Per, if you're seeing "smoothing" in your RAW files I can't help but wonder if:
1)You've got a faulty camera
2)Maybe you're actually looking at the JPEGs that are produced at the same time
I only say this because, I've never seen any evidence of smearing in my RAW files, but have seen plenty of it in the JPEGS.
1) Possibly; I´ve only had it for less than a week. Nothing else seems amiss, however.
2) Nope. I know what I´m doing...:angel:
Per, the conversion from RAW sensor data to the output should not lead to posterization (and it would look slightly different). What I would expect, given the small sensor size, is noise in the shadows, even at ISO100. The fact that you don't get noise, but slightly blotched, patterned colors, seems to indicate that there is some smoothing going on....
Simon
Well, as I said, I don´t feel up to a detailed discussion of raw conversion algorithms. Still, "slightly blotched, patterned colors" sounds (looks) suspiciously like a description of noise in a signal that has only a few distinct values (like very close to the black point treshold).
Well, I went looking through my RAW files to see if I could find anything like the smearing described and I found a few files that had something like what was described and they all had the same things in common: ISO800, a shutter speed lower than 1/25 of a second, an animate subject (usually my cat) and deep shadows.
Ha! Now we´re getting somewhere! This is exactly the kind of situations where I´ve seen this effect in 800 and 1600 settings (in my case a shaggy dog and a somewhat less hirsute wife, but I doubt the algorithms can distinguish between species...).
My hypothesis: what we're seeing is a fatal cocktail of noise, image stabilization, camera movement, subject movement and more noise. Add those together with any NR from the PP (and just about all of them add some) and you get a blurry, smeared mess in the shadows. So, I don't think it's in-camera NR, but the OIS and other factors.
Quite possible; I don´t have enough knowledge to challenge that hypothesis. In any case, the images in question look terrible. I´ve realized, and accepted that I´ve bought a good 100 - 400 ISO camera that can do 800 in a pinch, and that has a useless 1600 setting, I´ll never even touch again (after all, one can do things to an underexposed 400 file in the converter, and might do it better than the camera).
Finally, I´m intrigued to hear you get good conversion results from the Apple OS engine; I´ve only seen it at work in Preview, and there no editing is possible. iPhoto isn´t enough for my workflow, but I might have a look at Intaglio.
Anyway, within a few hours I´ll have to disconnect and be off for the mountains for a week. So if I don´t answer again, I´m not sulking..
I look forward to see what this thread has come to after a week; I feel I´ve learnt a lot from it already. Thanx all! :salute: