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Establishing the in-camera exposure meter calibration point is the way to extract more dynamic range from your camera

Submitted by lexa on

RawDigger. Determining the middle grey value

“My camera has not enough dynamic range”

“The numbers on that and that review site suggest that many stops of the dynamic range, but I do not see it, my highlights are blown out, my shadows are noisy and blotchy”

Part of the problem is in how one sets the exposure. To set the exposure correctly it is good to know how the in-camera light meter works, and how it is calibrated. So, what is exposure meter calibration and why is it important?

Understanding of the exposure meter calibration determines the outcome of the exposure.

What does this mean? Well, let’s take a closer look.

RawDigger 1.0.0 Released!

Submitted by lexa on

Licensing changes

RawDigger is Shareware now. You can use it free of charge during 30 days trial period. To continue using RawDigger after the end of the trial period please purchase the License.

RawDigger can be licensed as one of three Editions that differ in functionality and price:

  • Exposure Edition for everyday use: it displays RAW data in all modes (RGB, RAW Composite, and RAW per channel), indicates over- and underexposed areas, displays of RAW histogram, image statistics, statistics and histogram for selected area.
  • Research Edition is intended for camera/sensor evaluation (personal use and for preparing reviews, as well as to help with programming RAW data processing); it includes all the functionality of the Exposure Edition and adds TIFF export, multiple selected areas via Samples, tables of sampled data; statistics and histograms over multiple samples, exporting sampled data as CSV and CGATS.
  • Profile Edition helps to create sensor calibration data, linearization data, or device data for color profiling. It adds selection grids for faster processing of step wedges and color targets, as well as for calculating non-uniformity maps. Profile Edition allows to apply white balance, normalization, equalization (Flat Field), and filtering of outlying values before data export.

See Compare Editions table for details.

RawDigger 0.9.20 Beta

Submitted by lexa on

Note: RawDigger 0.9.20 will stop working on Nov 30, 2013

New features

  • Foveon support:
    • Raw data decoding support for all known Foveon-based cameras
    • For Sigma SD1 and Sigma Merrill cameras black level is computed automatically
    • For Sigma SD1 and Merrill cameras all raw sizes are supported, High, Medium, and Low.
      For Medium size RGB rendering is disabled because the aspect ratio in RAW is ~4800x1600 vs. ~3300x2200 in RGB
    • RGB rendering is supported for all cameras, but with different quality; for SD1 and Merrills it is more usable, for DPxx pre-Merrill series it is just usable, for SD9-SD14 and Polaroid x530 it is very rough.
    • For SD9-SD14 and Polaroid x530 cameras only Auto White Balance is available.
  • LibRaw library updated to support:
    • with full RGB rendering
      • Canon G16
      • Hasselblad Lunar, Stellar
      • Panasonic GM1
      • Pentax K50, K500, Q7
      • Samsung Galaxy NX (EK-GN120)
      • Sony NEX-5T, ILCE-A7, ILCE-A7R, ILCE-A3000
    • preliminary RGB rendering (but of course RAW data is extracted in full)
      • Canon S120
      • Fujifilm X-A1
      • Nikon P7800
    • For Sony and Samsung cameras black level is now based on EXIF information
    • For Sony cameras model name is now based on EXIF tag SonyModelID
    • Support for DNG files without compression tag is added
  • Added support for black level subtraction for non-Bayer (full-color) raw formats
  • Precision of the of floating point values is increased in exported files.
  • EXIF data can be copied to clipboard as a table and as a text, additional button for text export is available in the dialogue
  • EXIFTool updated to version 9.39

RawDigger 0.9.19 Beta

Submitted by lexa on

Changes

New features

  • Exporting Bayer RAW data as single channel (grayscale) TIFFs. This feature is most useful for exporting data obtained from DIY black and white cameras with removed CFAs (maxmax.com and similar methods).
  • It is now possible to switch off auto exposure compensation for RGB render display
    Preferences - Display Options - Automatic exposure correction for RGB render

Changes and improvements

  • The last set of Selection Grid parameters are now automatically saved and reused when the program is restarted.
  • The user can now control the set of folders that is displayed in the sidebar of the "Save.." dialogues (that is, export of RAW data and saving the measurement tables). Preferences - Misc Options - Sidebar folders in "Save.." dialogues:
    • Remember the list of used folders ("traditional" behavior) to display the list of previously used folders.
    • Standard list: include only Desktop, Documents, Pictures, TEMP, and Home folder.
    • Home Folder only

    (This change has been implemented to address user complaints such as: If the list of used folders contains a slow or a disconnected (networked) disk, the "Save.." dialogues are very slow.)

