Tag: RAW

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iPhone 7 Plus Review

iphone7plus-in-my-hand

I know this review is way overdue. I have reviewed the new iPhone each year on the Monday after release since 2007. Why the delay on my iPhone 7 Plus review? There are a few reasons, but the main one was that I was waiting on one of the hallmark features that is promised for the iOS 10.1 release. I was hopeful that since I’ve waited this long that the new “Portrait” aka shallow depth of field camera feature would be released. As of the writing of this review, it’s still in beta. So I don’t want to give an opinion based upon unreleased software. With that said, let’s get to it…

My iPhone 7 Plus order got off to a shaky start

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You Can Now Shoot RAW on iPhone Thanks to Lightroom

lightroom_iphone raw capture

Now You Can Shoot RAW on iPhone!

If you’re a photographer and an iPhone 6s (or higher) user, you’re going to be happy once you upgrade to iOS 10 and Lightroom 2.5 for iOS. With an iPhone SE, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus or iPad Pro 9.7″ you can now capture images in either JPG or DNG (RAW). The benefits of RAW over JPG have been well documented, but I decided to record a video not only showing how the new RAW capture feature works, but to also show you RAW vs. JPG comparisons from an iPhone 6s Plus and the quality differences:

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Adobe Lightroom 5.6 and Adobe Camera RAW 8.6 are here with Nikon D810 support and more

nikon_d810

I actually have a Nikon D810 on loan for review and I’ll be posting my initial impressions of it soon. One of the things that’s going to make it much easier for my to take the D810 through its paces is having Nikon D810 native RAW support in both Lightroom 5 and Adobe Camera RAW (ACR). Well that wait is over as they are now available. Here are the release notes from the team:

Lightroom 5.6

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is now available as a final release on Adobe.com and through the update mechanism in Lightroom 5. The goal of this release is to provide support for additional camera raw support, lens profile support and address bugs that were introduced in previous releases of Lightroom.

Release Notes

New Camera Support in Lightroom 5.6

  • Nikon D810 (Yay!)
  • Panasonic LUMIX AG-GH4
  • Panasonic LUMIX DMC-FZ1000

New Lens Profile Support in Lightroom 5.6

 

 Mount  Name
 Canon  CanonEF-S10-18mmf/4.5-5.6ISSTM
 Canon  CanonEF16-35mmf/4LISUSM
 Canon  Tamron28-300mmf/3.5-6.3DiVCPZDA010E
 Canon  Tamron18-200f/3.5-6.3DiIIIVCB011EM
 Nikon  Nikon1NIKKORVR70-300mmf/4.5-5.6
 Nikon  Tamon28-300mmf/3.5-6.3DiVCPZDA010N
 Pentax  Sigma18-35mmf/1.8DCHSMA013
 PhaseOneA/S  SchneiderKreuznachLS40-80mmf/4.0-5.6
 SonyAlpha  Sigma18-35mmf/1.8DCHSMA013
 SonyAlpha  Sony28mmf/2.8
 SonyAlpha  Sony16mmf/2.8Fisheye
 SonyAlpha  Sony100mmf/2.8MACRO
 SonyAlpha  SonyDT16-105mmf/3.5-5.6 
 SonyAlpha  SonyDT18-200mmf/3.5-6.3
 SonyAlpha  SonyDT18-250mmf/3.5-6.3
 SonyAlpha  Sony70-200mmf/2.8G
 SonyAlpha  Sony70-300mmf/4.5-5.6GSSM
 SonyAlpha  Sony70-400mmf/4-5.6GSSM
 SonyAlpha  Sony70-400mmf/4-5.6GSSMII
 SonyAlpha  Sony135mmf/2.8[T4.5]STF
 SonyAlpha  Sony300mmf/2.8GSSMII
 SonyE  ZeissTouit2.8/50M

Please note – the profile for the newly added Canon EF 16-35mm f/4L IS USM lens is not automatically located when applying lens profile corrections. This is a bug and we will fix it in an future release. The workaround is to:

– Manually select the profile and choose “Save New Lens Profile Defaults” in the Setup menu on the Profile tab. From then on, the lens should automatically select when the profile is enabled.

Bugs Corrected in Lightroom 5.6

  • Collections with a custom sort order would sometimes not properly sync with Lightroom mobile.
  • Updated the “Adobe Standard” color profile for the Nikon D810. Please note that this only impacts customers who used Camera Raw 8.6 or DNG Converter 8.6 to convert NEF raw files from the D810 to DNG
  • Star ratings set in Lightroom mobile did not properly sync to Lightroom desktop. Please note that this only occurred on images that were added to Lightroom mobile from the camera roll
  • Resolved the issues causing the persistent “Syncing … images” state that some of our customers have reported.”
  • Star ratings would sometimes not sync from Lightroom desktop to Lightroom mobile. Please note that this only occurred when attempting to sync a Collection that contained more than 100 photos that already contained star ratings.
  • Added information to the “System Info” dialogue to help designate if the customer installed Lightroom from the Creative Cloud.
  • Unable to open sRaw files from the Nikon D810. Please note that this only impacted customers that converted D810 sRaw files to DNG in either Camera Raw 8.6 RC or DNG Converter 8.6 RC.
  • Images with invalid GPS coordinates would not properly sync with Lightroom mobile
  • Lightroom occasionally crashed when changing image selection on Windows. Please note that this only occurred on the Windows platform.
  • JPEG files exported from Lightroom would not open or be available to edit within Canon Digital Photo Professional application software.
  • Lightroom would run in reduced functionality mode when it should not.

