Chuck Norcutt wrote:
> Then the lesson is all worthwhile.
Oh, goody! Am I forgiven for the lousy editing job I used to create the
new knowledge? :-)
> I assumed the nice smooth histogram
> was from the original image. The fact that converting from 8 to 16 does
> hold onto subtle gradations is a point I wouldn't have expected and am
> glad to learn. I'll try it out in the future. I normally shoot raw but
> not always.
About 999 out of 1,000 shots I take with the DSLRs are RAW. But, as
discussed at great length already, I couldn't find a smaller, less
formal camera with all the other qualities I wanted that also had RAW.
So I have pics, sometime quite a few, that suffer from 8-bittedness.
That's why I'm intrigued by the new image format MS has talked about,
which, as I recall, has both variable compression and variable color bit
depth. Although I have issues with MS, they may be the only ones big and
strong enough to get a new image format off the ground. Look what
happened to JPEG2, it's clearly better, but apparently dead in the water.
The current situation is really far from ideal, with the only popular
formats with universal support being one which only supports 8 bits, but
does useful, controllable, lossy compression and another which does
either 8-bits, not enough, or 16-bits, overkill for mostly 12-bit
sources, with the occasional 14 or 16 bit source. And I'm not convinced
that most those devices actually deliver more than 12 bits of actual,
usable data in most cases. The evidence I've seen certainly doesn't show
any more usable range of brightness capture with the 14-bit E-1 compared
to the 12-bit other DSLRs.
Clearly, a JPEG2-like format with the addition of variable bit depth
would be a great format for digicam output. I'll bet the sensors in all
those P&Ss are capable of 10 or 12 bit output, but without a viable way
to use it. Even 10-bit would make a big difference going from 256 levels
to 1024..
Moose
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