  • For CGATS file export, the fields that can potentially contain a space are now enclosed in single quotes.
  • RAW/RGB data can be exported as an Uncompressed TIFF. For compressed TIFFS, the compression factor is increased (files are smaller).
  • Floating point numbers now contain no less than 4 significant digits (with the exception of percentages of over and underexposed pixels, where only 3 significant digits are used).
  • New Setting
    Preferences - Misc Options - Disable check for updates at startup
    Enabling this setting prevents RawDigger from checking updates when starting the program.
    Consequently, the scripts noCheckUpdates.reg for Windows platform and noCheckUpdates.sh for OS X platform are not provided anymore.
  • LibRaw has been updated, adding support for the following cameras: Panasonic LF1, Panasonic GX7, Fujifilm X-M1, Canon EOS 70D, Sony RX100II, Sony RX1R, Olympus E-P5.

RawDigger 0.9.17 Beta

Submitted by lexa on

Changes

New functionality and major improvements

  • New Preferences parameter:

    Data Processing -> Selection/Sample stats: discard abnormal pixel values

    If the checkbox is set statistics for Selection and Sample discards 10% of highest and 10% of lowermost pixel values to filter off dust, scratches, small specular reflections, and other target/sensor defects

RawDigger 0.9.16

Submitted by lexa on

Changes

New functionality and major improvements

  • Support for non-Bayer RAW files (sRAW, linear DNG, multishot mode).
    Before display, YCC-coded files are converted to RGB through LibRaw/RawSpeed.
  • Support for lossy-compressed DNG format (introduced in Lightroom 4).
  • Correct processing of the files containing 1 to 3 channels:
    • the correct number of columns (and rows) is displayed in the tables;
    • unused histogram slots are displayed as grey rectangles;

RawDigger 0.9.15

Submitted by lexa on

Changes

New functionality and major improvements

  • Data conversion while saving the table of measurements:
    • The table for flat field calculation can be saved
    • Normalization using the saved table for flat field calculation can be applied.
    • White balance calculation for a user-selected patch can be performed.
    • Normalization based on user-selected brightest patch and gamma compensation can be applied.

RawDigger 0.9.14

Submitted by lexa on

Changes

New functionality and major improvements

  • The list of recently opened files is moved to a separate sub-menu and now has slots for 25 files.
  • Added convenience for processing color targets for profiling and field (non-)uniformity analysis (Selection Grid).
  • Added an option to filter out bad pixels in raw files produced by Panasonic cameras.
  • Changed the display of metadata in raw files:

    RawDigger 0.9.13

    Submitted by lexa on

    Changes

    New functionality and major improvements

    • Improved: Most of the time-consuming operations are now performed using parallel processing, to the effect that opening a file and computing statistics and histogram is 3 to 5 time faster if performed on a 4-core processor.
    • New: Display of blown-out and underexposed areas. The values for under-   and overexposure can be adjusted through 
      Preferences -> Over/Under Exposure
      Please see the manual for the detailed description.
    • New: Open Next or Previous file in the current directory.
      This can be done either through File menu or using the hotkeys: Ctrl + Arrow Right, Ctrl + Arrow Left on a Windows platform; Cmd + Arrow Right, Cmd + Arrow Left on OS X.
      The sorting order for these commands is set in
      Preferences - Misc Options - File sort order for Next/Previous.
    • New: To open Raw files RawDigger now defaults to RawSpeed library, which is much faster than the standard one. The user can change this default through
      Preferences -> Data Processing -> Use RawSpeed library for file decoding.
      If using RawSpeed the following options can't be changed:
      • Data Processing -> Sony ARW2 Hack is always On,
      • Data Processing -> Linear Raw Curve is always Off.

      In order to set these options differently the user needs to switch off the option to use RawSpeed library. This is because RawSpeed library does not support all the options standard processing does.

    • New: On a Windows platform the user has the control to allow and disallow running multiple instances of the program, using
      Preferences - Misc Options - Run single Program instance.
      If single instance mode is On, starting a new RawDigger process results in the following:
      1. The new process passes the file name that was used to start it (if the file name was passed to to the process as a command-line parameter) to the already existing process.
      2. New process is terminated normally.

      The user can force mode off if RawDigger is started with newinstance parameter like: RawDigger -newinstance [file name]. This will cause the new RawDigger process to start; the process started like that will not accept file names from other RawDigger processes. On an OS X platform new RawDigger instances can be started via Terminal.

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