X Lion support! He writes:

An updated build of the X3F Spotlight Importer and Quicklook generator is now released for Lion. See version 1.5.1 on the software link.

Here’s a movie I made a couple of years ago about the plugin.

This is perhaps not the most interesting movie but at least I had slightly more fun painting.. :) First half recorded yesterday using JPEG mode in camera – Today I switched over to RAW and the difference is HUGE! I even decided to skip colors in the first half as it looked so bad. :) Fluorescent light can be tricky for any camera but using RAW it’s no longer a real issue.

Click image to download – I included some shots from around home as well as a christmas gift from me to you. Now, DP1x has support from Sigma photo pro as well as the latest Lightroom 3.3 and also Raw Developer 1.8.11 – Silkypix? Please try and let me know! <b>Pack is 140MB</b>

O 1.3s . f/7.1 . ISO 50 . 16.6 mm

Went to Göteborg (Gothenburg) today and the evening was clear and bright.. I had the DP1x in my pocket and used all kinds of poles, walls etc to support the long shutter speeds necessary. EXIF should be intact incase you want to look closer. All images except the tractor shot was developed using Lightroom 3.3 – Tractor was developed using Raw Developer 1.8.11.

O 2s . f/7.1 . ISO 100 . 16.6 mm

O 3.2s . f/7.1 . ISO 100 . 16.6 mm

O+0.4s . f/4.5 . ISO 100 . 16.6 mm

O 0.8s . f/7.1 . ISO 100 . 16.6 mm

1/8s . f/4.5 . ISO 100 . 16.6 mm


O 0.5s . f/7.1 . ISO 100 . 16.6 mm

O 1.6s . f/6.3 . ISO 50 . 16.6 mm

O 2.5s . f/6.3 . ISO 50 . 16.6 mm

ISO400 @ f4 and 1/6s hand held leaning on car window. Yesterday evening – on my way home from my parents house where I filmed yesterdays movie – the DP1x really comes in handy when scapes (?!) like this appears.

Lightroom 3.2 used to develop and process.

Edit:

I just had to add a Raw Developer version as the latest 1.8.11 has native DP1x support! I used monochrome XDR and saved as 16bit tiff and continued with some post stuff in Lightroom.. Noise reduction is completely turned off (you can find stuck pixels) and sharpness is down to a minimum.  I also managed to save as 11MP without knowing. So, you have a pretty big image to look at if you wanna pixel peep.

Joined my moms painting class / group today – printed my own shot and did the above using oil on canvas (in artrage) – great fun!! Posted using wordpress on iphone.

yes, after lots of time - dissecting one of my 500GB Wester Digital book drives – couldn’t find the right power adaptor (I have lots of external drives and I never know which has what adapter) – it was the last drive that could have the “lost” wedding images in – so I ripped it open. it took me some time and now it’s in a more – say, mobile format. :) Less plastic. I have this e-sata reader that can connect naked drives and it worked perfect. I found my lost picture too and I couldn’t help myself not processing it instantly.

So here’s the result. Compare to old post with the “old” process. :) And yes I took the car away in LR – fast and dirty. Added some vignette again too. Should be around ISO35.

(original size)

here’s the original, unprocessed. :

I could save some of that highlight but not all. Still I’m happy. Maybe I’ll rediscover this shot when SPP 5 comes out? :D The beauty of RAW!

Ahh.. Not sure if you ever been in this situation? I’m currently online with one of my students, she’s from Germany and she’s asking me to send some old shots of her. So I’m digging some in my Lightroom library – while doing that I find these very special shots from a wedding a year ago – the first wedding where I dared use more or less DP’s only and now when I look at these shots I think that I want to play some more with the RAW – you know.. (I often get that feeling)..

Especially this first shot with that BEAUTIFUL redish light thingi that only the original DP1 could make. I’m thinking to myself, didn’t SPP 4.2 bring lots more dynamic range compared to the old version? Yes, it did! So that shoulder would look MUCH better today!! And that would, should be true! Perhaps I could reprocess if only I didn’t have space issues at some point – doing away with some less important files – not sure where either! Did I delete? No, I wasn’t that stupid or?

And this one.. just a perfect DP2 shot – just wanted to check again if it by chance was in focus.. Perhaps I could make a slightly enhanced version for some sales page of some sort… but NO, first I need to FIND IT!!! aaaaaa

Luxury issues.. But still. :)

Be sure to check out my “Questions and Answers” at times as there might pop up a few interesting things.

Dp1x, f5,6, ISO100, 1/80s. Full size (I had one of my old photo students visiting me today and we re-made the above shot so now it looks slightly different from when it was first published). Therefore I BUMP this post as it looks nicer until I come up with something better. :)

Did I mention that I love this little camera? I loved the DP1 immensely but the Dp1x is even better.. Have a closer look at these shots that I brought home today and tell me what you think. It sure is foveon. :) Also, note that all of these are hand held – the ones at the waterfall has been “leaned” so hand held with help. :)

Dp1x, f11, ISO100, 1/15s. Full size (corrected some to look more straight)

Dp1x, f11, ISO50, 1/6s. Full size

Dp1x, f6,3, ISO100, 1/100s. Full size

HDR. Three exposures, hand held (lucky me the DP1x is so fast). All shots ended up pretty dark so result is also a bit dark and I didn’t wanna make it look unreal.  Full size

Dp1x, f6,3, ISO100, 1/40s. Full size

I tried my best to make a shot that more or less looked the same and to my surprise I learned a thing along the way. The DP1x (and perhaps DP2 and SD15 too) is extremely sensitive to what WB you select. Make sure you pick the right one and your colors will look much better! I selected the wrong one first in the scene below and SD14 got it right using auto WB, but DP1x looked correct first after using “Shade” wb – all other options made orange look red! (This is a shade situation)..

All developments done using Sigma Photo Pro 4.2.

Dp1x – f11, 13s iso100. Full size. If I selected Incandescent WB then the greenish corner issue disappear but over all colors will be slightly less pleasing although some parts looks a bit more true. Like the green color. See that version here.

SD14 – f11, 8s, iso100. Full size. Strangely I had a short exposure time here, might be that light fell quickly at the time but .. hmm.. anyways, this SHOULD give the edge to SD14 so bare that in mind.

And some easier to view comparisons shots..
DP1x to the left. SD14 to the right.

Open up those shadows! What happens then? I added som e nasty X3 fill light so see what was behind the darker areas of the picture. How well does the DP1x hold up? The DP1x crop is from the second shot above, using the incandescent WB. Dont’ ask me why.

Another note. The Sigma 10-20 that I used on the SD14 performed very nice before I got the DP1 , but now, knowing how good the lens of the DP1 is everything else looks pretty pale in comparison. True with the DP1x as well. There might of course be a slight difference in focus as well, it’s easier to focus perfectly on the DP1x for sure. LIVE VIEW PLEASE!!! (SD1)

I had the pleasure to have a walk with two of my babies, the Dp1x and the good old SD14. Took a shot using the 10-20 set at 16mm and here’s the result from a scene where light is very tricky, and colors are difficult with the same settings – Tho colors has different settings in SPP as they ended up so far from each other.

You can see that SD14 has a tendency towards green that the Dp1x (and DP2 and SD15) lacks. Also, reds comes out way stronger in the DP1x – perhaps a tad too blue too, but that could be my processing (for sure). And my suspicion about Dp1x (and SD15) that they have slightly less DR is pretty easy to spot in the above image as the door of the car is more or less blown out in the Dp1x shot but not so much in the SD14 shot. I think this has to do with how colors are processed. In order to get better and more realistic colors they had to cut some of them slightly earlier and that results in what we see above. In the monochrome WB version, everything is there!

Ok, Now I’m off to have a cup of coffee together with Surte Fotoklubb.

Alright, a little something for those of you that want to try some of those DP1x RAW files out. SDIM0718 is taken in VERY tricky light and you can really see how well the DP1x handles that.

Make sure you use Sigma Photo Pro 4.2 installed. You can experiment with older versions though. :) I do. And OTHER versions. I know that Raw Developer has DP1x support around the corner, and above shots looks great in Lightroom 3.3rc. Silkypix?

