ProCap …. The Trade Offs ...................... WhyNot .................... 5/6/23

ProCap …. The Trade Offs ..

Still working and reading about ProCapture and the more I work with it the more I begin to think its all about trade offs and just being persistent and lucky … Here is our Red Breasted Woodpecker

Not really in sharp focus .. taken with the M1.2 and the 40-150mm lens with the MC-14. The picture was taken at 140mm and f/7.1 to get more DOF and allow him to stay in the frame longer. The first trade off would be to use a longer focal length and fill the frame more … The ISO was 6400 at a shutter speed of 1/1250 ...the trade off being a wider aperture to lower the ISO and retain a bit more detail and need a less aggressive NR process … One could also lower the SS. Wider aperture means less DOF and lower shutter speed means more motion blur as even at 1/1250 we have not completely reduced the motion blur of the wings …. with smaller birds we may not even stop the body motion blur by this point in the take off … And as to gaining DOF by reducing the focal length I probably will want the same composition regardless of the focal length used and that loses me the DOF that I got by using the shorter focal length and I've also made the noise reduction a bit harder by cropping … Also one needs to consider that the time of day (light) and position relative to the bird are major factors. .. Many factors to weigh and maybe just take your choice, put in the time needed and hope you're lucky! ….

Another factor with ProCapture that I run into is the problem presented by the thousands of RAW files that are acquired to be evaluated and a few to be processed. .. and many are processed simply to evaluate the trade offs!!! … With this many files I want to reduce the number of steps as much as possible.. For the above picture I used Neat Image to do noise reduction and maybe recover some detail .. and if I find a satisfactory setting for this set I can batch process them reducing PP time considerably .. ( I know there are perhaps better AI alternatives but I don't have a graphics card in my current computer so they become a bit tedious. Also tests with early versions were not satisfying for me … The AI programs also like to do the RAW to TIFF [or to a JPEG finished version] conversion and I have found in other tests that I prefer OV3 to do that.)

For the picture above I used Neat Image and minimal processes in Affinity to PP
it from a TIFF to JPEG. The picture below was selectively processed to reduce noise from the OV3 TIFF. Additional procedures were used in Affinity to produce the final JPEG ..

Without a detailed examination I see little differences and probably not enough to warrant the additional time for the posted version. …. but then maybe you do or would like an even a better prepared picture for posting here … ( another problem, of course, is that I reduce these pictures to about 1MB for posting, so you never see the full file version. )

I would like to read any thoughts you might have about the pictures and/or the process ….

WhyNot

Lovely WN I like these and love woodpeckers I can’t help u with the process only to say that I can upload 2MB files I even think my canon has some sort of pro capture but it’s more complicated process u can’t see the photos until u download special software from canon only then can u extract them I will have to look more into it 🙂 see if it’s any good I doubt it will be up to Olympus standard as it’s there first effort Paul

The image is captured at an optimal time WN. I have no idea about the processing you use. When you post images why do you resize them as opposed to simply using jpg compression to reduce the size of the file on disk? Resizing reduces the amount of detail in the images when downsizing. Upsizing can not provide more detail that was there other by guessing. Compression of the file generally reduces the colour levels visible in the image but for me has less of a detrimental effect on the result than resizing. A file reduced to 3 MB takes the same bandwidth to upload or download no matter which method is used. I understand people that don't want their images copied by others resizing but on the other hand don't know why they bother to post them if they are unwilling to risk copying. I don't think that is your reason for resizing. When DPR was winding down I stopped uploading images to my gallery there and uploaded images full size from my computer because I switched our internet connection to fibre and upload and download speed was able to handle the larger files easily.

I don't know if there is more detail available in the images or not. You are correct about there being little reason to choose the one image over the other at the size presented. The crop is better though!

Andrew

Thanks for stopping by, Paul ... If you decide to try it is fun but different .. a lot like taking video for an hour and then trying to find that one great frame .. not sure it's photography as such but then ...

WhyNot

Thank you Andrew ... when I first got into DPR I was interested in their challenges and one of the requirements was to enter pictures that were less than 1MB in size. .. and I thought that was the requirement for the gallery posts also ... I got in the habit of resizing to 1400 or 1600 px on the long edge and if that exceeded 1MB to reduce the quality of the JPEG to 95 or 90% until I got near that 1MB requirement and I still do that .. But then most monitors aren't using much more of the picture and web sites seem to tend to reduce the size before putting them up ... and then again I often reduce the detail in my pictures deliberately in PP !! ..... but not these birds ... yet ...

The crop gets different because unlike PSP Affinity doesn't remember the last tool setting!! ..

WhyNot

I am viewing on a 27 inch monitor WN. I am looking for a 32 inch 4K monitor but have not found one I am willing to pay for yet. On my phone, it makes no difference what size the image is because you can not see any detail anyway. Even the tablet does not show all that much because my eyesight is not all that good for close ups. I need to see my optometrist and get reading glasses that work for me.

Andrew

Thanks, Andrew ... my pictures look better a bit blurry anyway!! ... Seem the site update has corrected my problem with the Preview!! ..

Those woodpeckers make great pictures, WhyNot. I wish we had them here. Rich

Those woodpeckers make great pictures, WhyNot. I wish we had them here. Rich
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Yes they are, Rich and they've been performing for me this last week or so .... you really have many birds we don't have here just show us a few ...

WhyNot