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Sigma DP0 Quattro shots

Sapphie

Member
I would hold off for a couple of days - folks over at DPR has had issues with various dps freezing after the firmware upgrade.

Lee
 

ggibson

Well-known member
I'm super excited to see Sigma supporting DNG raws. SFD is interesting too.

It's a bit unfortunate that the DNGs are 150MB though. How's the camera perform speed-wise when shooting DNG vs. X3F?
 
I'm super excited to see Sigma supporting DNG raws. SFD is interesting too.

It's a bit unfortunate that the DNGs are 150MB though. How's the camera perform speed-wise when shooting DNG vs. X3F?
The buffer goes down to 6 shots from 7 and it takes a bit longer to write. The DNGs on my DP2Q are around 100-110MB each, roughly double the size of the X3F files.
Being able to open them directly in Lightroom is awesome! SFD takes far too long to process, both in camera and in SPP, but it is a lot of data.
I still prefer the output from my Merrill though.
 

furtle

Active member
That looks very good. My shots of Flamstead church from last year were ruined by diffraction - I was shooting at f11, so I'd be interested to go back and try it again with the new firmware and stacking in the future. I'll give the dng's a go tomorrow on my walk to work.

LouisB
You and I have both ruined photos using too small apertures. F4 to f6.3 (f5.6 better) is perfect. Will SFD prevent diffraction?
 

tagscuderia

New member
It's a bit unfortunate that the DNGs are 150MB though. How's the camera perform speed-wise when shooting DNG vs. X3F?
The OOC DNGs are uncompressed, you can run Adobe's DNG converter or ACR to save them with lossless compression. Extra step but... if serious about shooting DNG then probably worth it.

//

Are there any settings for SFD? If shooting ETTR, 3 of the frames are redundant :confused:
 

furtle

Active member
I made a second attempt at the church interior and this is better. Sigma dp0Q in SFD. Interior low light shot with no flash. F5.6 focused on the far stained glass window. I'm liking it.



and another from the altar end

 
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biglouis

Well-known member
My new Sigma DP0Q

I feel like I have been given a brand new camera. A different camera. One with a great 21mm lens and superb sensor. Why, oh why did Sigma not do this sooner????

Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou, Sigma for finally giving us dng!

My feeling is dynamic range is improved, sharpness at 100% is maintained, less appareance of flattening of subjects, better texture handling, better colour in shadows.

A few files for you to play with. Tell me if I am fooling myself, please. There are links to full size jpegs exported from LR and the original DNG files to play with (but be aware the DNGs are 100MB files). Right click and 'save as' to download the files

NOTE: please do not share the files - direct any interested parties to this post.


Full sized jpeg | dng


Full sized jpeg | dng


Full sized jpeg | dng
 

ggibson

Well-known member
Thank you, I had some fun playing around with these in Lightroom last night. I haven't shot a Quattro for a couple of years now, so it's hard for me to comment on the differences prior to the 2.0 firmware. I'm mostly editing A7rII files these days, which are of course much more resilient to push/pull in post than these Quattro files.

On the plus side though, LR's processing of Sigma's DNG files is SUPER fast compared to my Sony RAWs. At first I thought it was just 42MP vs 19MP files, but I opened up some of my old GF1 12MP RAWs and editing the Sigmas was still smoother. The option of shooting DNG does make the Quattro lineup more appealing to me (if I could get past the form-factor). I did note that the camera RAW profiles are available to select in LR as well if you want them (standard, vivid, landscape, etc...).

The question still stands whether DNG is inferior to X3F though. Early testing from others shows that you can use Adobe's converter to compress the ~100MB DNGs down to 33~50MB, which suggests at least a similar level of detail to typical ~45MB X3Fs. Have you tried any back-to-back testing between the two RAW formats?
 

biglouis

Well-known member
Thank you, I had some fun playing around with these in Lightroom last night. I haven't shot a Quattro for a couple of years now, so it's hard for me to comment on the differences prior to the 2.0 firmware. I'm mostly editing A7rII files these days, which are of course much more resilient to push/pull in post than these Quattro files.

