via Fstoppers https://ift.tt/15Zr7TO

via Fstoppers https://ift.tt/hBeAwtP

via Fstoppers https://ift.tt/hELie6D

via Fstoppers https://ift.tt/0o5UiRP

Setting the scene - Feb 1999

DPReview.com's test scene is probably the most recognized feature of our reviews. Other tests have come and gone as the need for them has ebbed and flowed, but almost every one of the site's reviews has included some sort of test scene.

And it's been at the heart of one of the greatest criticisms of the site: 'Oh, they only shoot test charts.' (This despite the real-world sample gallery that accompanied every review and informed all our IQ assessments.) Beyond any other feature, the test scene is what allowed the site to become DPReview.

Here's where it all started: Phil Askey's review of the Kodak Pro DCS 520, conducted in 1999 when the site was based in Singapore. It was the site's fourth review and of a camera that clearly blew Phil away. In it, he shot the Kodak alongside the Canon Pro70, to establish how the two compare. And it's that need to compare that would eventually prompt the creation of the test scene.

However, it would take several years and many reviews before the full ability to compare arrived.

The test poster - Aug 1999

Phil didn't spot the utility of shooting the same target, repeatedly, straight away. Some of the bottles cropped up in other reviews (particularly the fine print on the Martini label), and Phil experimented with a variety of setups, including more bottles, cuddly toys and various other targets to keep challenging the cameras he was shooting.

At the same time, he started to include test images of a poster that included a variety of challenging subjects. A series of portraits was later added below the poster in order to assess skintones. In all these early reviews, this poster and various ad hoc bottle setups were used to compare cameras, but notably, Phil was having to re-shoot the new scenes with each camera or lens every time he wanted to make a comparison.

The 'standard test scene' (of sorts) - Feb 2000

It was the Canon PowerShot S20 review (Feb 2000) that first used the phrase 'Standard Test Scene.' It didn't turn out to be quite as described (the review stresses that the comparison shots were taken within minutes of one another), but the germ of the idea is clearly there.

Another big change happened around this time. Just as the test objects kept changing, suddenly so did the content of the sample galleries. After the S20 review, Phil (and therefore, DPReview) had moved from Singapore to London.

Other tests - April 2000

The Nikon Coolpix 990 review of April 2000, as well as being one of the first reviews to reflect Phil's change of scenery, also showed the arrival of several other tests that would become central to his reviews. The white balance test (using a Kodak color chart), a test of the built-in flash and a resolution test chart all make their first appearance in the same review. All three would still be part of the review process seven years later, when I was being trained to conduct the DPReview tests.

Back to the bottles - July 2001

Phil continued to experiment with test targets over the next few months, replacing bottles with items like a watch and a set of pliers placed across the former test poster, the focus and depth-of-field challenges of which make me anxious to even contemplate. But with the Sony DSC-F505V review in July 2001 and then the Epson PhotoPC 3000Z reviews, the bottles returned.

Throughout this period you could see Phil settling on his preferred test subjects: a watch dial for fine texture, Crayola wax crayons for color rendering. The test scene itself gained a Kodak color chart and a variety of other elements, but what was still missing was consistency.

The concept is there, but elements shift around and camera position changes enough that the comparisons needed to be re-shot for each review.

Consecutive reviews would occasionally have the same test scene shot side-by-side, but then the elements would change again, the scene would be shot from a different position, etc. It seems amazing now, but even as the reviews gained a permanent section called 'Compared to...' Phil was having to re-shoot both cameras every time he wanted to make a comparison.

A fresh approach - May 2001

By March 2001 the arrangement had arrived at the four bottles that would be central to the scene for the next four years. But it took until May of that year for the scene to settle down and include most of the elements that would still be present when I joined in 2007: the Kodak color and greyscale charts, the blue 'Paul Smith' watch, the batteries, playing card, and Martini and Baileys bottles.

That version of the scene would persist broadly unchanged for the next three years. I say 'broadly' because at least one element kept changing: the fresh flowers placed on a vase towards the right of the scene.

This organic element had the advantage of providing an excellent, lifelike point of comparison, but also meant that scene was still always changing, now to the point of being seasonal. That in turn still meant regular re-shooting of old cameras for direct comparisons, but also meant there was enough consistency that the existing work wasn't going to waste each time.

The first interactive comparisons - Apr 2004

It was during this era that Phil built the first system that allowed side-by-side comparison without having to download each full image separately. He tested four 8MP cameras side-by-side and allowed users to dynamically compare them to one another in their respective reviews. It's an approach Phil would use again over the coming year to compare rival models.

An image map let you click on different parts of the scene, which summoned-up pre-cropped images and combined them, letting you evaluate each of the comparison cameras' image of each location. Unfortunately this early comparison system was built using Javascript, which the website doesn't now support, so you'll have to just imagine how it would work.

Consistency at last - Jan 2005

True consistency finally arrived in 2005. A simplified version of the scene first appeared in the Minolta DiMAGE A200 review in January that year. Perhaps not coincidentally, this is a few months after Simon Joinson started writing reviews for the site: the first time a name other than 'Phil Askey' had appeared on the masthead.

This version of the test scene would remain unchanged for almost five years and was the version in use when Lars Rehm and I joined DPReview in late 2007. To make comparisons, you had to manually crop specific sections from the scene and assemble them in vertical strips.

If the crops hadn't been prepared for the camera we wanted to compare with, or we couldn't find them on the server, we had to track down the original images from the comparison camera and re-crop and position the crops. But, critically, the scene was shot and lit consistently enough that you didn't have to re-shoot every camera you wanted to draw a comparison with.

This is the main benefit of shooting a consistent scene under consistent lighting: you can create a vast database of directly comparable images without finding that the weather or alignment has changed since your last review.

The last 'box' shot - Oct 2009

The final version of the test scene to live in its white wooden box came in late 2009 and represented a significant overhaul. It gained a great many fine detail targets added to really challenge the latest high-res sensors. There was also a dark box with colored cotton reels in it, to challenge the cameras' noise reduction algorithms.

Perhaps just as significant were the changes aimed at increasing our consistency of framing, now that there were many more people 'behind the scene' shooting it. Look at the center of the scene and you'll see there's a pin (placed in the plane of focus), the point of which, when the camera is positioned correctly, should line up with the center of a cross on the back wall of the box. If the camera was too far left or right, or high or low, it didn't quite align.

And, while there's a Siemens star just below it, it was the tree painting on the front of the Bailey's bottle we used for focusing. To cope with the 3D nature of the scene we shot cameras at F9, well into diffraction-limited territory for some of the smaller-sensor cameras we were testing. The scene was also very difficult to shoot with short focal lengths, and I wish I could find the photo of Lars with half of his body inside the test scene box, carefully trying to align the Sigma DP1, inches away from the targets.

This scene started its life in London and was carefully shipped to Seattle in late 2010, meaning the rancid Baileys had to be shaken from the bottle after many years under hot lights.

The first comparison tool - June 2010

The first full comparison tool was launched in June 2010. The new system meant there was no need to crop or prepare image strips. But it did mean we had to go back and re-shoot a fair number of older cameras, to make sure there were products to compare to, right from the off.

Note there's even a check box that would let you jump straight to the regions of the scene we'd previously shown crops of. We've no idea if anyone ever used or even noticed it.

However, there was no online interface or back end: instead to make it work we had a bespoke processing and tagging tool that would create all the thumbnails and tile sections, generate the index and metadata files containing all the image commentary, and arrange everything into the correct folder structure. These folders needed to be manually uploaded to the correct place in the live site, so that a script that ran at regular intervals would find the folders and add them to the list of comparable cameras.

This final step would only occur if the script found a file called 'visible.ini' in the correct folder, so we had to be incredibly careful not to upload this file if we were preparing a test with a product that wasn't public yet.

By the time the scene was replaced, the comparison tool contained 2973 images from 198 cameras.

The new test scene - Sept 2013

The most recent test scene made its first full appearance in September 2013 (though it had sneaked into at least one review while the interactive tool was being finalized). This was the most radical reworking of the scene, and attempted to combine the detail, color and resolution assessments into a single chart.

The inclusion of the resolution targets meant we couldn't arrange it as a multi-aspect-ratio scene (the height of the scene had to be consistent to interpret resolution in terms of lines-per-picture-height). As well as saving us from having to constantly re-shoot wax crayons and resolution tests, the new test scene had a significant benefit: it was much larger and much flatter. The scene is precisely 1m (~39.7") tall, making it around 20 times larger than the box shot that preceded it.

This made alignment much, much easier and eliminated any concerns about depth-of-field. We though long and hard about incorporating some of the familiar elements of the existing scene into the new one, to maintain continuity, but the vastly different scale and the need to keep the existing scene intact and shootable while the new scene and comparison tool were being completed meant a complete break with the past. I regret not including a Martini bottle, for old time's sake.

With hindsight I also wish we'd adopted equivalent apertures for our test shoots, rather than using F5.6 regardless of format. That said, there was significant reader angst about our choice, despite them all being excellent by the time they're stopped-down to F5.6, and I don't regret not spending a decade trying to explain why Micro Four Thirds cameras were being shot at F2.8 instead.

The second comparison tool - Sept 2013

The second test scene might look a lot like the first one, when you use it, but it revolutionized the way the site worked in the background.

It was the first time we had an online interface to a proper database into which the images were loaded. We could batch-apply metadata to define the properties of images (e.g., to mark a batch of images as having been shot using the 'Daylight' lamps) or to add the public-facing test about the lens and camera settings that had been used. The system could also extract some of this information from the files' EXIF fields.

This sped things up enough that it freed-up time to shoot every ISO in two different lighting conditions.

The way this code was designed proved to be impressively flexible: you could pick any set of images you wanted to compare right down to the pixel level, create a 'Scene' with the relevant variables for your comparison, then create a series of 'anchors' to ensure the images stayed aligned as you navigated around, even if the pixel counts were radically different.

Also added was the ability to ask the site to re-process the comparisons to match the lowest selected resolution. This FINALLY released us from the constraints of pixel-level analysis of all images and let us properly tell the story of image-level differences and the impact of sensor and pixel size.

A few years into the new scene we adopted the approach of shooting all Raw files with identical exposure parameters, regardless of the manufacturers' tone curves and ISO ratings, allowing a visual assessment of Raw performance that was more consistent than ever.

The end - Mar 2023

With the addition of the Pro70 to our studio scene, yesterday, we've come full circle. From what I can tell, the final test scene represents just under a decade's worth of cameras, and includes 11,307 separate images from 296 cameras.

The custom code that underpins the comparisons, not to mention the incredibly clever back-end programming and the upload and metadata-tagging tools, unfortunately are what make it very difficult to maintain, once the site closes. In its own strange way this stands as testament to the brilliant development work that went into creating the part of the test scene that was easiest to overlook: the comparison tool itself.

Even with the larger scene, it could be a pig to shoot, and the comparison tool was so effective that it meant you could compare images with finer precision than we could repeatably focus the scene with.

Alas, nothing we could do would stop the portraits from fading under the intense lighting; there are so many such aspects that I'd do differently if I were starting again. But do I regret the countless hours I spent framing, white balancing, focusing, processing, uploading, tagging so many of those eleven thousand images?

Actually, I'd prefer not to answer that.

from Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) https://ift.tt/UDFWwg4
via IFTTT

DxO PureRAW 3 gives you the company's core noise and optical defect corrections in a clean, simple package designed to work alongside Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom.

Two years ago, French software company DxO took a new tack with the noise and optical defect corrections for which it has long been famed. Previously, if you wanted to use these tools, you had to leave your existing imaging app and learn to use DxO PhotoLab instead. With the new DxO PureRAW, though, you can stick with your existing workflow and still take advantage of some undeniably impressive correction technology.

Last year, PureRAW received an update that improved its integration with Adobe's apps, boosted performance and added preliminary support for Fujifilm X-series cameras. Now, DxO PureRAW 3 arrives with an overhauled user interface that includes a versatile new queuing system. It also brings several new correction types and controls, including the top-of-the-line DeepPRIME XD denoising algorithms that debuted last year with PhotoLab 6.

Key features

• Designed for use with Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom and Lightroom Classic
• Simple, clean user interface that works hand-in-hand with the tools you already use
• Choose from HQ, PRIME, DeepPRIME or DeepPRIME XD denoising
• Correct lens defects like distortion, chromatic aberration, softness and vignetting
• Export images in Linear DNG, TIFF or JPEG formats
• Still a fairly steep price tag, albeit not increased since launch

Available immediately, DxO PureRAW 3 is priced at $129. A bundle with the Nik Collection 5 plugin pack is also available priced at $248, a discount of $30 over the individual pricing for both products. Upgrade pricing is provided for both products through DxO's customer portal, and a 30-day free trial is also available.

A cleaner, more efficient user interface

Upon first launching PureRAW 3, some changes are immediately obvious. The entire user interface has been restyled to be more in keeping with PhotoLab's current design, with fewer font styles and gray backgrounds that are easier on the eyes than the glaring white background PureRAW 2 used for the Process Options dialog.

Compared to the previous version, PureRAW 3's user interface is much easier on the eyes.

The result is both cleaner and more modern-looking than before. The screen space is also significantly more efficient, so while the image thumbnail size in the lightbox is unchanged, it shows quite a few more thumbnails on screen at once. You can still sort lightbox images by capture date or name, but there's now a new option to sort them by ISO sensitivity, which makes sense in a program where noise reduction is a key feature.

You can also now reverse the sort order regardless of the criterion you choose, where previously you could only do so when sorting alphabetically. The filter also lets you show not only processed or unprocessed images, but also those which have been queued but not yet processed.

It's not immediately obvious, but you can switch PureRAW 3 into a single image view with film strip by double-clicking on a thumbnail.

Really, I only found two UI annoyances. One is that you can't preview the effects of filtering prior to final processing of your images, although you can at least compare images after processing in split or toggled views. Also, unlike its predecessor, PureRAW 3 no longer remembers the last folder used when you save images to a custom location, and instead reverts to its Program Files folder each time you revisit the Process Options dialog.

Overall, though, the new version is a program that is much easier on the eye and better lets you focus on your images.

A versatile queuing system that lets you keep on working

An even bigger change is to be found in PureRAW 3's new queueing system. In the previous version of the program, once you clicked the 'Process' button the program's UI was inaccessible until your entire batch of selected images had finished processing. Now, you can return to the lightbox view and continue to browse or add images while the program works on processing the queue in the background.

DxO PureRAW 3 can now work asynchronously, processing images in the background while you continue to browse images and make changes to the processing queue.

You can also pause and resume queue processing at will, and you can even make changes to its order while processing is underway, should you wish. These are huge improvements over PureRAW 2's more linear nature.

One slight quirk is that images are added to the queue in numbered batches, and you can't drag images between batches as each batch has its own unique processing settings. This means that, as in the screenshot above, you can end up in a situation where each batch number appears multiple times.

DeepPRIME XD AI denoising makes its PureRAW debut

On the image processing front, the biggest change in PureRAW 3 is the addition of a fourth noise reduction algorithm, DeepPRIME XD. This AI-based tool first appeared in DxO PhotoLab 6, which we reviewed late last year. Since we've already tested it in significant depth for that review and the underlying algorithms are basically the same for both apps, we won't go into too much detail here; see the earlier review for the specifics.

Out-of-camera JPEG	PureRAW 3 HQ	PureRAW 3 PRIME	PureRAW 3 DeepPRIME	PureRAW 3 DeepPRIMEXD

Briefly, though, DeepPRIME XD delivers even crisper details and less noise than the earlier HQ, PRIME and DeepPRIME algorithms, all of which remain available in PureRAW 3 as well. The tradeoffs that go into achieving this are twofold. Firstly, like both of the earlier PRIME techniques, DeepPRIME XD works by throwing a lot more processor power at the task of denoising your images, meaning that each image takes a good bit longer to process than with most programs.

To give you a sense of this, on my 2018-vintage Dell XPS 15 9570 laptop with an NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti Max-Q graphics processor, running Windows 10 version 21H2, to denoise about 100 Raw images totaling about 2.5GB with DeepPRIME XD took around 110 minutes. By way of comparison, it took around 11 minutes with the HQ denoising algorithm. That's a huge difference, but the good news is that the difference versus the existing DeepPRIME filter was a more modest 26 minutes, or only some 31% longer.

Out-of-camera JPEG	PureRAW 3 HQ	PureRAW 3 PRIME	PureRAW 3 DeepPRIME	PureRAW 3 DeepPRIME-XD

It's also important to note that the DeepPRIME XD algorithms, while great in many shots where the detail is predominantly natural – e.g., hair, fur, foliage and the like – can be prone to creating false detail and artifacts on people and man-made substances. This can be particularly noticeable in high-sensitivity shots of skin or repeating textures like brick walls.

But that's why you still have access to the earlier algorithms as well, to give you the option to fall back on a more stable denoising algorithm at the expense of leaving some added noise in your images when your subject isn't amenable to a newer, AI-based algorithm.

Out-of-camera JPEG	DeepPRIME XD, all corrections

One last point to note about the denoising algorithms is that the standard PRIME algorithm isn't available for Fujifilm RAW files from X-series cameras, just as was the case in PureRAW 2. FujiFilm X-shooters do have access to HQ, DeepPRIME and DeepPRIME XD for their Raws. If your image batch includes any Fuji X-Trans Raws and you select the PRIME algorithm, you'll be warned that the program will fall back to HQ denoising for those shots.

Distortion correction now gives you the full picture

PureRAW 3 gives you more control over distortion correction than did its predecessor, which can be particularly handy when you want to make adjustments to your composition post-capture.

Uncorrected	Original ratio	Max. rectangle	Max. area

As well as allowing you to enable or disable distortion correction, the app now allows you to select how to crop the corrected image: to match the original proportions, crop to the largest rectangle it can from the corrected image, or include every pixel of the corrected image.

In this last case, PureRAW 3 will fill in missing areas with black pixels, which you can then crop out yourself or repopulate using a content-aware fill tool from your Adobe or third-party application of choice.

Uncorrected	Original ratio	Max. rectangle	Max. area

Note that while DxO's lens corrections are based on in-house lens testing, that doesn't necessarily mean they're always infallible. As you can see in the example above from a Panasonic ZS70, even the original ratio version could still use a tiny bit more cropping at frame left and right. This is likely due to sample variation in the camera from that which was tested by DxO, but it's worth being aware of.

There's more control over softness correction, too

You also get more control over sharpening of your images to correct for lens softness than was previously the case. Where PureRAW 2 offered only an on/off toggle, the new version allows you to select from a choice of Soft, Standard, Strong or Hard corrections.

Soft	Standard	Strong	Hard

We hit a bug in our pre-release version of the software here, which we mention for completeness; we imagine it will be fixed in short order if it hasn't been already. We discovered that the selected softness correction was ignored when the HQ algorithm was selected, yielding pixel-identical results in every case. Softness correction worked fine when PRIME-variant algorithms were chosen.

Taming vignetting and aberrations is not new, but now optional

Two last changes to the lens correction toolset are toggles for vignetting and chromatic aberration corrections. Interestingly, though, while PureRAW 2 lacked both, neither tool is actually new in PureRAW 3.

Uncorrected	Vignetting correction

From testing both apps side by side, we can confirm that the earlier app included both corrections already, it's just that they couldn't be disabled. Instead, they were active at all times, even when lens corrections weren't selected for a given image.

Uncorrected	Chromatic Aberration correction

You can now disable either correction if you would prefer to keep the vignetting or aberrations for artistic reasons, or if the corrections aren't working correctly on a particular image.

