Adobe camera profiles

[Joe P]

Guy,

While you're here... what's the difference between a Rolleiflex and a Rolleicord?

And, have you seen this? Shame about the LCD screen, as it would have been way cooler with a real screen.

http://www.rollei.jp/e/pd/MiniDigiAF.html

Joe

 

[guybat]

My Rollei-wu is weak, but I have learnt from my betters that:

a) There is no such thing as a bad Rolleiflex
b) Condition is much more important than model
c) The Xenar or Tessar lenses of Rolleiflex T's and Rolleicords are allegedly softer wide open than the top end Rolleflex 3.5f Xenotar or Planar lenses, but indistinguishable past f/5.6

Serial numbers, details and dates here http://members.aol.com/dcolucci/rolleitlr.htm, and more on Rolleicords here http://www.geocities.com/heidoscop/rolleicord_iv.htm

 

[sideshowbob]

Rolleicords are slightly cheaper built, and have manual cocking shutters and a film advance knob rather than a fancy crank handle. The Xenar lenses are a simpler and cheaper design than Planars et al, although in practice just how much difference that makes is not entirely straightforward. The focusing screen is a bit less clear and bright than the one on the Rolleiflex T I sold to Guy, although still perfectly useable. And Rolleicords were made in pretty large numbers, so are mostly less collectible. Mine's a bog standard Rolleicord V, and I'm not selling this one ;-)

-- Ian

 

[Joe P]

Cheers, guy(s).

I will immerse myself in Rolleinerdery.

Joe

 

[matthewr]

Having read it a bit more closely, I think I understand it now. These are basically the 4.4 camera specific profiles updated and improved for DNG 1.2, the differences being mainly that DNG 1.2 offers more information/features to help the de-matrixisation thingy so should give more accurate colour.

For the K20D I get two profiles ACR 4.4 (i.e. the K20 DBG 1.1 profile) and the new DNG 1.2 Beta one. One presumes when they are out of beta and released the DNG 1.2 ones will just replace the ACR4.4 ones on the next patch for ACR and LR and the update will be seemlessly applied for everyone.

 

[Joe P]

Matthew,

Do you prefer the colours you get with the beta profiles?

Joe

 

[matthewr]

Joe -- I don't think it's a question of preference as much as accuracy and basically what one wants is the most accurate profile for your camera. You still do the subjective assesment/conversion primarily via ACR controls and I suspect such adjustments are several orders of magnitude greater than the differences between profiles.

For example, the one picture I looked at briefly last night the beta profile reduced the saturation of a very blue sky markedly and if I were to process the picture I would probably reverse this effect by upping the saturation in ACR. However, this doesn't, obviously, mean that the beta profile is worse or wrong, so it's quite hard, I think, to express a meaningful preference.

To some extent I suspect making informed judgement about these profiles requires calibration targets and controlled lighting and the like, or at the very least lots of photographs and/or multiple models of camera.

Matthew

 

[Joe P]

Matthew,

Sorry, I'm being sloppy with language. FWIW, I think the Adobe beta profile for my Fuji is more accurate and subjectively better.

It's an issue for me, as the best conversion of Fuji raw files is with HyperUtility, Fuji's own software, but it has a clunky interface and the slowest conversions of any software I've used. HU is so painfully unresponsive I've given up on it.

The new Adobe camera profile gives HU-like accurate and pleasing colours (woo-who!), but without the glacially slow and crappy software (woo-who!).

Joe