Download Links:

Lightroom 5.6:

Mac | Win

Camera RAW 8.6

Adobe Camera RAW 8.6 has the same camera support and lens profile support listed above that Lightroom 5.6 has. Camera Raw 8.6 is now available as a final candidate on Adobe Labs for Photoshop CS6 and Photoshop CC. This release improves performance when batch processing images, both through the Save button in Camera Raw and when converting images to DNG in the DNG Converter. DNG Converter 8.6 is provided for customers using versions of Photoshop older than Photoshop CS6. As mentioned here, updates to Camera Raw 8 for Photoshop CS6 only include new camera support, lens profile support, and bug fixes. The new features listed in the release notes are only available in Photoshop CC.

Camera Raw 8.6 adds camera matching color profiles for the following camera models:

• Sony DSC-RX100 III

• Sony A7S (ILCE-7S)

• Sony Alpha SLT-A77 II (ILCA-77M2)

Camera Raw 8.6 introduces the following new features for Photoshop CC customers:

– Improved performance when batch processing images via the Save button (in Camera Raw) and when converting images to DNG (in DNG Converter). The performance improvements are available only on 64 bit systems.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed crash on launch in some cases on Hi DPI (Retina) systems.

• Fixed crash when opening some Sigma SD9 raw files.

• Fixed issue with JPEG images saved by Camera Raw not readable in some external applications.

• Fixed automatic lens profile selection for Leica M (Typ 240) when using most recent firmware version.

• Fixed issue with some Hasselblad H5D-50c and H5D-60 3FR raw images appearing slightly too dark. Unfortunately, this fix may affect the appearance of existing images captured with this combination of settings. It is recommended that you (1) purge the Camera Raw cache via the Camera Raw Preferences dialog, and (2) review previously captured images for unexpected brightness changes.

• Fixed bug with converting Nikon D810 and Nikon D4S sRaw files to DNG.

• Tweaked and updated the Adobe Standard color profile for the Nikon D810. Please note that this only impacts customers that used Camera Raw 8.6 RC with the Nikon D810.

Please note – If you have trouble updating to the latest ACR update via the Creative Cloud application, please refer to the following plugin installation:

Download Links

DNG Converter 8.6

Mac |  Win

Thank You



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Photographers: Why DNG?

DNG_logo

A few days ago one of my readers left a comment on one of my posts and he was basically asking why I convert my camera’s RAW files into DNG (Digital Negative) format? He asked if I had a post that I could refer him to about my reasons. I realized that while I’ve talked about converting RAW files into DNG format for years at seminars, training classes and on my videos, I’ve never really done a blog post on it. So here it is – Why DNG?:

What is DNG?

DNG stands for Digital Negative format. The problem with the RAW files that your camera produces is that they are proprietary. Also since every camera manufacturer makes their own RAW format (Nikon .NEF, Canon .CR2, etc.) there is no real standard. Each camera manufacturer does whatever they feel like in their format. This also means that not all software can read every RAW format because with each camera manufacturer and each new camera the software companies have to update their software to be compatible with the slight changes in each RAW format. Notice how your software never has to be upgraded to read JPEG files. That’s because JPEG is a universal, non-proprietary standard. You never have to worry about a company going out of business and therefore not being able to access your JPEG files. Like JPEG, DNG is an open standard. Although it was created by Adobe, it’s an open standard with a published specification. If Adobe did nothing else with DNG the standard would still live on. Some cameras even shoot natively in DNG format now.

Why I convert my Nikon .NEF files into DNG

I’ve been converting my Nikon, Sony, and Canon RAW files into DNG format for several years now. However, as usual the question comes up – why? Why go through the extra step to convert your files to DNG. Here are a few reasons for me:

  1. My images are my memories and can’t be replaced. I never want to worry about a day when I can’t open them up because of a company going out of business or deciding to stop support of a format. With DNG I have that extra peace of mind.
  2. DNG saves me space. On average my DNG files take up about 1MB less space than my original .NEF files. Since there’s no loss of quality I’ll happily take the storage savings.
  3. No XMP Sidecar Files! Since software programs can’t really edit RAW files (it’s the non-destructive benefit of working in RAW), any changes you make are made to a small text file that accompanies the RAW file. These small text files are called sidecar files and it becomes one more thing you have to keep track of. Now instead of a folder of images, you have a folder of images and sidecar files. With DNG the changes you make are written non-destructively right into the DNG file.
  4. Backwards compatibility.  DNG format has been supported since Photoshop 7, so I can hand off a DNG file from a camera that just came out to someone with an older version of Adobe Camera RAW or Lightroom and they’d be able to open it up and work on it.

How To Convert Your RAW files to DNG format

Like I said, I’ve been converting my RAW files into DNG for years now. I do it upon import into Adobe Lightroom. However, if you’ve already got images in Lightroom that are in your camera’s RAW format, you can convert them after the fact by selecting the ones you want to convert and choosing “Convert Photos to DNG” from the Library menu.

convert_to_DNG

If you’re not using Lightroom, Adobe actually makes a FREE stand alone DNG converter. It’s always updated anytime there is a new version of Adobe Camera RAW or Lightroom so that it has support for the latest digital cameras and their RAW formats. You can learn more about DNG and grab the FREE DNG converter for Mac or Win here.

LR_convert_to_DNG_dialog