Capture One on the A7RII giving me disappointing results

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

What you see here is limited by sensor resolution. Both C1 and LR yield the same resolution, name the one the sensor. Both converters yield a lot of artefacts.

Try shooting the test target at f/8, f/11, f/16 and see when aliasing goes away and try to compensate using sharpening.

Best regards
Erik

Hi Bart,

I've tried your resolution test and it's very elegant and easy to use! Great!

Here is a result with the A7RII and Zeiss Loxia 21mm lens, photographed at around 1m.

C1 0.477 cy/px  105 lp/mm       Horizontal   
LR 0.45   cy/px    99 lp/mm         

C1 0.445 cy/px   98 lp/mm     Vertical   
LR 0.445 cy/px   98 lp/mm         

C1 0.453 cy/px  100 lp/mm    45 degrees   
LR 0.468 cy/px  103 lp/mm         

C1 0.44 cy/px     97 lp/mm   135 degrees   
LR 0.44 cy/px     97 lp/mm      



(LR on left, C1 on right)

So the measured resolutions are pretty much the same, subject to operator error, that is.  However LR clearly has much more severe color artifacts than does C1.

Cheers

Robert

[Robert Ardill]

What you see here is limited by sensor resolution. Both C1 and LR yield the same resolution, name the one the sensor. Both converters yield a lot of artefacts.

Hi Erik ... yes, the test was to compare the two raw converters near Nyquist to see if one was significantly better than the other.  From this test I would say that C1 shows less color artifacts but in terms of resolving ability there's nothing between them.  On the whole the color artifacts are not something that would concern me much for my type of photography.

I have to say that at this stage, having done a whole load of tests on different images, that for the A7RII it pretty much comes down to how well one processes the images in C1 or LR - either are capable of absolutely excellent results.  C1 has a very nice color editor and the local adjustments are significantly better than LRs, so if all development was done in the raw converter then C1 would come out on top (IMO). Also, the way that C1 background adjustments can be reversed or negated by local adjustment layers is impressive, so, again, if local adjustments are used a lot then C1 would have an advantage.

As for me, I only use the raw converter for basic tonal and color adjustments and do the rest in Photoshop, which pretty much makes the greater power of the C1 color editor and local adjustments irrelevant.  So using both LR and C1 doesn't make much sense for me ... the very different controls would only confuse me: better to know one converter really well than two half-well, I think .  As LR has so much better integration with Photoshop than does C1, and as it does so many things that C1 does not (like panoramas, plug-in support, slideshows, map/gps, web, publish-services etc) it's got to be LR for me.  And I have to say that I find LR easier to use than C1, so that is also a consideration.

At any rate, I've concluded to my satisfaction that (at least for the A7RII), C1 is not a 'far superior' raw converter than LR, as quite a number of photographers claim. I think the two are neck-and-neck.

All the best,

Robert

[Robert Ardill]

FYI, I have received a reply from Phase One regarding the differences that I noticed between a rendered DNG and the original ARW file:

In Capture One 9 a DNG file is considdered a "Genric" document with no camera specific settings unless:

1. The DNG files comes from a supported camera and that camera shoots DNG as its only format nativly.

2. The DNG files contain the original RAW data from a camera which is supported by Capture One.


My question: "Can you quantify the loss of quality in Capture One DNG processing, or do you intend to fix the issue so that DNG files are correctly processed?"

You question is a bit difficult.

I will try to break it up in two parts.

We do support DNG, but as I mention it is a generic document so there is no loss between a supported cameras DNG and DNG which is generic. But the software does not come with camea specific adjustments so you will have to do this all manually. You can later save this as a style and have it applied every time.

When it comes to quality loss, there is certain parameters which DNG does not support which can result in loss of quality with DNG, not always the case but is with some manufacturars/camera models.


My question: "Thank you for your reply. Could you tell me if there is a loss of quality for the Sony A6000, A7II, A7RII and for the Canon 1Ds, 1Ds3 and 7D please?"

I would say there is but it is not massive as such and I believe it will be hard to spot unless you do extreme handling of the files. (Not normal photographic use)

... whatever that means.

Cheers,

Robert