If you develop something really nice from above images, please post as comment. :)

Lightroom 3.3 release candidate can be downloaded from Adobe Labs page and supports the DP1x but they suffer from the same bad colors as Sigma Photo Pro 3.3 – strangely enough, it’s ONLY images with colors that reaches a very high amount of light and mostly affects yellowish tones

See the difference between Lightroom 3.3 release candidate and SPP 4.2

Photo by Linn Rytterfalk

Update: I just found another good example of when above is not true. :)

LR 3.3rc vs SPP 4.2, and I had to change SPP to neutral color mode to get similar highlights. Also I had to saturate the SPP picture quite a lot to match LR’s version some. It looked pretty pale in comparison but perhaps more real? Full size.

Let’s hope Adobe continues to work with the DP1x support and – well, same with Sigma. :)

(Using ONLY SPP 4.2 the DP1x shot looks perfect developed!)

UPDATE: If you have many versions of SPP installed on the same machine it seams that they can use each others engines at times – Not all the time, but sometimes. So be aware! The DP1x still have problems like below – but nothing as severe as my examples from yesterday! Man I feel uncomfortable about yesterdays post!.. but the “real” clipping issue still remains but not as severe as mentioned yesterday. SD15 clipping is similar to the DP1x shot below..

The DP1x is far more sensitive to clip highlight than SD14 and the original DP1, although it has cleaner dark areas so maybe it just an exposure issue? There are two easy ways to fix:

First way: Switch over to Monochome WB! Now it looks MUCH better. :)

Second way. Be careful when exposing! Use bracketing! DP1x is fast enough to use it full time until Sigma figures out how to deal with “bright” colors.

Finally, the DP1x has the magic that I wanted from the DP1 – have a look at this portrait of – a friend. Shot at sunset at iSO100 and F4.

Original sized version. Developed using SPP 3.3 as it keeps skin a little bit more calm compared to SPP 4.2. As a SD and DP user you should have both 3.3 and 4.2 installed as some shots just look better using older algoritms and as a monochrome lover, then 4.2 sometimes is a big no no, especially with higher ISO shots. (You can find all of the important ones here!)

And yes, SD15 seams to have a little of the above issue as well, will Sigma be able to find and cure both cameras?! I certainly hope so!

From yesterday:
Hi All, I’m still working with the DP1x video review and during my work I’ve noticed some serious issues with how the DP1x handles highlights – and it sort of reminds me of the early days of DP2 (remember my early posts with clipped ISO50 shots?) the difference now is that it shows even at higher ISO’s which isn’t so nice – I’ve been worried about it as I think the DP1x takes AMAZING images (in situations where light is under control) and some of us have noticed an increase of sharpness using the SD15 and I’m happy to say that DP1x follows with very crisp images too, a bit SD9-ish.

Anyways today I noticed while looking at Linn’s China shots that the issue that I thought was more my mind related, is a real issue and that it’s likely to be fixable! Why? Because the embedded JPEG looks fine! Have a look:

Embedded JPEG (ISO400). Looks like all info is there. No problems.

Developed shot. Looks about the same using 4.2, 3.3 or even Lightroom .

And as a last control, switching on Monochrome WB we clearly see that all info is indeed there, it’s likely that some info is lost in translation. Question is how?! I think that it’s due to something in the RAW-file and not SPP – as all software translates the RAW-data wrong. So if we’re lucky then Sigma can fix with a firmware, and also with a special SPP to have these shots translated correctly.

You can also see some of it in my last shot of my room that highlights are clipped a little bit earlier than what we are used to with Sigma Cameras. Frustrating. A bit SD9-ish really. :)

Open full size version (not extremely big, but bigger and very detailed).

About the desk. I always wanted something bigger that we could use, both of us at the same time. The solution that I now settled with, as you see on the picture is a massive oak thingi on top, custom sized at 200 x 70cm, I bought it “raw” so I had to work quite a bit with it in order to make it nice – using sand paper and oil. :) Underneath there are two metall bars screwed from side to side so that the wood stays straight. Legs are bought at IKEA, massive un-prepared things that I had to paint using an oil mixed with white color semi-transparent mixture. Very cool I think. :)

My own chair is VERY comfy but really unpractical. I must change to something so that I can do more than just watch the screen. It’s way to low and writing this text isn’t as comfortable as I would like it to be. Also, my walls are a bit too white – need to print some shots and hang there. Wait for SD1? :D

Anyways – A final word from my DP1x work – I love it! It’s a really really nice little camera – and it handles mixed light much better than the original DP1, shot above uses all light sources possible, 2s exposures.  Slightly over exposed at some places but that’s hard to avoid without shooting HDR.