This shot in the pub on Friday night of my friend Martin Marroni on Irish wooden flute has actually been darkened a touch - most exposures on the 24mm f/2 CZ were around 1/60th at f/4, this one opened up to f/2.8. The camera was set to use Auto ISO to to 3200, and set the maximum for this.

The processing is ACR 6.5 with 25/50 Luminance and 25/50 Chroma NR, plus 25/0.5/20/0 sharpening - what I consider to be my defaults for higher ISO. The result has a visible but very tight and pleasing grain, no mush. Some correction of brightness and white balance has been added, to give the picture a suitably muted feel - the light was low, so a bright rendering would be wrong.



Full size original 24MB conversion here:

http://www.pbase.com/davidkilpatrick/image/138507229/original

Not by any means a bad outcome.

David

How is the A77 producing a shot like that? When the dpr conversion examples show the 24MP sensor produces so much rubbish compared to 'better' sensors at high ISO? Btw that’s quite a shot getting the subject dof so good at f2.8 from so close with such a short lens.
Greg

+1

My guesstimate is that total DOF at that f-length and f-stop is about 0.8-2 meters, so actually not that shallow

Br Zeb!

The sample is definitely looking very pleasing.

But that's only to be expected, as the subject is rather large in the frame, and the smaller objects are all in the blurred background; then the warm tone also helps hiding the residual low-freq chroma noise.
Still, all in all, it would seem the ISO3200 on a77 is not totally unusable.

I looked up a dof calculator to see if I guessed right that the dof in David’s shot would be pushing the limit, and it turns out that distance from the subject at that f-stop is critical. At 4ft the dof is only .95ft, at 5ft it’s 1.51ft and at 6feet away it’s gone up to 2.2ft, and that is still not much dof to play with as his knee is sharpish so I reckon David must have been a bit further away than even 6 feet, maybe 8 feet at a guess.
http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html
Greg

David,

Could you please try developing that file with the profile I attach here? I see great difference using that profile, especially in low-K lighting.

Here's a collection of profiles of the same kind for a700/580/55/35, Ne5/5N and Nikon D7000. All but the a700 one are built with the same 'recipe' being applied upon the embedded matrix.
Another file contains the same 'recipe' profiles for Canon 7D/60D/550D. And then the archive with recipe files used to make all those profiles; the a700 has a separate recipe.

Actually, all the modern cams with good enough matrix embedded in their raw files may have a similar profile created with the same recipe.

Excuse my ignorance, but where should I put those dcp files?

Search your machine for folders named 'CameraProfiles' - there are at least two of them for Adobe Lr/ACR, then put the files either of them or into any subfolder you may have or create inside that folder. Then restart the Lr/ACR to have them registered automatically.

no such folder in win7

OK, the profile does not really affect noise levels, but improves colour. Here is an export with the WB returns to 'As Shot' (for my result it needed strong adjustment to avoid being yellow, but the Deep profile restores good WB) and also the exposure is changed from -0.75 to -0.5, because the Deep profile avoided the image being lightened too much. Overall the 'Deep' profiles seem to work very well.



Just a small file, no pBase. Depth of field - he's no more than 1.5 metre away from my position.

Here's the raw data for the image:

