Problem is, in doing this, I suspect Sigma may have had to sacrifice some IQ by essentially Bayerizing its Foveon data to make it DNG compatible. This ensures compatibility with Lightroom, and helps Sigma gain more acceptance. It looks like for the Quattro-H, Sigma has decided to provide an optional DNG output, pretty much as the Leica S and M cameras do. In my own case, I own all the three DPx Merrills, and I’d love to use them, but I use a Lightroom workflow and I’m so used to it that I find it a hassle to use the DPx Merrills – it has been more than a year since I used any of them, and I’m wondering why I even continue to have them. Most people use Lightroom, and for them, it’s a real pain. It is less of an issue for people who use Photoshop as their workflow, but that is a minority. So Sigma had no option but to require its users either shoot JPEG or do a conversion to TIFF and use a convoluted workflow. To accommodate the Foveon would require too many touch points in the software (properly referred to as “bloatware”, coming from Adobe, but I digress.) Adobe can’t justify the cost of incorporating and maintaining all those changes – Sigma is simply not a big player in the camera business. But Adobe has not cooperated because a lot of the operations in Lightroom are hard-coded to traditional Bayer matrix. Sigma sd Quattro H: DNG files have no extractable embedded original using Adobe DNG Converter 8.7.1.311 Roy P writes:įor several years now, Sigma has been trying to get Adobe to integrate its Foveon cameras into Lightroom, and even offered up its RAW conversion software. Still, there might be-if the camera DNG is non-compliant and thus trips up the Adobe DNG Converter. But Adobe DNG Converter 8.7.1.311 states that there is no embedded original. One might think that the savings is from removing an embedded original (e.g., an X3F). This behavior raises the whole data loss concern I have always had about converting camera original camera raw files to DNG.īut could it all be just lossless compression starting from an uncompressed DNG? That is the claim by Eric C (towards end of post). Or, maybe not, as the evidence shows no difference in the final image quality, zero difference. What is lost exactly? Obviously something went away. This should be a no-op, but instead it has a major effect.Īdobe DNG Converter shrinks DNG files from the Sigma sd Quattro H by more than 50%.Īs shown at right, the file shrinks from 150MB to 65.5MB, a reduction of 56%. That is, convert DNG from the camera to DNG. On a lark, I decided to convert DNG files using Adobe DNG Converter 8.7.1.311. In Sigma sd Quattro-H: Shoots X3F as Usual, or DNG With a Huge Size Penalty, I discussed the huge file size penalty for shooting DNG files instead of X3F format. DNG converter destroys file dates during conversion, although the EXIF info still contains the original date.īottom line: Sigma shooters wishing to use Lightroom or Photoshop/ACR can save 50% or more in file size by running Sigma DNG files through Adobe DNG Converter, with no loss in image quality vs out-of-camera DNG.Running Sigma sd Quattro H DNG files through Adobe DNG Converter cuts the size by more than 50% (via compression), and finished images are identical to before conversion.Using DNG precludes ever using Sigma Photo Pro, which could be an issue, as one of my comparisons shows.However, it’s not clear that 14 bits helps in any way given the noisy sensor. Out-of-camera DNG files are huge because they are uncompressed, and also 12-bit vs the 14 bits of X3F format.There is a long discussion below, but I want to uplevel this to the key point as I see them now, pertaining to the Sigma sd Quattro H: Visit the Camera Raw page for a complete list of supported cameras.Sigma sd Quattro DNG file size, before and after Adobe DNG Converter This new version of the DNG Converter supports over 20 new cameras including the including the Canon EOS 6D, Nikon D5200, and Sony DSC-RX1. Corrections and bug fixes for issues introduced in previous versions of Lightroom.Additional raw file support for 20 cameras including the Canon EOS 6D, Nikon D600 and Olympus PEN E-PL5.HiDPI provides support for Retina-enabled Macs. HiDPI support within the Library and Develop Modules.The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4.3 update includes these enhancements: Add the support for 20 cameras including the Canon EOS 6D, Nikon D600 and Olympus PEN E-PL5. Adobe just released Lightroom 4.3 and DNG 7.3 updates.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |