Picture for the day

Here is an abstract shot I took today with the Ricoh GR Digital.

Details:
Macro mode
Black and white JPEG mode
ISO 64
f5 1/230s
Converted to sepia and contrast adjusted using Convert to Black and White Pro 3

In case you are wondering it is a car headlight.

Firmware update for the Ricoh GR digital now available

The new firmware update v2.10 is now online for Windows and Mac.

It allows improved customisation of the ADJ button. You can now assign different functions to four ADJ settings among other things.

Cases for the Ricoh GR digital

I recently started a thread on Flickr about cases for the GR-D. The Ricoh case does not hold the camera with anything else attached and I wanted a case that would hold the camera with viewfinder at least. I noticed some other threads on DPReview also asking the same question. I am summarising the responses and suggestions here.

If you just want a case that holds the camera with spare batteries and cards then the Crumpler John Thursday 80 is fine. I have this one and it is OK. It will not hold the viewfinder or lens attachments, but it fits on a belt and is padded and unobtrusive.

Recommendations from the threads are as follows:

The Crumpler Sporty Guy 1.0 allows the wide conversion lens and the external view finder attached. It is a tight fit.

Someone also suggested the Sporty Guy 1.2 if you need extra room.

The Lowepro Rezo 60 was also suggested. But this person has the Voigtlander viewfinder which I think is a little smaller than the Ricoh. I don't know if it is OK with the Ricoh 'finder.

The Lowepro D-Res 8 was described as a perfect fit for the camera and viewfinder.

The Lowepro Promaster D110 holds the camera and viewfinder.

The Lowepro D-Pods 30 (I don't think this handles the 'finder).

The Lightware P.H.D. pouch was recommended again by someone with a Voigtlander viewfinder.

LINKS:

The threads:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/grdigital/discuss/72157594194360637/
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1013&thread=19276197
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1013&message=18069862
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1013&thread=19277763


Manufacturers:
http://www.lowepro.com/
http://www.lightwareinc.com/

Crumpler have the most useless, unfriendly website on the planet. This link is easier to use:

http://we-sell-crumpler.co.uk/

Converting GR-D files to monochrome

Is it worth shooting in colour?

Recent discussions about the Ricoh GR Digital have put the question forward as to whether there is anything to be gained from deliberately shooting images in colour and then converting to monochrome, or whether the monochrome mode in the camera does a good enough job by itself.

There may be reasons to shoot in colour in any case. This gives you the best of both worlds. That is you can have both a colour and mono image if you so desire. RAW files also preserve all the colour information so if you have the camera set in monochrome mode, but use the RAW quality setting, you get a 'colour' RAW file and a mono jpeg.

I use the Convert to Black and White Pro 3 Photoshop plugin (CBWPro) to do my conversions. The package also works on the monochrome jpegs the GR-D produces as they are still RGB files. I find it relatively easy to adjust contrast and exposure using the plugin and can tone my images at the same time even if I had the camera in monochrome mode to start with.

One major advantage of shooting colour and converting to black and white is that you have control of the individual RGB channels. So if you have a blue sky in colour this can be selected to produce different effects in monochrome using the channel mixer in Photoshop. For example, selecting the red channel will often make blue sky look dramatic and dark as if a red filter had been applied to the lens in traditional black and white photography. CBWPro also has filter options that are much easier to use than the channel mixer in Photoshop.

I decided to try a few tests using colour files from the GR-D and converting to monochrome using various methods. This is basically a quick and dirty tutorial. Here is an initial file to play with (colour jpeg):


It is a little dark in the foreground due to the very bright sky and the fact that I had some underexposure dialled in to the camera to prevent blowing highlights, but it will suffice for this experiment.

Here is a straight CBWPro conversion using the red filter to darken the blue of the sky:


The sky is still a little weak and undramatic. The easiest thing here is probably to just burn the sky in:


This looks more dramatic. Another way of achieving more drama from the original colour file would be to select the sky and saturate and darken the blues using the Hue/Saturate command. Then use CBWPro with the red filter:


This is better than the first attempt above, but a rather long-winded way of livening up the sky. My preferred solution is to use CBWPro on selected parts of the image. In this way we can apply separate settings to the sky and foreground.

