JPEG's, Our Dirty Little Secret

boojum

boojum

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All the specs and speculation I see on the Pixii are supported by the DNG format. The camera does two others: GPR, the GoPro compressed DNG format, and the coin of the realm, JPEG/JPG. JPEGS are like booze in a Baptist house, in use but not talked about. We all use them but like to talk about the DNG's.

So, who is shooting JPG's? How do they look? What is the write time compared to DNG's? Anonymous posts in answer will be accepted. ;o)

Also, on the subject of formats, is anyone using GPR? Editing? How, what, where?

Thanks
 
I shoot jpg's all the time.
They look just fine.
I don't have any software to work RAW files at least not now, so jpg's are where it's at for me. My editing skills aren't as good as they should be, so I let the cameras do it. So far I'm satisfied.
YMMV.
 
Judge Holden said:
To be clear, boojum, are you speaking specifically about shooting JPEGs with Pixii cameras or JPEGs generally, with any camera?
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In the Pixii forum, a Pixii question. But yes, I should have been clearer, who is shooting JPEG's on a Pixii?

No, I am not interested in a replay of the JPEG vs RAW files wars any more than I am interested in the replay of the APS-C vs FF wars. There are other threads for that. The question here is who is shooting JPEG's on a Pixii and what are their results.

Thank you.
 
Yokosuka_Mike said:
A lot of this was covered in Bill Pierce's Raw/JPEG thread:
https://www.rangefinderforum.com/node/4757486

All the best,
Mike
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Ah, another JPG vs RAW thread. No, no, no, I just meant who is shooting JPEG on a Pixii and how is it working? JPEG is a lossy format. Designed to speed the DL of images from satellites back when satellite bandwidth was minimal.

Let me tell you a true story about MPG's. They are another lossy format. A fellow I knew on another board, one for audio recording, had a golden ears friend who bragged he could discern WAV from MPG easily. He kept it up so the fellow I knew sent him 14 tracks and asked the golden ears fellow to identify them. And golden ears smugly did. My friend asked was he sure and golden ears was sure which were MPG and which were WAV. Then my friend told golden ears they were all MPG. Golden ears never again spoke to my friend. My point is that it is perhaps hasty and unwise to underappreciate JPEG files, or any lossy format. They are a compromise like just about everything else in life. And they can be very, very good.
 
I'm not a Pixii shooter so I guess I'm butting in, however, I agree with ^ by boojum. I shoot JPEG 99% of the time these days and I'm satisfied with the results. Hell, I've downloaded JPEGs off internet websites (US Library of Congress has lots of FSA photos available as one source), diddled and doodled with them in Lightroom to clean them up and printed them well enough to frame and hang on the wall. Depends on your use, of course. I still believe it takes good post production to get the final look so I never use SOOC pictures. But, yeah, they can be very, very good.
 
Personally, I like RAW so that I can decide how much data to discard later. And by later, I might mean a decade later. In the late 1990's, I started fooling around with digital, scanning a small percentage of my B&W negatives. I saved them in the most data-rich format that was available, and the files seemed huge. Now those same files seem tiny because of the relentless increase of processing power and decreases in data storage costs. Interestingly, my final output is often a jpg, if I am making a book, posting a photograph online, or sending an image to a friend. I am not against either format, but I won't be slavish about their use. From my perspective, blanket statements in that regard are like pledging to use only a 10" chef's knife or only a 12-inch cast iron pan in the kitchen. If that's all ya got, then go for it. But I think most of us choose what we think is the best tool for the job. Hey, in 100 years, no one will be able to read any of these files anyway so the stakes are low. LOL.
 
Benjamin Marks said:
Personally, I like RAW so that I can decide how much data to discard later. And by later, I might mean a decade later. In the late 1990's, I started fooling around with digital, scanning a small percentage of my B&W negatives. I saved them in the most data-rich format that was available, and the files seemed huge. Now those same files seem tiny because of the relentless increase of processing power and decreases in data storage costs. Interestingly, my final output is often a jpg, if I am making a book, posting a photograph online, or sending an image to a friend. I am not against either format, but I won't be slavish about their use. From my perspective, blanket statements in that regard are like pledging to use only a 10" chef's knife or only a 12-inch cast iron pan in the kitchen. If that's all ya got, then go for it. But I think most of us choose what we think is the best tool for the job. Hey, in 100 years, no one will be able to read any of these files anyway so the stakes are low. LOL.
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I wish that Pixii would offer the option of doing both DNG and JPG simultaneously like my M9 does. That's how I shoot. I have not yet started fiddling with the DNG's from the Leica(s) but may in the future. I'll try shooting the Pixii in JPG, continue to wish for both simultaneously, but not doubt defer to DNG. But not without a fight.
 
The jpeg looks fine if you nail the WB. Auto WB can sometimes be a bit off. I believe it’s a work in progress. With WB adjusted in post they look great.
 
M.B said:
The jpeg looks fine if you nail the WB. Auto WB can sometimes be a bit off. I believe it’s a work in progress. With WB adjusted in post they look great.
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This is a big part of the joy of the Pixii, it is a nascent creation, like the Botticelli Birth of Venus and it has promised more than it has yet delivered. We will all be here to see the baby grow up. We see it has been through Kindergarten (we still use the German name) and is stumbling through grade school on its march to the well-famed Lycée. We will see it off to université and then life. Leica preens and prides itself on tradition. Pixii exults in none and exercises innovation. An interesting clash of cultures.

But WB. Yes, Barth et cie will nail it. These mecs are a smart crowd. And they are in the process of reminding the world that the French are damned clever with technical chops as good as anyone's and better than many. Allez-y!

Yeah, I am stoked.
 
