DxO and A900 self-interest thread

[edwardkaraa]

I work similarly to Douglas, treating the A900 exactly like I used to do with chrome film, spot metering the highlights and overexposing by 2 1/2 stops. But mostly taking an incident light reading of the scene puts everything in place. I never get burned highlights except in contre-jour situations. Sunny 16 resulted in underexposure in most cases, even in film days. Btw, I found the camera meter to be very consistent and accurate, compared to my hand-held meter set on reflected light. Perhaps the meter overexposes slightly by just 2/10 of a stop. Nevertheless, reflected light readings often result in underexposure as they require a lot of interpretation, and they are hardly ever usable as they are, unless the subject is a flat middle grey. That's why most pros relied on incident readings in the past.

 

[dhsimmonds]

Hi Quentin,

I am using C1 and have tried DxO (they've just added the CZ 16-35 to their list of supported lenses which is a good thing). However I am still holding off from getting DxO for the following reasons.

1. I've "developped" some pictures simultaneously in C1 and in DxO starting from the same raw file and found the colors of DxO off (that is a personal thing of course). Do you have a similar experience of different colors or is it something I did wrong?

2. I find DxO very slow, especially creating tiff files from developped raw files is imho ridiculously slow. Have you tried that?

3. The fact that you always have to zoom to at least 75% to see various changes to me too is annoying.

I really wanted to like this software because it has a nice workflow and lots of goodies, especially the specific lenscorrections. Now if only C1 would incorporate that in their software.

I might still get DxO though. Like to hear your take on the points above.

Cheers, Bob.

An interesting review of DxO used with both Nikon and Sony A900 is in the current issue of the weekly pro magazine "The British Journal of Photography".

It likes pretty well everything DxO does, particularly the lens corrections but could not live with it's very slow workflow. The photographer writing the review also commented on the issue of an inadequate number of lenses capable of correction, particularly none of the excellent older AF Minolta glass which I know he uses regularly.

If only C1 did lens corrections for the A900!!

 

[douglasf13]

If only C1 did lens corrections for the A900!!

C1 PRO does have a pretty good lens correction tool, although it isn't as advanced as DxO's, apparently.

Edward, I should add that when I expose my highlights at +2.5 EV, I have the camera set to -1 ZONE. The ZONE jpeg settings of the camera actually affect exposure. It's almost like the A900 has highlight tone priority on all the time, and setting ZONE to -1 actually changes the metering and gets me closer to perfect exposure. You should try it

 

[edwardkaraa]

Edward, I should add that when I expose my highlights at +2.5 EV, I have the camera set to -1 ZONE. The ZONE jpeg settings of the camera actually affect exposure. It's almost like the A900 has highlight tone priority on all the time, and setting ZONE to -1 actually changes the metering and gets me closer to perfect exposure. You should try it

That sounds interesting. Honestly I have not tried to understand yet what the Zone setting does so I have always left on 0 so far. Worth a try. Thanks Douglas for the tip