On the plus side though, LR's processing of Sigma's DNG files is SUPER fast compared to my Sony RAWs. At first I thought it was just 42MP vs 19MP files, but I opened up some of my old GF1 12MP RAWs and editing the Sigmas was still smoother. The option of shooting DNG does make the Quattro lineup more appealing to me (if I could get past the form-factor). I did note that the camera RAW profiles are available to select in LR as well if you want them (standard, vivid, landscape, etc...).

The question still stands whether DNG is inferior to X3F though. Early testing from others shows that you can use Adobe's converter to compress the ~100MB DNGs down to 33~50MB, which suggests at least a similar level of detail to typical ~45MB X3Fs. Have you tried any back-to-back testing between the two RAW formats?
I think you will find that DNGs are superior to the X3F files. I've got to play with them more but the results so far are very promissing.

I haven't done any back to back processing. I know full well the shortcomings of the Quattro files (highlight issues, poor colour in shadow areas, flat look to some landscape/acrhitectural features) and I'll be looking to see if that occurs in the DNGs.

I don't quite understand the idea of compressing the DNGs. I'm not familiar with how that affects files. You seem to imply it improves detail but that seems counter-intuitive to me.

LouisB
 
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ggibson

Well-known member
I think you will find that DNGs are superior to the X3F files. I've got to play with them more but the results so far are very promissing.

I don't quite understand the idea of compressing the DNGs. I'm not familiar with how that affects files. You seem to imply it improves detail but that seems counter-intuitive to me.

LouisB
I guess I wasn't very clear what I meant about the file sizes. I think I read somewhere that what Sigma is doing with their DNG RAWs is just a rough and dirty bit translation from RAW, which results in a much larger DNG file size. What that suggests to me is that there's little to no loss in data when using the DNGs instead of X3F, but it's hard to say for sure without some testing.

Adobe's DNG Converter does a lossless compression algorithm to get the file size down to 33-50MB, which matches closely the X3F file size. If it were much smaller, I would suspect there is some loss but this at least suggests there is a lot of data in the DNG (compared to a 10MB or so jpg). Sigma could potentially do a similar lossless compression in-camera, but I'm guessing the various Quattro processors simply aren't powerful enough to do so in a reasonable time. I think Lightroom allows for automatic compression on import, but I didn't try it yet.

If you have time, could you take a DNG and X3F file or the same subject to compare?
 

biglouis

Well-known member
I guess I wasn't very clear what I meant about the file sizes. I think I read somewhere that what Sigma is doing with their DNG RAWs is just a rough and dirty bit translation from RAW, which results in a much larger DNG file size. What that suggests to me is that there's little to no loss in data when using the DNGs instead of X3F, but it's hard to say for sure without some testing.

Adobe's DNG Converter does a lossless compression algorithm to get the file size down to 33-50MB, which matches closely the X3F file size. If it were much smaller, I would suspect there is some loss but this at least suggests there is a lot of data in the DNG (compared to a 10MB or so jpg). Sigma could potentially do a similar lossless compression in-camera, but I'm guessing the various Quattro processors simply aren't powerful enough to do so in a reasonable time. I think Lightroom allows for automatic compression on import, but I didn't try it yet.

If you have time, could you take a DNG and X3F file or the same subject to compare?
Yes, to be accurate I'll have to use a tripod but I will give it a try some time this weekend.

LouisB
 

Stoneage

Member
I think you will find that DNGs are superior to the X3F files. I've got to play with them more but the results so far are very promissing.
I see the opposite in my tests. The DNG and X3F are very similar with a slight edge for the X3F in shadow quality after boosting them.
Also in the highlights there seems to be a minimal advantage for the X3F. And then there are some color artifacts in the DNG that the X3F seems to render better. Also blues can look different.

 

biglouis

Well-known member
^^^^ Worrying. I've got some new files to process with comparison shots ^^^^

What software were you using to process the DNGs?

