Sony A7x lounge

Johnny010 wrote in post #17719082
It looks like it is lossy. An update though is this: http://www.sonyalpharu​mors.com …king-on-uncompressed-raw/

I can not fathom why someone would want an uncompressed RAW over a compressed lossless RAW as 14bits per channel = 42 bits per pixel = 42*42E6 = 210MB per shot....I mean it saves on computing power...but possibly stops crazy burst rates (you can fill 512MB of RAM in 2 shots ha! As SDs can remove 90MB/s from RAM...it only takes 4 shots in one second and you fill a buffer with no other overheads). Maths may be off but yeah...

I think its because of the fact so many people were complaining about compression artefacts that the obvious solution (to Sony) was to remove the compression. Since all this started people have been shouting for uncompressed RAW, its only fairly recently people have been realising that actually lossless compression would be better. Sony have gave us what everyone asked for but people are now realising they asked for the wrong thing

Johnny010 wrote in post #17719073
OK, just looked it up and people say they are getting 40MB ish file sizes on the A7RII...this means they MUST be compressed somehow. Can't go from 42bits per pixel (14 per channel) to 40MB over 42MP ha!

It looks like the compression has gotten each pixel down to about 1byte...which is very good compression if it is lossless! I have a sneaky suspicion it may be lossy as I am finding it hard to see how they can pretty much dump 75% of the original data and end up with a lossless image...anyone find actual specs on this :S?

A7RII files (and all 7 series cameras previous) have lossy compression RAW

Johnny010 wrote in post #17719082
It looks like it is lossy. An update though is this: http://www.sonyalpharu​mors.com …king-on-uncompressed-raw/

I can not fathom why someone would want an uncompressed RAW over a compressed lossless RAW as 14bits per channel = 42 bits per pixel = 42*42E6 = 210MB per shot....I mean it saves on computing power...but possibly stops crazy burst rates (you can fill 512MB of RAM in 2 shots ha! As SDs can remove 90MB/s from RAM...it only takes 4 shots in one second and you fill a buffer with no other overheads). Maths may be off but yeah...

Lol your news is a bit stale. Here's the update:

http://www.sonyalpharu​mors.com …t-uncomrpessed-raw-files/

I have an idea for the next cutting edge innovation Sony needs to implement in the a7R III. They've got the portrait and event shooters covered with that awesome eye-focus ability, so with the a7R III they need to throw us architecture and landscape shooters a bone. I want sky detection with raw file that automatically creates an alpha channel for the sky. Would make my life SO much easier.

Need to do a sky replacement on an architecture shoot? Need to re-tone the sky, but don't want to affect the rest of the image, no problemo - with the a7R III's ground-breaking new auto-channel sky detection system it's as easy as a single mouse click to isolate the sky.

I am kidding (and dreaming) of course. It's just that in my professional career (which officially ends a week from Friday!!) I did architectural visualization (3ds Max and Vray) and in Vray you can render the sky as an alpha channel, which makes final editing sooo much easier. Wish there was an "easy-button" for sky selection, but there just isn't one. boohoo.

David, I agree!

Topaz Remask comes close though.

xpfloyd wrote in post #17719156

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/z1MJ​DK Flowers by xpfloyd, on Flickr

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/y473​Pz Flowers by xpfloyd, on Flickr

Eddy-

I'm staring at the second one on my crappy work-station monitor, and I swear it looks like I'm staring at the real thing. Incredible resolution all round, but nice job processing the photo as well.

digital_AM wrote in post #17719207
David, I agree!

Topaz Remask comes close though.

Yeah, I like remask - just updated it to version 5. If my sky isn't blown out, yet is clearly delineated from the rest of the scene, then Viveza 2 can makes things easier to re-tone/color the sky.

mystik610 wrote in post #17719208
Eddy-

I'm staring at the second one on my crappy work-station monitor, and I swear it looks like I'm staring at the real thing. Incredible resolution all round, but nice job processing the photo as well.

