DNG Profile Editor

[Ben Rubinstein]

It's been a couple of months since we saw the release of the DNG Profile Editor but after forecasting a wave of profiles released by every Tom, Dick and Harry, it's been totally silent.

I want a profile that will give the colour from the D700 (even ACR canned colour) for my 5D. Quite willing to pay for it. I find that facial tones from the D700 snap right in to perfect when the WB is right but I've never been able to do that with the 5D. Never had luck with the Tom Fors script either. I do not like the Adobe profiles released at the same time as the profile editor. I had assumed that the names making C1 profiles would have been releasing profiles but nada.

Am I missing something here? Have I just not noticed them? Can anyone point me to how I would be able to achieve the above, even (heaven help us all given my hamfistedness) if I have to do it myself?

Many thanks guys.

[DarkPenguin]

Hi,

Long time no see.

I haven't seen any dng profiles other than the beta ones.  The DNG forum is probably your best bet ...

http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?14@@.3bb5f0ec

[Ben Rubinstein]

Yeah, been a while, long story.

I'm heading over to have a look, thanks Dark.

[DarkPenguin]

Last I heard you had a project in Israel.

Anywho, if you find a source of interesting DNG profiles please let us know.

[Ben Rubinstein]

Well I'm still a wedding photographer full time so I've had very little time to actually shoot. I had a short trip into large format with the Camera Fusion stitching back. Gave up on it (I didn't realise how hard it would be to use outside the studio), got a 6X12 roll film back as I had fallen in love with the ratio but gave up when I realised that the shutter speeds I needed for the amount of DOF were around 10 seconds with moving foliage and in heavily trafficed area and at f128 I wasn't getting a resolution benefit to assuage the whole LF bother.

I then did what I should have done right a the beginning. Took one of my 5D's, the RRS pano head and bought Autopano Pro. I'm now shooting pano's that take under a minute to shoot, using a nice clean iso 400 for the higher shutter speed and having the finished result about 2-3 hours after I get home. I'm looking for a 'normal' perspective but due to the wider FOV of the pan am using a simple 100mm prime (used to use zoom). I'm also getting huge amounts of DOF by refocused with each frame then stitching them together. Heaven!




5D, 70-200L @ ~100mm, 5 frame stitch, shot the frame with the guy in first then did the rest.

For more see www.studio-beni.net/jerusalem/

[Ben Rubinstein]

BTW, I spent a couple of hours last night working again with the new Adobe profiles. With the Adobe Standard Beta the facial tones are more natural though still not as good as the Nikon, not by a long stretch. They've calmed down the saturation on the reds significantly. What I really don't like is the amount of red tone they've added, I need about a -10 or more more on tone than I've had to in the past. No idea why they did that. But when I do get the WB right the facial tones have more depth to them, more natural.

Still want my 5D's to look like the Nikon D700, I was on the point of switching but my business can't afford it right now and there were some niggles which put me off anyway.

[madmanchan]

I just replied in the Adobe user-to-user forums. Let's follow up with the discussion over there if you have questions or need further help.

[DarkPenguin]

Very cool work.

Are you stacking multiple photos for DOF and then stitching those or are you optimizing your focus point in a given frame and letting Autopano Pro sort out the details?

[Ben Rubinstein]

I'm not stacking photos for DOF traditionally Helicon style, too much movements, those alleyways are like wind tunnels. What I'm doing is refocusing for maximum DOF with each frame of the stitch and then cropping out any OOF areas before sending to stitch. That way every frame that the stitcher sees has focus front to back. In the photo below I have DOF from front to back eventhough I was using a 100mm focal length @ f16 and the nearest point is a couple of inches from the tripod leg. The path was shot bit by bit, some 10 frames, then when I hit the stone on the path I focused on it and shot the frames at the top of the photograph. I've used this method with quite a few of the images including the one above. What can I say? It works.



The idea of shooting an image like this with this kind of focal length, eventhough you need all this hassle to obtain DOF, well, you can imagine what it would look like shot with a wide angle, I wanted a more 'normal' perspective. I tried to shoot this with large format but it was 10 seconds at f64 (without filtration) with movements to obtain the necessary DOF plus of course squaring it up. 10 Seconds was far far too long with that moving foliage. With stitching I could shoot at iso 400 and time each shot for when the wind calmed down. The wind was really bad there, almost blew me down the steps I was standing on to shoot the photo. It's always like that there.

[Ben Rubinstein]

Eric, many thanks! Questions there.

[Ben Rubinstein]

Seems to have worked well though I want to check that the DNG PE maps the colours from the 5D converting them to the D700 'look' rather than just applying the D700 colour to the RAW data which could throw up some nasty surprises.

The difference is subtle but the reds are less saturated and more natural without the losing of contrast/darkening of reds and addition of significant red tone that using either Adobe Standard Beta profile does. Looks more natural and I'm happy that it's closer to the Nikon look for facial tones.

[Czornyj]

Seems to have worked well though I want to check that the DNG PE maps the colours from the 5D converting them to the D700 'look' rather than just applying the D700 colour to the RAW data which could throw up some nasty surprises.

The difference is subtle but the reds are less saturated and more natural without the losing of contrast/darkening of reds and addition of significant red tone that using either Adobe Standard Beta profile does. Looks more natural and I'm happy that it's closer to the Nikon look for facial tones.

I also gave it a try in an oposite way - a few of my friends/clients (mostly wedding photographers) are former 5D users, who switched to Nikons D3/D700, and didn't like their rendering type. I think they gonna like it - after applying 5D profile on a DNG from Nikon (to my eye) it starts to look "Canon-like": reds are oversaturated (so the skin tones are warmer), and the contrast of the scene is build by the brightening of highlights rather than darkening of deep shadows (like in Nikon D3).

I only wonder if the colorimetric differences of primaries and dynamic ranges of these cameras can have some influence on the effect, so that some further calibration will be required to get the better match...