How well do Pixii sensors / JPGs handle dynamic range? I do not have one so I do not know but I am curious.

For me that is the biggest issue with JPGs on other cameras. I do a lot of outdoor shooting and came to abhor blown highlights which have bedevilled me in so many ways, especially back in the days of CCD sensors, that I began shooting in RAW format more or less exclusively (or occasionally when in the mood to experiment in RAW/JPG simultaneously. Even now with later cameras having CMOS sensors I am somewhat reluctant to shoot JPG only as I feel I still lose too much control over the final image and lose too much in terms of dynamic range.
The other issue I suppose is firmware in the camera. Most modern cameras give you some basic control over JPGs in camera- contrast, saturation and some other effects. But what I would really love to see, as computing power grows in cameras, is the addition of more fine grained controls in the firmware to allow images to be adjusted before being taken - possibly like Fuji does with their film simulations but also with sliders to adjust image settings on the fly.

Sorry I got off the topic there. I was really asking about Pixii JPG images dynamic range specifically. All my other stuff is just gratuitous jibber jabber. 🙂
 
It doesn’t have any settings as far as I know except for picture profiles. Fuji’s film simulations is if where honest, just a fancy name for the same thing, picture profiles.

The picture profiles on the Pixii is using an Adobe standard and are easy to locate in the camera when hooked up to a computer. I know there are users that have started making their own and loading them onto the camera. I will probably have a go at it for fun at some point.
 
boojum said:
This is a big part of the joy of the Pixii, it is a nascent creation, like the Botticelli Birth of Venus and it has promised more than it has yet delivered. We will all be here to see the baby grow up. We see it has been through Kindergarten (we still use the German name) and is stumbling through grade school on its march to the well-famed Lycée. We will see it off to université and then life. Leica preens and prides itself on tradition. Pixii exults in none and exercises innovation. An interesting clash of cultures...Yeah, I am stoked.
Click to expand...

Just in case anyone has lost the plot, he is talking about a camera.
 
peterm1 said:
Sorry I got off the topic there. I was really asking about Pixii JPG images dynamic range specifically. All my other stuff is just gratuitous jibber jabber. 🙂
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I suspect that it will have the same dynamic range as the other cameras which use the Sony IMX571 26MP BSI APS-C sensor.
 
M.B said:
It doesn’t have any settings as far as I know except for picture profiles. Fuji’s film simulations is if where honest, just a fancy name for the same thing, picture profiles.

The picture profiles on the Pixii is using an Adobe standard and are easy to locate in the camera when hooked up to a computer. I know there are users that have started making their own and loading them onto the camera. I will probably have a go at it for fun at some point.
Click to expand...

Yes I think you are right about Fuji sims being picture profiles and I think I saw something the other day which indicated other profiles for Fuji could be downloaded though I believe these go into Lightroom not into the camera itself. What I would enjoy seeing is a camera which is able to load third party profiles which are menu selectable within the camera.

What would be even better would be if images shot using such profiles could be saved as some form of RAW file (i.e. as a lossless image format). OK I can hear people yelling that's not possible- RAW format connotes images that are well, "raw" and unmanipulated in any way. But surely this is a convention not a technical limitation of RAW. In fact coming back to the subject of the Pixii, I just watched Mathias Burling give an overview of it in which the video seemed to suggest that with the Pixii the user can indeed select monochrome as the type of image to be saved and still select RAW as the type of file. (Unlike all other cameras which only allow monochrome JPG images - with the obvious exception of Leica Monochrom cameras which also shoot in RAW but with a different sensor architecture.)
You can see that here at 3:45min into the video where he appears to select both Mono and DNG in the menu. Although this may be misleading as he is not explicit. If it is so then this might be a very good reason to buy a Pixii camera for anyone who wants to shoot in RAW/ DNG but also likes to sometimes shoot monochrome images.

The Pixii Rangefinder Review - Part 1 - What and Why? - YouTube
 
ptpdprinter said:
Just in case anyone has lost the plot, he is talking about a camera.
Click to expand...

Yes, of a camera evolving and evolving rapidly. OTOH we can watch the stultifying and glacial progress out of Wetzlar where they are still trying for the perfect electronic M3. The M8 could have been a fresh sheet of paper but no. Leica's M series is built on minor refinements of the previous. When the Leica PR guys tout the camera as being able to be stood on one can believe they have lost their way and are selling what sold before. This does not sell me. Maybe it does you.

Pixii looks like the past from the outside. Inside it is an all new and overdue approach. Perhaps of little interest to you but very exciting to me. The Pixii is more than a refinement of yesterday. It is today and may well be tomorrow. What other camera can say that? Name one.
 
boojum said:
Yes, of a camera evolving and evolving rapidly. OTOH we can watch the stultifying and glacial progress out of Wetzlar where they are still trying for the perfect electronic M3. The M8 could have been a fresh sheet of paper but no. Leica's M series is built on minor refinements of the previous. When the Leica PR guys tout the camera as being able to be stood on one can believe they have lost their way and are selling what sold before. This does not sell me. Maybe it does you.

Pixii looks like the past from the outside. Inside it is an all new and overdue approach. Perhaps of little interest to you but very exciting to me. The Pixii is more than a refinement of yesterday. It is today and may well be tomorrow. What other camera can say that? Name one.
Click to expand...

I have no interest in buying a Leica or any other rangefinder digital camera. If one is a rangefinder enthusiast, I can see the attraction of this camera at 1/3rd the cost of a Leica. It's real limitation is the widest framelines of 42mm (28mm x 1.5) in its current incarnation. Of course, some people don't shoot wide or don't mind using external viewfinders so it would work for them.
 
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