DateTimeOriginal: 2011:09:30 21:21:18
ISO: 3200
Aperture: 2.8
ShutterSpeed: 1/60
FocalLength: 24.0 mm
Make: SONY
Model: SLT-A77V
ImageSize: 6048x4024
ExposureCompensation: -0.3
ExifToolVersion: 8.59
FileName: _DSC0182.ARW
Directory: /Volumes/Raw Archive/2011/10010930
FileSize: 24 MB
FileModifyDate: 2011:09:30 21:21:18+01:00
FilePermissions: rwxrwxrwx
FileType: ARW
MIMEType: image/x-sony-arw
ExifByteOrder: Little-endian (Intel, II)
ImageDescription:
Orientation: Rotate 90 CW
WhitePoint: 0.313 0.329
PrimaryChromaticities: 0.64 0.33 0.21 0.71 0.15 0.06
ImageWidth: 6048
ImageHeight: 4024
BitsPerSample: 12
Compression: Sony ARW Compressed
PhotometricInterpretation: Color Filter Array
SamplesPerPixel: 1
PlanarConfiguration: Chunky
XResolution: 350
YResolution: 350
ResolutionUnit: inches
CFARepeatPatternDim: 2 2
CFAPattern2: 0 1 1 2
StripOffsets: 698880
RowsPerStrip: 4024
StripByteCounts: 24337152
PreviewImageStart: 146082
PreviewImageLength: 549010
YCbCrCoefficients: 0.299 0.587 0.114
YCbCrPositioning: Co-sited
ExposureTime: 1/60
FNumber: 2.8
ExposureProgram: Program AE
ISO: 3200
SensitivityType: Recommended Exposure Index
RecommendedExposureIndex: 3200
ExifVersion: 0230
DateTimeOriginal: 2011:09:30 21:21:18
CreateDate: 2011:09:30 21:21:18
ComponentsConfiguration: Y, Cb, Cr, -
CompressedBitsPerPixel: 8
BrightnessValue: -1.78359375
ExposureCompensation: -0.3
MaxApertureValue: 2.0
MeteringMode: Multi-segment
LightSource: Unknown
Flash: Off, Did not fire
FocalLength: 24.0 mm
PanoramaFullWidth: 0
PanoramaFullHeight: 0
PanoramaDirection: Right to Left
PanoramaCropLeft: 0
PanoramaCropTop: 0
PanoramaCropRight: 0
PanoramaCropBottom: 0
PanoramaFrameWidth: 0
PanoramaFrameHeight: 0
PanoramaSourceWidth: 0
PanoramaSourceHeight: 0
Brightness: 0
LongExposureNoiseReduction: On
HighISONoiseReduction: Off
HDR: Off
FaceInfoOffset: 94
SonyDateTime: 2011:09:30 21:21:18
FacesDetected: 1
FaceInfoLength: 37
Face1Position: 2629 769 544 544
ColorReproduction: Standard
ColorTemperature: Auto
ColorCompensationFilter: 0
SceneMode: Standard
ZoneMatching: ISO Setting Used
ImageStabilization: On
ColorMode: Standard
FullImageSize: 6000x4000
PreviewImageSize: 1616x1080
FileFormat: Unknown (3 3 0 0)
Quality: RAW + JPEG
FlashExposureComp: 0
WhiteBalanceFineTune: 0
WhiteBalance: Auto
SonyModelID: Unknown (287)
Teleconverter: None
MultiFrameNoiseReduction: Off
LensType: Carl Zeiss Distagon T* 24mm F2 SSM
FlashLevel: Normal
ReleaseMode: Normal
SequenceNumber: Single
Anti-Blur: On (Shooting)
DynamicRangeOptimizer: Off
IntelligentAuto: Off
UserComment:
FlashpixVersion: 0100
ColorSpace: Uncalibrated
ExifImageWidth: 6000
ExifImageHeight: 4000
InteropIndex: R03 - DCF option file (Adobe RGB)
InteropVersion: 0100
FileSource: Digital Camera
SceneType: Directly photographed
CustomRendered: Normal
ExposureMode: Auto
FocalLengthIn35mmFormat: 36 mm
SceneCaptureType: Standard
Contrast: Normal
Saturation: Normal
Sharpness: Normal
LensInfo: 24mm f/2
LensModel: 24mm F2 ZA SSM
Gamma: 2.2
GPSVersionID: 2.3.0.0
GPSStatus: Measurement Void
GPSMapDatum: WGS-84
GPSDifferential: No Correction
PrintIMVersion: 0300
SR2SubIFDOffset: 51680
SR2SubIFDLength: 56958
SR2SubIFDKey: 0x44332211
WB_RGGBLevels: 1884 1024 1024 2092
WB_RGBLevelsDaylight: 2612 1024 1496
WB_RGBLevelsCloudy: 2824 1024 1376
WB_RGBLevelsTungsten: 1608 1024 2616
WB_RGBLevelsShade: 3112 1024 1240
WB_RGBLevelsFluorescent: 2344 1024 2076
WB_RGBLevelsFlash: 2804 1024 1392
SubfileType: Reduced-resolution image
Make: SONY
Model: SLT-A77V
Software: SLT-A77V v1.02
ModifyDate: 2011:09:30 21:21:18
ThumbnailOffset: 40576
ThumbnailLength: 10625
Aperture: 2.8
BlueBalance: 2.042969
CFAPattern: [Red,Green][Green,Blue]
ImageSize: 6048x4024
LensID: Carl Zeiss Distagon T* 24mm F2 SSM
PreviewImage: (Binary data 549010 bytes, use -b option to extract)
RedBalance: 1.839844
ScaleFactor35efl: 1.5
ShutterSpeed: 1/60
ThumbnailImage: (Binary data 10625 bytes, use -b option to extract)
CircleOfConfusion: 0.020 mm
FOV: 53.1 deg
FocalLength35efl: 24.0 mm (35 mm equivalent: 36.0 mm)
HyperfocalDistance: 10.27 m
LightValue: 3.9

David

Someone on another forum discovered something funny about the A77 LCD:

Sony's 3 stage LCD hinge system is flexible and despite more moving parts than a single swivel feels solid and sturdy. The LCD itself is excellent and aside from the Canon 60D's LCD the best in class. My only complaint, addressable in firmware, is that if the LCD is positioned underneath the camera body facing the lens it does not change orientation. You see an upside down image. It's an odd omission since the LCD's orientation does change in any other position.

David, I recall that you found a similar problem with the Canon 60D LCD and wrote about it in your 60D review. You have probably already discovered this problem with your A77, but just in case I thought I would alert you. (I have not been able to reproduce the problem with my 60D, but it probably is just that I have a later firmware than you did. I updated it months ago.)

Two such folders in Win7 behind the hidden parents 'AppData' and 'Programdata' -

C:\Users\[Your User Profile]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles

C:\ProgramData\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles

Sure, strictly speaking, the profile doesn't affect the noise levels too much, just a little bit if used with no NR and viewed at 100%.

But trying to forcefully adjust colours of a bad profile introduces noise through posterisation.