The report that caused a lot of hubbub about JPEG was Phil Askey's
review of the DS on DPReview.com. His test procedure set the camera
to its defaults in Auto Picture or Program mode, which means
"Vivid" (highly saturated) color rendering, a high degree of
sharpening and contrast, sRGB colorspace. This degrades image quality
when you're measurbating and comparing image quality at the
pixel:pixel level, other DSLR manufacturer defaults are often a bit
softer, but Pentax spiked up the defaults for the intended consumer/
snapshooter audience who mostly output to 4x6 prints. All other
reports I've seen about "JPEG problems" were directly traceable to
this DPReview report.
Like parrots in a bordello... ;-)
I normally save exposures in RAW format. When I do use the in-camera
JPEG rendering, I set Adobe RGB colorspace and "Natural" color, ***
quality. The default neutral settings for sharpness, saturation and
contrast are fine for average subject scenes, and should be adjusted
for contrasty or flat lighting conditions per usual in-camera JPEG
controls. I find that I often want to reduce contrast setting to
improve post-processing options, and I rarely want more than neutral
saturation as otherwise I run into clipping too easily.
The key is Natural color mode and Adobe RGB color space. Natural
color mode *ONLY* works in P, Tv, Av, and M exposure modes; Auto
Picture and all the program presets override the setting and go to
Vivid. The combination of these two settings give a broader gamut and
much more modest contrast, less loss of imaging quality from
highlight sharpening erosion and gamut clipping.
Godfrey
On Sep 13, 2005, at 4:16 PM, Bob Sullivan wrote:
What kind of settings are you using for jpegs?
I'd like to try them on my DS.
There was never a problem with the DS' JPEG rendering that I have
been aware of. Any so-called problem is more a matter of the default
settings than of the rendering. The default settings do not, in my
opinion, make the best quality JPEGs.
Is there any insight knowledge whether the poor jpeg rendering was
improved, too? I guess we'll have to wait for the first samples...
The DS has been discontinued in favour of the DS2. Pricing
should be
identical. There's very little difference between the DS and DS2,
only the larger LCD and Auto ISO.
