GXR contrast and sharpness settings

[riccadonna]

Recently I my attention was directed to contrast and sharpness settings while being asked by AlberTRAL in my post " sunday in museum " about the settings I used for the shots.

Beautiful work! Nice light control and really clean B&W! Can you please comment a little bit on your GXR settings including the NR? Do you use the NR?
Take care, AlbertTRAL

Thank you so much for enjoing my work.
The picts are taken as JPEG, the NR is off, and as far as I recall, Ricoh doesn`t include in-house sharpening so I sharpen the picts a bit according to the motive with unsharp mask ( 50 amount 1 pix 1 tresh). As I tend to underexpose in order not to blow highlights, I fetch the shadows in Highlight-Shadow so they open up. Sometimes one get closer to final result like in the case of violin player. I would like to try RAW but I haven`t yet got the software for it. Anyway, I think JPEG in Ricoh edition are fully satisfying for my needs. Not to forget the source of light, overcast non direct and the motive, full range with dominante on the opposites of light and dark outlined on middle grey background. Asi , Stanislaw

Stanislaw
You can change the camera's default setting for contrast and sharpness in jpg - go into colour settings, then B&W then press the display button and it brings upa menu where these can be set.I often leave my B&W on high contrast an -0.03 or -0.07 for more contrasty images. But you can play with the setting to suit your taste. Tom

Tom.
Thank you very much for hint. Normally I set the color to normal and don`t go further with intensity and sharpness. Likewise with B/W. I recall answering AlberTRAL about my settings, that as far I remember Ricoh doesn`t offer in-body sharpening. Well, here I was wrong and your advice put me on track. However, in my menu it`s called Image Setting-B/W- sharpness and contrast. I can see that I shot all at default values of 5. I`ll try to figure how it works at lowest 1 and highest 9 value. There`s one question I have to GXR users. What is unprocessed or least processed value ? the lowest one that`s 1 or the default one value of 5? Stanis

Stanis,
"5" is "neutral" - you can plus and minus from there.
I did a test some years ago by running a GRD through all the possible variations using the same image (it starts here - move through the rest of them in sequence) :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/49387980@N ... 8295493690
This should give you an idea on how the settings differ - not much in it really. Tom

Tom.
It looks like the value 1 on contrast setting retains highlight better and has more shadow detail the the one taken at value 5 (default). I took two picts at value 1 and value 5 and reviewed them in camera with white saturation on. Less flicker on value 1. However I took them in hurry when the sun came out and overexposed them one stop. Then the sun got cloudy and hasn`t come out yet. It´t Danmark here, not Australia lucky you. Anyway I think our conversation about these settings is a interesting stuff for separate topic. Stanis

That`s it so far. As said I`m waiting for sun ( third day in row without it! ) to conduct some tests. I still fee that sharpness and contrast settings at value 1 are the least in-camera processed jpegs that would say closest to raw. They are pretty flat and grey to look at. You wouldn`t like to show them to your sparkling girlfriend. Luckily I discovered another Ricoh goodie. It´s levels compensation, brothers and sisters! It allows you to adjust levels in camera producing a copy of original so you can comare the side by side. Superb! There´s auto and manual option. I find auto works more precise and fast.

That`s it folks. Let`s use this forum to exchange settings tweeks to get the best of these sensors. One thing more. I have both A12 m-mount and A12 28 and 50 units. I`m not sure about the differences of the sensors. Beside size, are the same, do the A12 lensors have AA filter or not, and so on. Since there`s no subforum for settings exchange on Ricoh GXR forum, I`ll post my observations on m-mount settings exchange subforum. Waiting to hear from you Stanislaw

 

[riccadonna]

Hi folks. Here`s my modest shot at finding out about contrast settings on A12 m-mount unit. To make things simpler, I left sharpness at default value of 5. First a little notice about exposure. From good old film days I retained the habit of " sunny 16". For those too young to remember it`s a simple rule that foe average sunlit scene one used shutter speed equaling ISO and f:16. In extreme light reflective surroundings (beach, salt lake ) you used f: 22.
Gxr base ISO is 200 which should give f:4 at 1/4000. I discovered however that A12 overexposes at that setting and the right exposure is more like 4.5-5. To be on safe side I exposed the first three at 5.6. I noticed that while setting contrast at 9 I was severely blowing the highlights. It lead me to take second row at f :8. The whites were pacified but at the severe expense of underexposed shadows. It`s my habit to underexpose and the fetch shadows in post. But too much underexposure will result in the grain/noise in pulled-up shadows. Which was the case in third pict of second row. My quest for this little test was to find out about nature of contrast settings. It´s looks that Tom Caldwell was right saying that default value of 5 was neutral. It`s pretty confusing: 5 is zero, 1 is -4 and 9 is +4. Maybe I`m wrong but to my eyes values 1 and 9 being pulled to value 5 level, exhibit more noise then default value of 5. It looks like for time being I`ll stick to factory setting for most of pictures. It`s all about jpeg, of course as I yet have not graduated to fine art of RAW editing. By the way, recently my proff friend showed me a completely black pict which he pulled in RAW to produce very fine 3200 film ISO grained portrait as a result. Who needs then these silly B/W grir and grain filters !? Cheers Stanislaw