XE-1 BW Jpegs :/

2WK

2WK

Rangefinder User
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I took a few shots on a hike the other day. I had my XE1 set on fine jpeg BW mode with yellow filter. I am noticing lots of weird highlight renderings. Areas where white meets very light grey are not smooth, in fact very pixelated. I noticed this the other night when some of my dark areas has this abrupt gradient pixelation. What is going on here? My 5Dii would never dare pull this type of a stunt.....come to think about it, even my old Rebel XT would not render so poorly. This sure doesnt look like 16mp to me and it really bums me out in a cutting edge new camera.


Screen shot 2012-12-11 at 11.29.25 AM by phi.design, on Flickr


Screen shot 2012-12-11 at 11.29.36 AM by phi.design, on Flickr


Screen shot 2012-12-11 at 11.28.15 AM by phi.design, on Flickr


Screen shot 2012-12-11 at 11.26.44 AM by phi.design, on Flickr
 
Yea exactly. At first I thought it was just my old imac monitor not being able to render out all the dynamic range and it was the monitors fault for the clipping. However, on my brand new imac at work....same story.
 
There's a few strange things I'm noticing. 1 - why are you posting screenshots and not the actual photo itself? and 2 - I can't see any pixelation or weirdness on my old calibrated matte screen imac.
 
Thats better... I gotta say I can't see anything unusual on my imac. Might it be that your newer imac is affecting it? Maybe print the image at a decent size and see if it shows up in print?

Edit - are you talking about where the tree line/horizon directly meets the sky? How it's sort of 'jaggy' or overly sharp looking?
 
I'm getting a kind solarisation within the white areas, a semi circle over the upper left quarter of the frame, if I view the screen at an angle.

I am guessing it's the standard artefacts you can get when you look at an LCD screen at certain angles.
 
Odd. Look at the semi circle area Paul T is referring to. The gradation from white is not smooth at all.
 
Looking at the original photo image (not the screen shot), I now see what you're talking about. The semi-circle is certainly located where you'd typically expect flair when shooting into the sun. But the distinct demarcation is unusual... I've never seen that kind of thing before. It seems like the sensor almost has an on-off switch at that particular level of white, beyond which it records zero information. Hmmm...
 
2WK said:
Odd. Look at the semi circle area Paul T is referring to. The gradation from white is not smooth at all.
Click to expand...

I can see the harsh gradation on the top left.
(seen on a non-calibrated programmer-grade Thinkpad screen)
 
After staring at my screen for a few minutes, I can actually see what you're talking about. it looks a LOT like a flare to me, but it's just strange that it clipped the highlights so absolutely in that big semi circle. Can you or have you reproduced this in any other photos?
 
Ah, on another display I see it.

Looks like a defect in JPEG encoding, possibly. I've done a lot of B&W with the X-Pro and X-E1 and don't recall seeing a highlight behave this poorly.

Do you have a RAW file of the same image? If so, what does the histogram look like?
 
They are compression artefacts that show up at certain angles. When you look straight on the screen, the difference between light levels is minimal. At an angle, the artefacts are exaggerated.

Loads of photos on here have worse artefacts than that, so I'd be pretty certain it's the jpeg compression - which you have re-compressed to post on here, I guess - rather than anything wrong with the camera.

If it's the camera's jpeg compression at fault, well, I suggest with a good camera like that, you shoot raw. You can't always edit jpegs without adding more artefacts, either.
 
Thanks Paul T.
I am going to be shooting raw (& convert) from now on. Looking forward to Capture One support.

Also, I had the recommendation of setting the HIGHLIGHT TONE -2, SHADOW TONE -2 & NOISE REDUCTION -2.
Seems to help with the highlight clipping for sure.
 
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