Starting with the sky, select it using a feather of 100 pixels and launch CBWPro. Fix the sky to taste using the negative and paper sliders to darken the sky and the multigrade slider to increase the contrast of the clouds:


Then select the inverse and use different settings to sort out the foreground to taste. There will be a slight band of colour on the edges of the two selections. This is removed with the desaturate command. This is the result:


After a bit of touching up around the edges this will produce the desired image.

So is it necessary to have started from a colour file? I don't believe so. It is relatively straightforward to work on selections using CBWPro - and presumably other conversion tools. CBWPro also works on the monochrome jpegs out of the camera. There may be times when having access to the colours will be useful for making delicate selections, but I find on the whole that it makes little difference.

Here is another example:

The original monochrome jpeg out of the camera is about a stop underexposed...


Again here the image is roughly split into sky and then foreground using the lasso tool and a feather of 100 pixels. The following was achieved using CBWPro in less than one minute:


The sky is made more dramatic and the foreground exposure and contrast is improved in two separate stages.

So quite dramatic adjustments can be made to monochrome files straight out of the GR-D just as easily as using colour files. So if you don't need colour in the first place then there is not always much point in bothering with it. Shooting in monochrome mode gets you the monochrome preview on the LCD so you can get a better idea of what the mono image will look like while you are in the field.

Using Lightroom with GR-D RAW files

I just downloaded the Windows Beta version of Adobe Lightroom. There have been some complaints about it on various forums, but it is after all only a free beta version.

I thought I would try some tests on a Ricoh RAW file just to see how quick it would be to get a RAW file up to scratch, and also to test the monochrome conversion mode.

I was pleasantly surprised how easy the program was to use after an initial hiatus. Lightroom has quite a strange interface to load files for viewing and editing. You basically have to import folders into a 'library' before you can start. It took a while to get this. The files in the library then show up as a film strip along the bottom of the screen.

Once in the library it is easy to edit RAW files (or any other type of image file). After editing these files can be exported to other formats.

This is an example of a raw file I loaded for the test:


It is underexposed and flat. Lightroom has several photo editing tools which appear as tabs along the right hand side of the image in develop mode. These include basic controls, tone curves, Hue/saturation (HSL), grayscale, split toning, detail and others.

I used the following to improve the image:

Increased exposure 1.33 stops, Blacks +10. This stretched out the histogram (which is always visible at the top of the editing tabs).

I increased the colour temperature to make the wood a more red/warm colour.

I applied a contrast increase using the shadow compression sliders.

In the HSL tab I increased reds and yellows, decreased blue and magenta to warm up the image even more.

Finally sharpenend (50) and denoised (20).

This is the result:


There are also some one-click presets such as cyanotype, antique, and sepia. Here is an example of antique:


The grayscale conversion was also OK. Here is a quick grayscale conversion starting with 'auto' with a little tweaking of the contrast sliders:


The other option that I quite like is the split toning (although this can also be used for simple straight toning). The program has two sliders each for highlights and shadows (each pair adjusts hue and level of saturation separately). An infinite combination of split tones is therefore possible. Here are some quick examples:

Slightly warm highlights/neutral shadows:


Very warm highlights/cool shadows:


These were extremely easy to do. All in all despite the complaints about the beta version, I am quite impressed with it. I will certainly be playing around with it for the foreseeable future.

Bigger versions of the examples can be found here.

Sample GR-D files from the 'grain' post

Some people have asked to have access to the original files from the grain post below.

Here is the jpeg straight out of the camera.

And here is the original RAW file (DNG format).

What the heck is 'digitalness'? Grain revisited.

The subject of grain has come up again. This time in an interesting thread that has started over on dpreview. HERE

Someone with a Canon 5D has had a picture rejected by a gallery because it looked 'too digital'. This has sparked off a debate about whether to add grain to the image (among other things) in order to fool the curator.

Another interesting issue that arose from my point of view is again that different sensors produce different kinds of image and that these are noticeable to a trained eye. For example, one commentator says he prefers the Kodak SLR/c files which apparently look more like medium format film than files from the Canon high megapixel cameras. Some people claim they can't tell the difference. I find that scans from negatives out of my 4x5 field camera look more like digital ;-)

Interesting reading after the debate below on the Ricoh GR-D's noise characteristics.