TIFF export expands your possibilities with third-party apps

DxO has added a new export format to PureRAW 3. As well as the existing Linear DNG and JPEG, the application can now export TIFFs. This could be handy if you're using the program with a non-Adobe application that can't support Linear DNGs, as it means you're not stuck with the lossy JPEG format as your intermediary stage in the editing process.

Out-of-camera JPEG	DeepPRIME XD, all corrections

Monthly updates mean camera and lens support will keep growing

One last improvement, which we think might make PureRAW 3 a worthwhile upgrade for users of earlier versions, is in its lens and camera support. We understand from our briefing with the company prior to launch that it intends to release new optics modules on a monthly basis going forward, so you can expect to see continuing support for new camera body/lens pairings.

Of course, there's no guarantee that any particular pair will be supported, as DxO's modules are reliant on in-house testing, but so long as you're not opting for particularly obscure cameras and lenses there's a fair chance that your new purchases will be added to the roster soon. As for PureRAW 2 owners, we understand that the program will receive one final batch of modules that will bring its camera/lens support up to parity with that which PureRAW 3 featured at launch.

Out-of-camera JPEG	DeepPRIME XD, all corrections

Want to know if your particular cameras or lenses are compatible? You can find out on DxO's site courtesy of its Supported Cameras and Lenses list.

Conclusion

With its latest release, DxO PureRAW 3 continues to move in a positive direction. For our money, the standout features are its new DeepPRIME XD noise reduction algorithm and the queuing features, while the refreshed user interface also makes it noticeably more pleasant to use.

But while we're on the topic of money, that remains one of our primary concerns with PureRAW: With just a handful of tools and very limited potential for manually tweaking its results, a pricetag that's more than half that of the far more capable DxO PhotoLab still feels like quite a big ask.

Out-of-camera JPEG	DeepPRIME XD, all corrections

That said, if you're already well-acquainted with Adobe's applications – and especially if you don't want to forego working in Lightroom – we could definitely see paying for the privilege of accessing DxO's superior noise reduction technology in-app. There's something to be said for solutions that remove the learning curve and let you stick with what you know.

For users with earlier versions, the question of whether to upgrade is a tougher one, in part because DxO doesn't publicly state its upgrade pricing. While DeepPRIME XD and the queueing features are worthwhile, they might not be enough to spur an upgrade by themselves. More likely, the choice to upgrade will be prompted by the need for camera/lens support that PureRAW 2 won't provide.

Overall, though, if you can justify its cost and have a use for DxO's testing-based lens corrections and top-notch noise reduction, we think PureRAW 3 is an excellent option.

What we like	What we don't
Lets you stick with the apps you already know for most editing tasks Extremely simple and clean user interface Absolutely top-notch noise reduction Great lens correction results most of the time Queuing features can save time waiting	Still very pricey for an app with relatively few capabilities No way to preview the effects of your corrections Fuji users still can't use the PRIME denoising algorithm

Out-of-camera JPEG	DeepPRIME XD, all corrections

from Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) https://ift.tt/62PDC9R
via IFTTT

via Fstoppers https://ift.tt/JESDOTG

via Fstoppers https://ift.tt/aWHYOKl

via Fstoppers https://ift.tt/lwLrbXd

via Fstoppers https://ift.tt/EzS56to

See how the Sony VZ-E1's officially 12MP (probably 48MP Quad Bayer) sensor performs with a look a our full resolution sample images from Seattle and Calgary.

Want to learn more about this camera? Watch our hands-on preview from DPReview TV.

View our Sony ZV-E1 sample gallery

from Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) https://ift.tt/NHT5vo0
via IFTTT

via Fstoppers https://ift.tt/fnCNbhy

via Fstoppers https://ift.tt/JgAR6Fi

via Fstoppers https://ift.tt/VleaNsv

via Fstoppers https://ift.tt/ybHLRex

via Fstoppers https://ift.tt/qLD3vjK

via Fstoppers https://ift.tt/HSAEXbl

via Fstoppers https://ift.tt/YPVkmyW