Just between us: all photographers are crazy for cameras and lenses performances. Every time a new camera hit the market flocks of people flow on the Internet looking for files, pixel-peeping at 200% etc, producing tons of bytes on specialized forums. Even those who normally say they don’t care about gear at the end use some piece of equipment and had, maybe even only once in their lives, an interest for image producing tools and for the maximum quality they can reach using them.
DPReview paved the way for “scientific” comparison of camera performances, guiding passionate and professionals in understanding “what is worth to buy” and what is not. Similarly there are tons photographers on free or pay websites testing cameras and giving indications about performances, with a plethora of suggestions, hints, etc.
Here at “The Visual Experience” we did the same for some cameras, so we’re no exception.
Back in the argentique world, the image quality (note: pls stick to image quality only, not to other considerations) of a camera was mostly linked to the lens used. Bigger formats, better lenses, larger film surface, bigger prints. Sure: different films with different characteristics and “ASA” were also responsible for image quality. Films were interchangeble, so we had the opportunity to decide on the final image quality (on purpose here I will not talk about printing processes). In the digital world the lens is only a part of the equation since the Sensor is, as we all know, very important as well. Full frame, APSC, Micro4/3, “Medium Format” the sensor is the new recording media and, being not anymore a film, something we buy and have to live with for the camera lifetime. Sure, a new firmware release may better some feature, but the sensor intrisic characteristics remain the same. Bayer mosaic for most (CCD or CMOS), Xtrans or Foveon, and new comers directly from the research world.
The product of these sensors is, today on most of the serious cameras, a RAW file. This is “digital negative” for all serious photographers, giving all the advantages we know in terms of dynamic range, post-shot white balance etc.
But there is another part of the equation, which is mostly mathematic: the algorithm for reading (de-mosaicing) a RAW file.
The observation is pretty simple: DPReview uses the industry standard ACR (Adobe Camera RAW) for interpreting the results of a camera RAW ouput with, generally, this workflow:
- Load RAW file into Adobe Camera RAW (Auto mode disabled)
- Set Sharpness to zero (all other settings default)
- Open file to Photoshop
- Apply a Unsharp mask: 100%, Radius 0.6, Threshold 0
- Save as a TIFF (for cropping) and as a JPEG quality 11 for download
So ACR is the “meter” used to compare cameras for what concerns RAW. You can jump to the “Image Quality” of each review and use the tools to compare RAW performances. Gladly you can also download the original RAW file and play with them yourself, reproducing the same workflow… So you may discover that maybe the camera you’re looking at works better then they say. What if the “meter” is not anymore the right “meter”? What if we measure things with a wrong meter, not using the one that sits at the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures?
These are our findings with the output of the FUJIFILM X100s (shot by DPReview) processed with IRIDIENT DEVELOPER 2.1.1 and ACR 8.1 following DPReview workflow, so all set to default, no sharpening in the RAW processors, USM as in point 4. We left to you the conclusions. All we can say is: before choosing a camera do your own tests. And to DPreview: please start taking into account different RAW processors or, at least, make some claim that the RAW results people are inspecting may be not representative of the REAL POTENTIAL a camera may have (since the meter you’re using is, somehow, not the best).
PS=Please not that no further post processing was done in the file, just the basic DPreview workflow is used. Some Chromatic Aberration in the IRIDIENT output could be mitigated working a bit on the file but the idea here was to use default setting for both processor with no sharpening and further elaborations.
PPS=We are NOT LINKED to Brian @ Iridient Digital!
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