Noise or grain characteristics of different cameras

Comparing the Nikon D100 NEF to the GR Digital DNG.

There has been some discussion recently about whether the digital noise produced by the Ricoh GR-D looks like film noise rather than digital noise. A lot of people seem to have the opinion that it does and this is one of the reasons they like the camera. Another school of thought states that there is no difference and we are all just saying this to make ourselves feel good about buying an expensive overpriced digicam with a small sensor. (See, for example, this thread on photo.net.)

I for one did not buy the GR-D because of its noisy characteristics. I generally prefer slow film monochrome images. However, I have become a little intrigued by the discussion and decided to run another test. I had not thought much before about the characteristics of different digital sensors with respect to noise. I just know that I don't generally like digital noise and usually try and hide it in some way. However, I would resort to using fast films and push processing HP5 if the need arose when I shot 35mm or 120 film. If a digital camera like the GR-D can produce HP5 like images at ISO 800 or 1600 I would be more than happy to use this when the need arose.

Here are 2 shots. The first done with a Nikon D100 at 1600 ISO/RAW mode and converted in Convert to Digital Black and White Pro 3 (CDBWPro). The second with a Ricoh GR Digital at 800 ISO RAW mode - again converted with CDBWPro (the Ricoh cannot shoot above 800 ISO in RAW mode). You can click on them to get a bigger view.





To me at a reasonable print size (say up to 8x10) both these images look 'grainy', but the 'grain' or noise has different characteristics. The GR-D grain looks like a different 'film' at least. But what about going a little bigger? Here are some crops about the same size from each image:


Again click on the crops to see the bigger view. I believe that the differences are apparent. It's not just noise, but different noise from the two cameras. I'm not saying that one is better than the other, either. Merely that these differences can be used to advantage in certain situations.

I find in printing larger images that the noise on the GR-D seems to remain more 'globular' up to about A3 size. In other words it looks like particles of grain rather than digital until the print gets too big to print. I find with the D100 image that the tell tale 'cross-hairs' begin to appear at A3 revealing the image as digital - but even here you would have to stick your nose up to the print. In fact when I last printed this D100 image I added some grain in Photoshop to make it look more like film. I don't do that with GR-D files. On the other hand the D100 takes much less noisy images than the GR-D. At ISO 800 the Nikon will probably blow away the GR-D at ISO 800 noise-wise. My Canon 5D is virtually noise free at high ISOs and the 5D files clean up pretty completely with Noise Ninja. So it's different strokes for different folks in the end. I find that I am using the GR-D a lot, because I can take it anywhere and take it to places I would not take the 5D. If I can get high ISO shots with nice film like characteristics then that is just a bonus sometimes.

What is interesting though is that images from different digital cameras have different characteristics at different speeds. And this can sometimes be used to the photographer's artistic advantage. It also makes a difference how the images are finally printed. I find that different printer driver settings can accentuate the noise in different ways, but that is another story.

Controlling grain on the Ricoh GR digital - first attempts

I have been experimenting with grain in RAW and jpeg modes on the Ricoh GRD in monochrome. I have come to the conclusion that I can't clean up the noise on the RAW files as well as the in-camera processed jpeg that is produced by the camera (at 800 ISO). The camera in RAW mode produces a RAW and a jpeg file simultaneously. (I usually shoot black and white so I have the camera in black and white mode.)

This is not really a problem as such, as the 'RAW grain' is somewhat different in character to the 'jpeg grain' using the methods I use. The RAW grain I am getting reminds me of Tmax 3200 or Delta 3200 while the jpeg grain looks more like Ilford HP5. This is useful to know depending on the effect that one wants to achieve. I have been using Noise Ninja to filter the files.

I decided to do an experiment on a file yesterday just to see the different effects that were possible without spending an enormous amount of time. For example, is it worth shooting RAW and suffereing the write times of 10 seconds or more when an in-camera jpeg will do the job just as well (I'm only talking about black and white here)?

This is the file I started out with. Shot at ISO 800 in RAW mode with a simultaneous jpeg produced in monochrome.


This file was generated using Adobe Camera RAW on default settings and then running through Convert to Black and White Pro 3 (CBWPro) to arrive at an image I liked with a little warm toning applied. Click on the picture to get a bigger view and look at the grain. Unsharp masking has also been applied to this image as this tends to accentuate grain, but is a necessary step before printing.

