Neighbor Got New Truck So I Tried to Shoot a JPEG

Ysarex

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The truck is cool, the JPEG not so much. What happened is I saw the truck and it's painted grey. Then photographer brain kicked in I thought, "hey it's a greycard right in the middle of the photo." Which started a cascade that ended with I wonder how well auto WB would handle that. (I generally have a low opinion of auto WB).

Well I had recently watched Simon d'Entremont's video; "Is RAW Better?" (waste of time) and decided WTH I'll try and shoot a camera JPEG as it's been awhile since I had a look.

The rules:
1. Clipped diffuse highlights = total failure. I don't do it and I won't tolerate the camera doing it.
2. The camera JPEG is the final product. I know some folks edit JPEGs. I have zero interest wasting time sitting in front of a computer trying to repair a camera screwup when I can process raw files to a better outcome in a fraction of the time.
3. Level of difficulty = moderate. I decided there was no fun in giving the camera a cakewalk shot that was easy to process so I decided on sidelight in direct sun with a blue sky and puffy white clouds. The sidelight raised the lighting contrast to a point of moderate difficulty.

To save me from chimping hell behind the camera I decided to work through the picture control options in NXStudio which can recreate a camera JPEG exactly. The camera I selected is my Nikon Z7.

First hurdle then was exposure. I set default picture controls (landscape) and started clicking away to get the exposure that wouldn't clip the highlights in the clouds. I had Nikon's WYSIWYG EVF but no highlight alert so I had to take the photo and chimp the JPEG which does show a highlight alert along with histograms. Metering was matrix and I had to set a -1.3 EC to avoid highlight clipping (barely). I got a worthless too dark JPEG that belongs in the trash.

bad-jpeg.jpg


But Nikon has an answer for that: ADL. So I engaged ADL and had to crank it all the way up to get decent looking image lightness. I saved then the RAW+JPEG with the EC set to -1.3.

As a control I reset the camera to my working defaults and snapped a RAW file with the EC set to +.3. Yep, that's 1 and 2/3 stops difference and that's got to get talked about. My raw file exposure is perfect. Here's the processed image:

processed-raw.jpg


I then took the NEF from the JPEG exposure and loaded it into NXStudio. There I ran through dozens of picture control options to adjust the final output for best results assuming I would have had time to do the same behind the camera. No one of course has that time and the permutations of options available I'm sure run into the 10s of thousands so what the JPEG shooter has to do is become familair with a handful of setting options to match general conditions, learn and use those. Not a JPEG shooter I haven't done that and so the time spent with NXStudio.

The camera JPEG sucks, primarily because auto WB failed. Here it is:

sucks-jpeg.jpg


The grey truck was no help and no surprise there. So to successfully shoot camera JPEGs I'd have to set a custom WB or use a saved preset. Too much work. I love digital photography because it's so bleepin easy -- why make it harder? The JPEG lightness level and overall contrast are on the edge of the ballpark. A little more midtone contrast is sorely needed and a tad lighter especially in the shadows but not highlights. I had to compromise between overall contrast, lifting the shadows with ADL and not clipping the highlights. As it is there is a little highlight clipping from ADL cranked to max. Heaven forbid I would have dropped exposure another 1/3 stop. The minus 1.3 EC is already ridiculous in the extreme. If I set a minus 1 EC the midtones and shadows would look better but the highlights would clip badly.

I was shocked at the exposure difference between my raw file and the exposure the camera required to avoid highlight clipping. I define a perfect exposure in digital as full utilization of the sensor's recording capacity. My exposure at +.3 EC did that. The camera's exposure at -1.3 EC underutilized the sensor by 60-70%. Imagine you're back in school and the teacher is handing back math tests and yours has a big read 40 on it -- not a passing grade. I imagine without the moderately challenging sidelight the camera would do better and use more of the sensor's recording capacity but this is a deal breaker for me. No way would I pass on 60% of my sensor's recording capacity when it isn't necessary to do that. So to answer Simon's question in his video's title; yep.
 
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Interesting write up. I have to wonder if the DR of the scene played a part, especially with matrix metering. I've always used spot metering to sample the scene to first determine if the DR is in the range of camera capability. Then either adjust the EV accordingly or set the camera to bracket.
 
Interesting write up. I have to wonder if the DR of the scene played a part, especially with matrix metering. I've always used spot metering to sample the scene to first determine if the DR is in the range of camera capability. Then either adjust the EV accordingly or set the camera to bracket.
The scene DR was in the 10-11 stop range -- the Z7 can handle 12 if you fully utilize the sensor. I like high contrast light and expansive DR scenes. This was just full sun, blue sky, sidelight; nothing extreme. The bottom line here is the Nikon EXPEED processor insisting on blowing the highlights unless I reduced the exposure a ridiculous amount. I didn't anticipate that behavior and it was enough of a shock for me that I decided to write it up.
 

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