Thank you! The second one does have a nice 3D pop to it. I think the distance to the green background was just right for that effect

xpfloyd wrote in post #17719113
I think its because of the fact so many people were complaining about compression artefacts that the obvious solution (to Sony) was to remove the compression. Since all this started people have been shouting for uncompressed RAW, its only fairly recently people have been realising that actually lossless compression would be better. Sony have gave us what everyone asked for but people are now realising they asked for the wrong thing

Viewing it from this perspective i must say youre totally right

But sony engineers should know it better whats best. Maybe they need to sit down with some photographers...

That would be the "cake" to have on the a7rlll.

Eddie, that second one just pops! Great job.

Does anyone know if the Nik suite is still supported by Google? I'm finding that Color FX agrees with me for developing cityscape shots.

I need to update my Remask and get OnOne 10. Then DXO looks very interesting too for architecture shots (leveling, distortion corrections, etc). It never ends.

digital_AM wrote in post #17719287
Eddie, that second one just pops! Great job.

Does anyone know if the Nik suite is still supported by Google? I'm finding that Color FX agrees with me for developing cityscape shots.

I need to update my Remask and get OnOne 10. Then DXO looks very interesting too for architecture shots (leveling, distortion corrections, etc). It never ends.

Definitely get DXO Optics Pro. You get a nice round trip workflow from LR. It has the best NR for any raw conversion app. Also get Viewpoint - it is an outstanding perspective correction plugin within PS.

Google still supports the Nik Tools - wish they had never bought out Nik though. I hate it when the giant corporations buy up cool stuff.

Johnny010 wrote in post #17718953
Well...uncompressed it literally that. 14 bits per pixel * 42MP = About 70MB. There is no other way, it is uncompressed as in it has all the original data, and that is the 14bits for every pixel for the 42 million.
Other data may also be bundled in like a maybe just shy of a kilobyte to hold the WB value, a byte for the ISO,Ap and whatever other magic metadata for sh**s and giggles.

To do a compressed lossless, the camera would have to run those 70MB through an algorithm. This algorithm may involve multiple steps to sort out the recursive pixels and catalogue them in to a form that can be read back as the original when the algorithm is run the other way.

To do a lossy, it would require much fewer steps as the information does not need to be retained and cross references back. It is a more basic "if pixels are between blue A and blue B...just replace them with blue C". This means less SRAM needed and less CPU cycles.

Exactly this. I'm not really sure what people expect. They complain that there are compression artifacts, so Sony gave them the option to go without compression. The resulting files are going to be huge. And now the complainers are going to complain about that.

Sure, it would be nice to have an option to use lossless compression for smaller files, but that's hard to do after the fact without crippling the camera, for the reasons you pointed out. Maybe when there's a faster processor in future generations.

But then people will still find something to complain about ("I want my choice of lossless compression algorithm!"). hehe.

Charlie wrote in post #17718976
wait, I'm not following. What is sony's current raw, lossy compression? I definitely dont want to lose what I currently have, would be great if there was an even high compressed version.

so perfect settings would be:

uncompressed raw
lossless compressed raw
lossy compressed raw (what we have currently?)
lossy compressed raw 12 bit (wishful thinking)

I think we already have lossy compressed raw 12 bit today. No?

Johnny010 wrote in post #17719082
It looks like it is lossy. An update though is this: http://www.sonyalpharu​mors.com …king-on-uncompressed-raw/

I can not fathom why someone would want an uncompressed RAW over a compressed lossless RAW as 14bits per channel = 42 bits per pixel = 42*42E6 = 210MB per shot....I mean it saves on computing power...but possibly stops crazy burst rates (you can fill 512MB of RAM in 2 shots ha! As SDs can remove 90MB/s from RAM...it only takes 4 shots in one second and you fill a buffer with no other overheads). Maths may be off but yeah...

It's not a question of why someone would WANT. It's a question of what Sony can give us today with the hardware limitations at hand, as you yourself explained it so well in the previous post. Dumping the whole dataset to file with no compression is easy. So they gave us that via firmware.
Introducing a lossless compression algorithm is a whole other ballgame and would likely cripple the processor or the burst rate, or any number of other things.

A7RII, LA-EA3, 70-400mm G SSM II. A couple of Ibis thanks to IBIS.