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DXO with A850?

edwardkaraa

New member
Douglas has mentioned in one of the threads on another forum that A850 is shipping with a free copy of DXO in Europe. If this is true, what about A900 owners. We purchased the more expensive model, and all what we get is IDC. Is Sony going to provide the software for download?
 

peterv

New member
Hi Edward,

I'm afraid this will only happen in our dreams ;-)

I understand how you feel though, just bought DXO myself for €240,-
 

edwardkaraa

New member
Hi Peter,

You could have gotten a free copy of DXO if you had paid 2000$ for an A850 :D

A few months ago, I complained to a Sony rep about the lack of professional converter, and he recommended to use Lightroom. He quickly added I should pay for it LOL

Canon on the other hand upgrades DPP every few months and this FREE software is one of the best converters for Canon files.

I don't really understand Sony's strategy. They provide a pro software with the amateur body, and an amateur software with the pro body :confused: :wtf:
 

peterv

New member
You're right, it's sad really.
It seems Sony is going to work together with DXO and though I like the software for colour and noise reduction, I'm getting more and more impressed with RPP for sharpness. The difference is astounding.
 

douglasf13

New member
Yeah, I think the issue is that Sony is still providing IDC with the A850 as well, so they see DxO as just an add-on thing. I've been playing with a trial of it, and, although don't mind the way the program is laid out, I am astounded by the "smudginess" of everything...with all NR turned off. I have a feeling that is why Sony is courting them a bit. DxO conversions will be good for the review crowd. Like Peterv and his RPP, I just keep coming back to Raw Therapee with its spot on color and unbeatable detail. Just printing tends reduce noise enough for me.
 

Quentin_Bargate

Well-known member
I'm not seeing a radical difference between Raw therapee and DxO. DxO has some distinct advantages such as built-in lens correction which makes is a better workflow tool than the excellent but a bit flaky Raw therapee. Fact is no one converter does it all.

Quentin
 

douglasf13

New member
Agreed that no one converter does it all. I'm surprised that you're not noticing a detail difference between DxO and RT. I've heard about this from others, and, now that I'm testing it, it seems like a night and day difference. The DxO conversions seem overly smooth to me, but I'll keep testing.
 

peterv

New member
Quentin, would you mind sharing your DXO settings? I've tried quite a few, and I agree with Douglas that the difference in detail rendered is quite obvious. Even with the so called 'no correction' setting and noise reduction off.
As said, I don't mind the interface of DXO, though for developing a large number of files the workflow of Aperture or Lightroom saves time.
BTW, DXO has an update that is supposed to take care of the green cast in low light shots with the a900, version 5.3.5.
 

douglasf13

New member
Edward, I'm not in front of my computer to double check, but I believe that I settled on the demoisacing algorithm that comes initially preset (I can't remember the darn name.) You may want to give deconvolution sharpening a try, too. I still sometimes use C1 for its convenience, but I just can't quite get the color where I want it, so I use RT for my final proofs and personal stuff. I like most of what I've seen from DXO so far, so I too am curious how to get more detail out of it.
 

edwardkaraa

New member
Thank you Douglas. I see which setting you mean. Unfortunately RT is still crashing on my computer, but I have isolated the problem. It will crash every time I open a folder that contains files that were modified by IDC, which means basically all my folders. I have created a folder and copied a few "virgin" files in it, and it works. I need to familiarize myself with RT first but it seems to have all the settings I need apart from the healing brush.
 

Quentin_Bargate

Well-known member
I like Raw therapee, don't get me wrong. In fact I'd probably pay money for it if it was more stable on my 64 bit Vista machine (it crashes out occasionally).

I also use Silkypix, which does slightly smooth some subtle detail but also generates noise free images. Noise free is more impirtant to me than the last ounce of detail because noise can lead to images being rejected by stock libraries.

My biggest issue with DxO is its treatment of shadows where DxO lighting generates harsh transitions. I'm not using any particularly special settings with DxO, except I do turn the sharpening down by at least 1, and sometimes off altogether. I much prefer to sharpen in Photoshop using Focalblade. Both DxO and SilkyPix allow perpective correction before conversion, which I find very useful.

Quentin
 
Raw Therapee has a habit of crashing on me if I move a slider first one way then the other without releasing the mouse button in between. 32 bit XP. I find that on the shots where I don't ETTR enough, RT leaves white speckles over the shadow/dark areas of the image and doesn't do a very good job of eliminating the red blotchiness. I end up seeing posterization in places where IDC does fine. I have been wanting to try DXO, and while they have a fix for the "green shadows" issue now, when I asked them about it the person on the other end alluded to "something big" coming this fall. I think I'll wait a bit longer. The examples here look pretty impressive, though the sharpening looks a bit aggressive.

BTW I caught wind on the Dyxum forms that Iliah Borg is finding that the 850 color separation is not up to a900 spec, but that is preliminary -- it will be interesting to see the final results.

IMHO I still have a lot to learn with RAW processing so take my findings with a grain of salt.
 

Cerebus

New member
I'm playing with Raw Therapee on Vista 64. I read on the RT forum to try RT with compatability mode set to Windows XP. So far, it seems to be working. No crashes so far.

I'm not seeing a night and day difference between RT and DxO on details, at least not on the first set of prints. I think there's a slight edge to RT though. Currently, I'm favoring RT and DxO over C1 as far as image quality, but C1 has the best workflow.

I'm hardly an expert, so YMMV.

eric
 

roweraay

New member
I use DXO with the A900 and thus far have been very happy with their output. Of course luckily in my case, almost all of my lenses (except for the Sony 16mm Fisheye and the Sony 50mm Macro) are fully supported by their lens correction modules.

I just downloaded the 5.3.5 version.
 

douglasf13

New member
Uh oh, Quintin, you may have me on-board the DxO train. :) I've been playing with it for a couple of weeks, and I'm starting to get things dialed in to where I'm really liking it. I may start using the Lightroom/DxO combination 2 method for a workflow. One thing I've noticed is that I have to dial down exposure compensation around -1.5EV with my shots in order for DxO's histogram to match my camera's LCD histogram (even with DxO lighting turned off.) Is anyone else noticing this?
 

edwardkaraa

New member
Douglas, do you have any news regarding DXO shipping with the A850 in Europe? I asked about it at Sony Thailand and they confirmed no DXO software is being packaged with the A850. It's a real pitty because for the price it's selling at, I would have bought the camera just to get the software, and a back up body of course :D
 
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