> Welll, that's MUCH more colorful than your last post from this location. ;-)
> Any sliders damaged? :-)
A bit. The levers are bent.
I've been shuffling the cameras around and leaning on everything
pretty heavily at the moment. I've been processing images in
Lightroom, Capture One, DXO and Silkypix. Overall, there are several
themes that are emerging:
1. The E-1 has the most neutral shadows, as well as the most
well-behaved shadow-recovery of all the cameras in my fleet. Of all
four cameras, the images from the E-1 can be punished the most. And by
a long-shot. The only exception is with certain blue and orange tones
which will cause stair-stepping if you go too far. It's a brick-wall
thing. You can push the images really hard, but all of a sudden,
without warning, you'll cross the line. Capture One and the E-1 are
made for each other. DXO is a non-starter and Lightroom is fine if you
have a guide image (in-camera JPEG) to work with. Without the guide
image, you'll never get the greens right. I've tried to create
profiles, but they only seem to work if you absolutely nail the
white-balance first. Speaking of white-balance, the E-1 files will
neutralize extremely well with minimal color casts.
2. The DMC-L1 is sometimes better than the E-1. Sometimes not. While
Silkypix is the best converter for L1 files from an artifacts
perspective, Lightroom is far better for colors. If I use my in-camera
JPEG as a guide-image, I can get the greens right. Silkypix blows
shadow colors to bits, though. Great for detail and micro-contrast,
not so great for most colors. Where the L1 files crash and burn is in
the golden-hour. Yellows go nuclear and cannot be tamed.
3. The E-3 shadows are pretty horrid if you try to shadow-recover,
increase saturation or otherwise bend the bits upward. Capture One is
definitely the best converter for E-3 files. Silkypix just isn't
cutting it with E-3 files. You can get great results, but nothing
comes easily. DXO is actually pretty good. I would say that the images
are better than Lightroom, but not as good as Capture One. The DXO
files are better than the others if you are keeping the images pretty
neutral. But I can't seem to bend the images quite as much as I want.
4. The 6D is easily the most frustrating camera of the bunch--even
more so than the E-3. Capture One does pretty well and actually gives
me better colors than any other converter (including Canon's own), but
I'm always balanced right on the fragile edge. I like to punish my
pixels and the 6D is fine as long as you have no blue shadows to
contend with. For portraiture, Capture One is certainly the best for
6D files and the 6D with Capture One and the E-1 are really close. But
only with Capture One. I'm not saying that Lightroom is "bad" with
portraiture, but it is noticeably not as good.
Once the trial periods all expire, I'll return to just Lightroom for
right now. When the wedding/portrait season starts, I'll probably get
Capture One to process the images. I like how Capture One handles
mixed lighting with these cameras. But before then, I really need to
get a new lens or two. I really want another 14-54. And the 11-22 has
always been on my shortlist.
While any one picture may be an exception to the above "rules of
thumb", generally speaking, this is what I've been finding with these
converters. One set of pictures from one camera may process better in
one converter over another, but the next five sets will be better in
the other. I was looking for a binary answer to this and I'm not
finding it. Other than skintones (which Capture One nails almost every
time--regardless of camera), each converter and camera combination has
strengths and weaknesses that can prove frustrating.
Other than that, it's really hard to beat Lightroom. I was hoping that
I could replace Lightroom with something else, but it still is the
best overall program of the bunch.
AG Schnozz
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