LouisB
 

ggibson

Well-known member
I see the opposite in my tests. The DNG and X3F are very similar with a slight edge for the X3F in shadow quality after boosting them.
Also in the highlights there seems to be a minimal advantage for the X3F. And then there are some color artifacts in the DNG that the X3F seems to render better. Also blues can look different.

Someone on DPR was showing this as well, but also noted that if you increase the color NR to 50 or so in LR, the two look very close. It may be that SPP's color NR is just more aggressive by default.

While I was looking at this on your DP0q shot of the building with the smokestack, Louis, I noticed something interesting--the leaves on the shadow side of the building, near the corner look like the color gets completely lost against the brown bricks in some places. You can see some texture of the leaves, but the color takes on the brown of the building. Do you see that, or am I imagining it? Seems like a Quattro artifact more than X3F vs. DNG though.
 

tagscuderia

New member
Quattro OOC DNGs are linear, that means that the camera is performing the colour conversion from 4:1:1 and logic implies that this is the same routine used for the JPG engine which is inferior to SPP. The files are also denoised in camera (compare to X3F in RawDigger) and also inferior to SPP.

DNG was designed for CFA data so linear was SIGMA's only option.
But linear DNG is still a scene-referred RAW file e.g, it has no White Balance or colour space and no gamma applied. There's also zero sharpening which for Quattro is a God send!
I would imagine that 12-bit reflects greater efficiency having converted to linear.
 

tagscuderia

New member
By design, linear DNGs are open to interpretation by RAW developer software (discovered having pitted Iridient vs ACR); no colour space, white balance or gamma is applied.
Regards blues, SPP and the JPG engine correct the cyan cast that appears inherent in Foveon files, thankfully it's very easy to do manually. With DNG, it's also possible to profile the camera to apply this correction automatically in a way that's not possible with the X3F!
Due to using the in-camera colour conversion and noise reduction routines, X3F will prove superior until SIGMA greatly improve camera processing power; that would allow for NLM which appears superior for denoising Foveon RAW data.
Cheers,
Tom.
 

biglouis

Well-known member
One aspect of the new firmware/SPP I am not understanding is the new SFD mode.

Maybe I have not set my camera up correctly but in use SFD seems to me no more that autobracketing. Am I correct?

When I export from SPP in either JPEG or TIFF mode I get the exact same file size whether it is a normal X3F or SFD format X3I file, despite the fact that the X3I RAW file is nearly 8 times bigger than the X3F file.

Here is an example of the detail created by an X3F versus a X3I. Both files were exported as TIF into LR6 and then saved as jpegs.

At 100% I really cannot see any improvement using the X3I, or if there is an improvement it is very subtle indeed and begs the question whether it is really worth it.

Am I doing something wrong or missing something?

The subject:


100% crop from centre of TIF of X3F file, as JPEG from LR6


100% crop from centre of TIF of X3I file, as JPEG from LR6
 

Knorp

Well-known member
Louis, as an objective observer I'd say the difference is huge !
The iX3 file is much cleaner: f.i. look around the No Parking text.

Kind regards.
 

Sapphie

Member
By design, linear DNGs are open to interpretation by RAW developer software (discovered having pitted Iridient vs ACR); no colour space, white balance or gamma is applied.
Regards blues, SPP and the JPG engine correct the cyan cast that appears inherent in Foveon files, thankfully it's very easy to do manually. With DNG, it's also possible to profile the camera to apply this correction automatically in a way that's not possible with the X3F!
Due to using the in-camera colour conversion and noise reduction routines, X3F will prove superior until SIGMA greatly improve camera processing power; that would allow for NLM which appears superior for denoising Foveon RAW data.
Cheers,
Tom.
Hi Tom

Are you able to explain how to correct the cyan cast to produce better blues in Lightroom? Also, how do you profile the camera with DNG?

Lee
 

tagscuderia

New member
SFD is auto-bracketing; it's taking 7 shots total, 3 either side of the base exposure. The X3I is a container for the 7 X3F files that can be individually extracted.
Unsure as to why you expect the TIFFs or JPGs to be larger :confused:
The SFD image has visibly better IQ in your example thanks to much lower noise. Noise and dynamic range being the raison d'être of SFD.
 
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