Brand New DCS SLR/n

[Steve_Baron]

Hello;
Just received my SLR/n today and took some quick shots with mixed results. I am not going to pre-judge this camera because I don't fully know how to use it properly yet but here are my first results.

1.) I shot in RAW mode with standard noise reduction, low sharpening, and at ISO 160. I would be happy to post some files here if someone could intruct me how.

2.) A quick shot of a street scene showed a moderate amount of moire. That was dissapointing. I also noticed quite a bit and I mean quite a bit of majenta and green around objects. I mean A LOT! I was not using the best lens in the world. It was a 28-105.

3.) I then shot a close up of some branches against the sky.....Majenta on every single one of the branches.

4.) Is there something I have to set for lens optimization or is it done automatically?

5.) I also noticed that the capture indeed exhibited the painter effect that I have read about. Not much but enought that it bothered me.

Am I totally misunderstanding this camera or did I get a bad imager? I shot with 4.5.7 firmware.

6.) Regarding Camera Manager and Photodesk, they would not even see the camera under system 9.2.2 on the Mac. I had to boot into system 10.2.8 in order for it to see the camera. Also, converting to a .tiff file was painfully slow. I am on a G4 Mac and properly installed the system 9 versions of Camera Manager and Photodesk and the system OSX versions.

Thanks for the help group. I am a bit dissapointed initially.
steve

[Keith_Snell]

Steve,

I would have been disappointed with my SLR/n also if I had judged it only with Photodesk. As many others have pointed out, the ACR plug-in with Photoshop CS does a much better job with most images, especially those prone to magenta fringing. Images converted with ACR don't have the painterly affect either. If you have Photoshop CS, you can download version 2.2 of the ACR plug-in for free off the Adobe site. If you have an earlier version of Photoshop, it's probably worth updating to CS if you plan on keeping the SLR/n.

Keith

[BruceAlbright]

Steve,
Don't freak out over your new SLR/n.
I had some of the same problems at first and was questioning it against my S2.
I simply use a Moire program on some of the files and like you shoot in low sharpening and use Nik Sharpener Pro to sharpen photos. Moire is quickly killed and photos are sharp as a tack. Better than any other camera I have seen.
I too was told at first to not jump to conclusions and simply wait to learn the camera and it's learning curve. Glad I took some time to learn it's points and didn't ship it back. I did however sell the S2.
I'm afraid straight out of the camera you will have moire sometimes more than other cameras but it's so easy to clean up that it really isn't a big deal, at least I have found it easy to do.
We have to remember these things are just machines and must understand that at any cost no machine is perfect to everyone. I just hope you can get to like yours as much as I do mine.
It's worth the couple extra steps to obtain such great images.
I use RAW, a 2.9 GHz HP computer with 2GB of RAM and things move pretty quickly.
Just waiting for the next firmware update so I hopefully can get rid of the magenta edges on my 85mm 1.4 and my 20mm 2.8 Nikkors.
I hope you can sleep better some now after hearing you are not the only one who was stressed at first.
Bruce

[Steve_Baron]

Bruce and Keith;
Thanks a lot for the replies. I definately plan on making this camera work. Just wish I didn't have to jump thru hoops to do it. I use a Jenoptik and Megavision in the studio so I am not used to seeing moire at all. This camera replaced the Kodak 760 and I could deal with moire issues in the regular ways without too much problem. I guess as you say, it is time to upgrade to Photoshop CS. My thinking though is that if Photoshop ACR can open the images without the Painterly effect and less moire, why can't Kodak's software engineers do the same thing..I mean, after all it is their hardware. As to the lens optimization, do I need to do anything to catalog my lenses or just understand that some are optimized and some are not? Thanks.
Steve

p.s. website if interested is www.sjbaraophoto.com

[CharlotteLowrie]

Steve, a new firmware version is coming real soon now. It will address lens-specific problems.

And to answer one of your original questions, on the firmware you are using, you don't have the option to optimize for specific lenses. With the new firmware, you will have many optimization options. The upcoming version of Photo Desk update has also been optimized for much better performance (at least on a Windows XP system).

I don't know what day the firmware will be released, but it shouldn't be much longer. I think that you will like it a lot.

Cheers,
Charlotte
http://wordsandphotos.org

[bartdepuij]

Photodesk is slow, but it can generate images without the painterly effect, by setting off sharpening and noise reduction. By the way, Photodesk does a better job demoirizing than ACR if you go into advanced mode. Obviously if you use Photodesk at the faster setting, your overview images will look very bad. That's why the loupe is there to show you the details. If you really dig into Photodesk, it's a pretty cool program. Contact sheet opening of folders for example. And much more.
Hope the new firmware does change things for the new sensor cameras.

[PhilFarber]

New firmware .... New Photodesk .... ROCKS!