Aperture and the M8

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whatmicah

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Hi,
This is Micah Walter. I write for the Inside Aperture blog on the O'Reilly Digital Media Network. I am researching a piece I would like to do on the workaround for the Leica M8 DNG files. I may even try and come up with a more one click option for the plist portion.

However, I don't have an M8 on hand, and so I was wondering if any one out there wouldn't mind sending me an untouched out of camera DNG file that I could play with for research. It may end up as a screen shot at most in a post, and I would be happy to credit anyone who contributes a photo.

If you are interested/willing, please contact me at micahpix@mac.com and I will let you know how to upload it to my iDisk.

Many thanks in advance.
-micah

PS - Please, I am looking for one or two photos, untouched, right out of the camera, shot at normal ISO (like 100 or 200) and only in color. Trying to keep things fairly simple to start with...
 
Min ISO on the M8 is 160.

Be interested to read about the workaround as I use and like Aperture for my D200 RAW files but would love to use it with my R-D1 and M8 RAW files as well.
 
Well from what I understand so far, there is a workaround to sort of trick Aperture into allowing the import of Leica DNG files, but the end result is that they have the wrong color profiles attached, or at least... they look sort of flat. I'm not sure exactly what that means, but you can still import them, and make adjustments etc...

I've seen some write up and instructions for all this, but I may try and get it into the form of an install package where you just double click it and it rewrites the plist file for you... anyway... need some photos to play with first...
 
While the workaround does actually work, it is firstly a kludge and secondly unsustainable. I've not yet resorted to using Lightroom - mostly out of frustration bordering on anger at Apple after spending £200+ on glacial Aperture - but I'm not currently managing my Leica DNGs inside Aperture. Better to use an app that knows M8 images are M8 images. Biding my time for a while. If Apple doesn't include M8 until a major point release, requiring a new license, I'll be one unhappy man.
 
Robg,
I hear what your'e saying, but can you explain to me what you mean by a kludge and unsustainable?

Is it that, with the workaround, you can do editing etc... but who knows if all that will be lost once Apple adds it's own real support for the M8? That would be a real bummer!

-m
 
If I understand the modification correctly, it masquerades as another camera. The colour I get out of C1 is much better, though I primarily shoot B&W. I know I can modify in Aperture but C1 gives a far better starting point. Once Aperture finally starts to support M8, I'll likely import everything and start from scratch. I'd really like to do this without the DNGs already in Aperture. I've ended up using Aperture primarily as a way to store Final images (corrected film scans), rather than as a master with versions, and I wonder how many people do this.

The nail in the coffin has been a mysterious 'preview going black' problem that I've seen all over forums and Apple's knowledge base. Despite having a Quad Mac Pro and 5GB RAM, adjustments to the RAW/DNG make the preview go black or disappear until I do some slider-fu.
 
Since Aperture has added support for the M8, I was wondering if anyone had any feedback on how well Aperture and the M8 DNG files get along. Not really looking for Aperture Vs. Lightroom Vs. Photoshop here, but more along the lines of how your files are rendering in Aperture and any anomolies, etc you may have experienced.

thanks
micah
 
No anomalies with Aperture and M8 DNG files. Rendering is slightly different than ACR but all RAW converters are slightly different. It works fine for me plus any tonal changes can be applied in Aperture if it doesn't match your preferences.

The Aperture DNG conversion apparently doesn't use the most current colour matrix information (it uses an older firmware equivalent set of settings - not those in the DNG). This makes the colour rendering slightly different to ACR and also the previous D100 raw.plist mapping. It certainly still looks fine.
 
I have been using Aperture for 12 mths, first with a D200, now with a M8. No problems what so ever, works just the same, if I use the USB or via a card reader no issue at all.

If you want to change the colour as you load the files then you can try this hack (http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/leica-m8-forum/30398-m8-apple-aperture-resource-info.html), I tried it and settled on the slightly more saturated version, but the results were little different to tweeking through the Adjustment Hud.

Phil.
 
In terms of digital I currently only shoot a Nikon D70s and use JPGs . It has been suggested that I shoot RAW which is an option with the Nikon although I simply have not tried it yet so do not know what I am up for. I understand that DNG is Leicas equivalent (?????) My questions........ What software do you use for post processing these file types- RAW DNG etc I mean. I have long used Photoshop but so far as I know it does not support these files - unless there are plug ins available. If not, can someone describe the typical workflow when using such image types. I presume that they must be converted to JPG or similar at some stage if you print and maybe for post processing unless there is software available that handles this file type. I am interested to know what options I have. I take it from the context of these posts that "Aperture" is software but can someone please educate me starting, BTW with, what is the advantage of shooting RAW / DNG? I understand they have a better color range but is this the main thing and does it really matter?
 
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Hi,
I would have thought there were other threads describing the difference between RAW and JPG, but here goes a quick summary.
JPG are compressed files (small files), the JPG routine looses information in the compression, RAW may or may not be compressed (much bigger files), but when they are it is a loss less compression (like Zip files), the loss of data in a JPG file occurs where the pixels next to each other are the same/ similar, this occurs more often in the Highlights and the Lowlights. So with RAW you can recover more details from the Highlights or Lowlights with the desktop software.
I use Aperture (Apple-powerful mac), but there are others like Lightroom (Adobe-PC or old mac) which offer a balance of simple editing and nice management and presentation. They do not change the RAW image but store the changes as sidecar files, when you open the images they apply the changes. (you have the option of saving previews). This means you have the choice to go back to the original image and start again, or as I do, have sevaral versions side by side, colour, B&W ... and all for a few very small files. These programs will open just about any file (RAW, JPG or DNG).
So its not so much a colour range, but a dynamic range think of it as an extra 2-3 stops from the lowlights and maybe 1-1.5 stops from the highlights.
The applications can be downloaded for 30day trials so give them a go and try for yourself, switch your D70 to RAW and remember to under expose a little to take advantage of the more recovery from lowlights.
Good luck,
Phil.
 
palker,
You are probably right, but I like to tell people, a RAW file is like your film negative, and a jpeg is sort of like a 4x6 print...
-m
 
"Has anyone here upgraded to Leopard yet? I am curious about M8 + Aperture + Leopard and whethter that has resolved the nagging issues."


and what issues are those?
 
Well, I had seen some threads with M8 file support disappearing between updates. I don't know if this was an isolated case or endemic to that particular Tiger update. I saw on Apple's homepage that an Aperture update was made on launch day to accomodate compatibility. Whether this addresses the Aperture/Time Machine issues, I do not know.
 
When apple introduced support for the M8 the M1 and M2 segments in the raw.plist file matched the matrix1 and matrix2 values in the exif of files taken on the M8 with firmware prior to v1.09.
In firmware v1.09 Leica adjusted these matrix values for some reason but this change has yet to be reflected in any OSX 10.4.XX update.

I have read elsewhere that the reason leica adjusted these was to allow different raw converters to decode the file correctly. It seems strange since both values are needed in aperture.

Also noted at this time is the work we have done to get the DMR dng recognised in aperture has been broken with the upgrade to leopard. At this time I'm not sure if it's just the overwriting of the raw.plist or if leopard has done away with the raw.plist. Some have reported they can no longer find the raw.plist file in the usual location.

If any of you are using my M8 entries for the raw.plist over on LUF and find some oversaturation try adjusting the boost slider and saving that as a preset.

I should have Leopard in a week or so and I'll look into the changes made with 10.5.0. I'll post my findings over on LUF.
 
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