Do you recommend RD over C1? I've always used Aperture for my raw conversion, but of course now can't. I find C1 to be a bit klunky and counterintuitive, especially wrt import.
I've been a fan of C1 for years now, but I generally prefer RD for small sensor compacts. RD is very flexible from a sharpening and noise reduction standpoint. For example if noise reduction is disabled in RAW Developer, absolutely no additional noise reduction processing is performed, period, even if you shoot at ISO 25600. Same goes for sharpening; uncheck the "Enable sharpening" option and absolutely no sharpening is applied beyond whatever inherent "sharpening" the demosaicing process may incorporate. The files end up with more detail and look more "organic" to me. In addition, the tools to remove hot pixels and dead pixels in RD are very useful. C1 often leaves hot pixels in high ISO files. C1 Pro now has built in tools for distortion and CA, which Raw Developer doesn't. However, C1 Pro is very expensive! RD is fast and rock stable on my Macs, and I find it quite intuitive in use. The developer has also been extremely responsive to my questions.
Amin,
Thanks for the helpful example. I have an LX3 on the way and I have been wondering whether the in-camera JPEGs are good enough to skip shooting RAW. I guess not looking at your results.
-Brad
Glad it was helpful Brad. I think the in-camera JPEGs are very good, to be honest. There is a good amount of detail. Colors are great, and dynamic range is also very good for a small sensor camera. The in-camera JPEG engine strikes a nice balance between noise and detail, and the in-camera B&W settings are already getting a rep for their high quality results. Many people refuse to use the RAW files until they are supported in Lightroom/ACR or Aperture, and most of those folks are very happy with the JPEGs. I was listening to the photography podcast TWIP, and the pro photographer Scott Bourne was very happy with his A3-ish prints of in-camera JPEGs. He also raved more than once about the "publication quality" appearance of ISO 80 in-camera JPEGs viewed full screen on a 23" Apple display.
All that said, I would not shoot this camera in JPEG mode for shots that I think have potential to be very good. There is simply more detail and dynamic range in the RAW files. The example I've shown in this thread shows how much more detail the RAW file contains, but there is also
much more noise in the version from RAW. In an A4 print, I don't doubt that many people would prefer the in-camera JPEG version. I'm just not one of those people
.
If I'm understanding Amin's post correctly, I'd disagree w/ Brad and say "yes." On my screen the jpeg (on the left ?) looks darned good.
Michael, yes the JPEG is on the left in the resized (first) image as well as the crop (second) comparison. I think the in-camera JPEGs are very good. This is the first Panasonic-made small sensor camera I've owned where I felt like the Venus engine was doing a great job. Prior to version IV of both, I thought Canon's DIGIC was outclassing Panasonic's Venus. I no longer think this is the case.