I was interested to try the new firmware release and thought I would share my observations about the "original" Ambient Light setting that was added.
Overall, I like the effect, but I am guessing it may be just leaving the vignetting lens correction off. Not a bad thing considering many of the vintage raw processing filters use a little vignetting.
I posted
more examples on my blog, but here is one pair that I think demonstrates the new setting pretty well.
Does anyone on the forum know how the new ambient brightness setting actually works?
Original film setting first
Normal digital setting next
It is reasonably subtle in good lighting, but can have more of an impact in poor lighting situations. Perceptually the peripheral vignetting seems to increase contrast and maybe even saturation a bit, but I haven't checked the files at the pixel level to see if these differences are real or not.
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Updated to add a link to additional discussion on DPR.
After looking at the photos a little more, I am starting to believe the idea that this new feature could be a combination of enhanced s-curve for global contrast and turning off de-vignetting.
This thread on DPR includes a few more opinions.
Now I'm curious to find out how many people plan to use this routinely.
