A2 boku's post on saturation/detail

[boku]

Thanks for "ladling" this post out of the muck and mire of that thread: "Bullshitting about Bullfighting."

I have two additional observations I discovered today:

1) Shooting the A2 in RAW gives WAY more detailed results than even the least compressed JPG. I thought I'd try "Ultra Fine, whatever" JPEGS with the A2, but today I just went back to RAW. I was reacting to all the slams eveyone had about the Photoshop CS RAW converter. Sorry, no more JPEGS. Things are much better when I control the raw conversion in PS CS.

2) The actual focal lengths are so d-a-m-n small that I miss having the ability to dial in a very shallow, but appropriate depth of field. But then, for that I always resort to manual focusing, not something I relish with an EVF. To me, too much depth of field is a problem in smooth colorful areas. Possibly this contributes to my original observation.

[boku]

Frank,

I've hear about this a number of times, but my mathematical brain (which I hate to engage because it's been overused), tells me this is related, somehow, to "variable" Gaussian blur. Is that how it works? How is that setup? Is it automatically applied?

Sounds like ton of work.

Thanks!

[Frank B]

boku wrote:
...
I have an A2 also. I am observing something in these photos that I also see in mine taken with this camera. There seems to be some quality (or lack of) that makes solid color areas slightly non-linear. What is it? As the saturation goes up, the detail goes WAY down. In parts of the scene that aren't as saturated, there is a far greater amount of detail. I guess a good word for it is "pasty". I take identical shots with my 10D and A2 at comperable DOF settings and observe this.

Is there an explanation? Am I crazy?

Look at that ochre sand and then look at the matador.


--------------
Bob Kulon

Bob,

I worked on the matador/sand picture with PS and there is much more detail in the sand then appears in the picture posted at Luminous Landscape.  I think that with the Raw file, if you wanted to bring out more detail in the sand (I don't think Michael necessarily wanted to) you could do so quite easily, especially if you reduced exposure a little.

I have not noticed lack of detail in saturated areas of my photos, but I tend not to like too much saturation so it may be a function of how I post process.

[Frank B]

Thanks for "ladling" this post out of the muck and mire of that thread: "Bullshitting about Bullfighting."

I have two additional observations I discovered today:

...
2) The actual focal lengths are so d-a-m-n small that I miss having the ability to dial in a very shallow, but appropriate depth of field. But then, for that I always resort to manual focusing, not something I relish with an EVF. To me, too much depth of field is a problem in smooth colorful areas. Possibly this contributes to my original observation.

I was interested in your post, but the thread was closed (I wonder why - smile) so I pulled it out.

I tend to use Photoshop to reduce depth of field when I have too much.  For example, I took a picture of a flower recently and used f11 so I would get maximum DOF in the flower and then used PS to reduce the DOF in the background.  I also like the increased DOF for  landscapes when I want the foreground to infinity sharp. However, I can see that the workflow to reduce DOF could be a real problem for someone who typically wants reduced DOF.

[Frank B]

I have been using Gaussian Blur.  I reverse select (I think I use about Feather 20 pixels).  I use the radius that pleases my eye trying to leave some sense of what is in the background while making the eye focus on the subject.

Here is an example (nothing special).

http://www.fototime.com/{50CFB9....ure.JPG

I know that Gaussian Blur does not exactly mirror true DOF, but that does not bother me as true DOF just happens to be how the physics of lens and apertures work.

I expect I could use Lens Blur in CS to more closely mimic DOF, but I have not gotten around to learning how best to use this filter yet.