Ex-Lightroom user. Question/s about how to do in Cap1
Hi, I've just bought a Sony A5000 as an 'out and about' camera. Capture 1 express 8 came free with the camera. I've been having a play with the software and so far I’m very impressed, and so much so that I'm thinking of making it my primary RAW development software. I was using Lightroom before, but not too impressed with the lens corrections, noise reduction or the difficulty in reading the numbers by the sliders etc.
I have a few questions that I'd love to find answers for, to help me transition from Lightroom to Capture 1, and so any help in answering them would be great (obviously you'd have to be familiar with both the software's).
1) In Lightroom I’m used to having to apply some whites (via the whites slider) after increasing the exposure, to stop the mid tones and high tones from bunching together. There's no whites slider in Capture 1 (unless i missed it). Is there a reason for that? Is it not needed (perhaps the exposure slider in Capture 1 works differently)?
2) What is the difference between the exposure slider and brightness slider, i.e how do they effect the image differently?
3) In Lightroom, and in its Lens correction panel, there's a slider called vignetting. It is obviously used for correcting the darkness around the edges of the RAW file caused by wide apertures etc. In Capture 1 there's also a slider called vignetting, but there's also one called Light Falloff. What is the difference between the 2, and which should i use. I initially imagined it was a simple case of using the vignetting amount slider in Capture 1 just like i do in Lightroom, but after reading the Capture 1 help file, I'm wondering whether the equivalent slider is in fact the Light Falloff slider. The Capture 1 help file says:
If you have a profile for your lens, set the amount to 100% to get a completely flat and even looking image.
Now, my Sony camera has its own Capture 1 profile, and so if I'm right that i should be using the Light Falloff slider as the equivalent to the Vignetting slider in Lightroom, am i then also right in saying that i should just set the Light Falloff off slider to 100% for every image to remove the vignetting defects? Why is it defaulted to zero for each image though? Does the Capture 1 Sony camera profile know exactly how much correction to use, and is correct if the value is 100%?
Sorry for so many questions, many thanks for any help.
I have a few questions that I'd love to find answers for, to help me transition from Lightroom to Capture 1, and so any help in answering them would be great (obviously you'd have to be familiar with both the software's).
1) In Lightroom I’m used to having to apply some whites (via the whites slider) after increasing the exposure, to stop the mid tones and high tones from bunching together. There's no whites slider in Capture 1 (unless i missed it). Is there a reason for that? Is it not needed (perhaps the exposure slider in Capture 1 works differently)?
2) What is the difference between the exposure slider and brightness slider, i.e how do they effect the image differently?
3) In Lightroom, and in its Lens correction panel, there's a slider called vignetting. It is obviously used for correcting the darkness around the edges of the RAW file caused by wide apertures etc. In Capture 1 there's also a slider called vignetting, but there's also one called Light Falloff. What is the difference between the 2, and which should i use. I initially imagined it was a simple case of using the vignetting amount slider in Capture 1 just like i do in Lightroom, but after reading the Capture 1 help file, I'm wondering whether the equivalent slider is in fact the Light Falloff slider. The Capture 1 help file says:
If you have a profile for your lens, set the amount to 100% to get a completely flat and even looking image.
Now, my Sony camera has its own Capture 1 profile, and so if I'm right that i should be using the Light Falloff slider as the equivalent to the Vignetting slider in Lightroom, am i then also right in saying that i should just set the Light Falloff off slider to 100% for every image to remove the vignetting defects? Why is it defaulted to zero for each image though? Does the Capture 1 Sony camera profile know exactly how much correction to use, and is correct if the value is 100%?
Sorry for so many questions, many thanks for any help.
0
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A1) the Whites in Lr can best be translated to the Levels tool, white point setting, in CO8
A2) in CO8, the Exposure slider mimics exposure (obviously) in that it moves the entire histogram to the right or left (drag the slider, watch the histogram); the Brightness slider moves the center of the histogram primarily and the outer edges of the histogram to a lesser extend then the Exposure slider
A3) Light Falloff compensates a lens error and is not influenced by any cropping of the image; Vignetting tool is 'crop-sensitive' (unless you do not want it to be). With Light Falloff you can make corners only brighter (to compensate for light falloff, obviously), with Vignetting tool you can have it both ways
If there is a profile for your lens and it is applied (automatically) it should be the best correction you can have. If there is no lens profile, you can set the sliders manually to your liking.0 -
Thanks for taking the time to give a detailed reply, appreciated.
The Light Falloff vs Vignetting sliders makes sense to me now, ty.
Just a couple more questions (if you don't mind).
1) There's no black slider in Capture 1 express 8, but there is in Lightroom. I assume the blacks must therefore be done via the Levels tool?
2) Why do some of my RAW files have 100% distortion correction applied automatically, but others have 0%?
Thanks again.0 -
[quote="NNN635649191907959269" wrote:
Thanks for taking the time to give a detailed reply, appreciated.
The Light Falloff vs Vignetting sliders makes sense to me now, ty.
You're welcome.[quote="NNN635649191907959269" wrote:
Just a couple more questions (if you don't mind).
1) There's no black slider in Capture 1 express 8, but there is in Lightroom. I assume the blacks must therefore be done via the Levels tool?
2) Why do some of my RAW files have 100% distortion correction applied automatically, but others have 0%?
A1) Correct, you can use the black point setting in the Levels tool
A2) That depends on the lens, the focal length of your zoom lens, aperture and so on. This information is all in the lens database of CO8.0 -
A2 would make sense, however, the images that had 0% distortion applied look much more accurate if the distortion is manually set to 100% instead (although i'm only pooling that conclusion from about 5 images so far). 0 -
Anyone? 0 -
I'm not at all familiar with recent Sony cameras nor the Sony Express version of the C1 software.
However my observations with my Canon cameras shows that lens corrections are typically most obviously applied to the wider end of the zoom range and at anything above the old analog 35mm /Full Format length of circa 50 to 60mm the adjustments are harder to detect.
I am assuming that the Sony camera/lens database makes use of adjustment values supplied by the internal lens database where a lens has such information available. If you look in the Lens tool it may show a lens by name or may show something like Generic or Manufacturer Profile.
The simplest way to see whether you are getting what you might expect would be to shoot both RAW and jpg and compare the end results. The jpg results should, one would expect, have the default manufacturer lens corrections values applied if there are any to apply for the lens and settings in use.
HTH.
Grant0 -
In my experience, LR's lens profiles are better than C1's.
In every other respect (but most importantly for me, colour) C1 is better.
D.
Edited: LR also does Chromatic Aberration correction better than C1.0 -
Thanks for all the info. Appreciated. 0 -
[quote="Dinarius" wrote:
In my experience, LR's lens profiles are better than C1's.
In every other respect (but most importantly for me, colour) C1 is better.
D.
Edited: LR also does Chromatic Aberration correction better than C1.
FWIW I have no experience of LR but my Old Canon 600mm FD mount lens used with an adapter is very prone to CA and Purple Fringing in certain light conditions and Capture One's image analysis, backed up with some manual fine tuning on rare extreme CA occasions, deals with both very well. My more modern lenses, are also well covered.
Maybe I'm lucky.
I think one has to be cautious about making broad general statements without the possibility of reasonable comparisons.
Grant0 -
Grant,
Whatever about CA, the amount of image area lost in profile correction in C1 as compared with ACR/LR can be alarming, when correcting wide angle lenses. Why does this have to be so? How can ACR/LR correct with virtually no loss of image area?
I use Canon's 17-40mm a lot. Shot at the wide end and opening a file in C1, I will immediately notice in the thumbnails (the default Distortion setting will usually be 100%) that large areas all around the edge of the image are greyed out. I would say that, comfortably, 10%+ of the image area is lost in correction.
My carry-round camera is a Sony RX100. The loss of image area at the wide end with this is even worse.
Critical composition created in camera is wasted at the processing stage because of loss of subject matter around the edges.
Pity.
D.0 -
Dinarius,
for the RX100 I've noticed that the corrected image size shows the pixel count to be expected from a 20MP camera. So AFAIK nothing lost here. The corrected image shows an angle of view of 28mm eq. at the wide end. BUT it's a known factor that the lens actually covers a slightly wider angle than 28mm - actually about 26.5mm. And this image area, greyed out, can be used. You could shift the image around more towards the sides, you could change the ratio, let's say to 16:9 and use all the available width of the image - although with perhaps a bit more of distortion or lower optical quality. I don't know what correction is applied on your Canon lens but from my cameras and lens I only know the above principle that the corrected full size image shows the expected pixel count - with areas eventually exceeding those limits.0 -
Dinarius,
I suspect what C1 does with optical distortion is to assess the level of compression or pixel fill required as part of the correction and crop according to some default quality parameters. (That's my description of the potential process applied set out in simplistic terms.)
Sure the crop could be made larger but when I look at the images from my most affected cameras the default crop (in landscape mode for reference) avoids the most compressed elements at the top and bottom of an image and the most stretched areas left and right.
The out of camera pre-adjusted jpg is usually only slightly different, allowing a few pixels more compression and stretch respectively although the stretched areas are never sharp.
I am assuming you are not using a crop ratio preset that might slightly modify the process and perhaps influence it to cut out a little more than an unconstrained crop.
Like all things involving defaults it is a "best offering" and C1 still allows people to make up their own crops and adjustments if the defaults are unacceptable to them.
In camera composition should, in my opinion and for most cameras, make allowance for the potential differences that one sees in the viewer compared to the usable area of the image. This has always been the case in my experience. Composing right to the edge has always offered potential processing challenges of various sorts. With wide angle shots, irrespective of general lens correction availability in software, there has always been a trade off between maximum width composition and, for example, sharpness and other optical errors at the edges and especially in corners.
Sometimes the circumstances do not allow us to make such compositional safety adjustments on the original shot so we are left with the software solution at best.
From what I have seen C1 makes a pretty good choice (for my Canon cameras) about where the crop should be applied after lens correction. I may sometime adjust it an take the hit on quality - especially if the nature of the subject matter means that the compressed or stretched areas are not visually significant detail for the image. Beyond that I guess one can always crop outside the image area and then take the result into Photoshop or some other graphics manipulation tool that allows further pushing and pulling of pixels. I don't think C1 sets out to offer that type of functionality other than by what it offers using the Lens Correction tool when applying settings by hand.
Grant0
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