The grain from the jpeg produced by the camera was much less pronounced as some sort of noise reduction is taking place in the camera. For a comparison I used Convert to Black and White Pro 3 again on the jpeg file and tried to get a similar picture in terms of tones and feel to the RAW effort. Again unsharp masking was applied. I find that it is easier to adjust monochrome (but still in RGB) files in CBWPro as it gives nice control using the 3 sliders even though the image is already monochrome. Here is the result:


I found it much easier to get this image than the RAW one. There is slightly more detail and the tones seem smoother. In fact seems quite a bit better than the RAW attempt and much less grainy. I probably could have got a better rendition of the RAW file if I spent a lot more time on it, but this experiment is partly about the relative convenience of shooting RAW versus jpeg on the GR Digital.

To cut a long story short I experimented with various combinations of Noise Ninja and came to the conclusion that the RAW image grain is nice, but difficult to reduce in coarseness. For some images this is useful. The in-camera jpeg was much smoother and difficult to replicate with Noise Ninja on the RAW version. Here are 6 crops of my experiments on the above images using various controls:

Again click on the image to see a bigger version.

The 1st image here is the crop from the original RAW file after using CBWPro. The 2nd is a crop from the unsharpened jpeg after CBWPro. 3rd is an example of default Noise Ninja on the 1st image (that is using a profile generated from the image, sliders on 10/10/10 but with USM off). I usually find the Noise Ninja does too much reduction for my tastes so I also halved the sliders to 5/5/5 and produced the 4th example. The last 2 examples show the effects of unsharp masking on the grain. The 5th image being the RAW conversion and Noise Ninja followed by USM (65/2.8/0 in Photoshop). The final image is a crop of the jpeg after the same USM settings.

My conclusion is that I will probably not bother with RAW monochrome on the GR Digital. The in-camera processing is hard to better and good enough for my purposes. I have printed images up to A3 size and the in-camera jpegs are slightly less grainy than I can easily achieve using RAW files and Noise Ninja without losing detail. Noise Ninja has a tendency to wipe out details that were in the RAW files if you are not very careful, but these details are still present in the in-camera jpeg. The character of the grain is different in the RAW files and maybe nicer for some images.

I am not saying this is a robust scientific test, and maybe my Noise Ninja skills are not up to scratch, but the jpeg mode seems to me to give the nicest results and much more quickly than fiddling around in RAW.

Incidentally I use exclusively RAW mode with my Canon 5D and wouldn't shoot any other way, but then I don't have to wait for the camera to slowly write the images to the card. I would probably sometimes stick with RAW for colour work on the GR Digital to have control over white balance and so on.

If anyone is interested I will post the original full size images from this post on my Flickr page.

Lightzone as a RAW editor for Ricoh GRD DNG files

I just downloaded the demo of Lightzone and it lists the GRD as one of its supported cameras. It can browse and open the DNG files produced by the Ricoh. It takes a while to get used to the controls, but it does a fine job. This is one of those packages where you have to read the manual as it is quite unlike any other photo editor I have seen. It uses a kind of zone system methodology where you can expand or compress tonal ranges by simply moving some sliders around. It is a radical alternative to using the traditional levels and curves controls that we are used to. It also has all the usual photo editing features such as hue/saturation, unsharp mask, a channel mixer, blending modes etc.

If you are looking for a cheap way of using Raw other than Photoshop on the GRD the demo is worth checking out:

www.lightcrafts.com

I do mainly black and white so I compared it with some raw DNG shots done with Convert to B/W Pro 3 (my favourite converter) and the results were very similar to desaturated colour images edited with Lightzone. Although it took me longer to do the work in Lightzone (which may be because I am not used to it).

There is a good discussion of the software here:

http://theonlinephotographer.blogspot.com/

Ricoh GR Digital

RIMG0044 NN s
Originally uploaded by m_r_tomlinson.

I just got hold of a Ricoh GR D camera to complement my Canon 5D. It is a really nice well designed camera. Great for carrying around all the time and when the 5D would just be too heavy. I will post some shots using this periodically. They can also be viewed on my Flickr site:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alt-digital/