Photoclubalpha

I upgraded my DxO V5 to V6, not because I was fond of V5, but because it was so inexpensive and I thought it would be worth a try.
My first attempt after I upgraded resulted in a crash, so I didn't use it for awhile.
However, I've been following the forums and discussions, and on Monday I went with some photographic friends to the Butterfly Conservatory and the Bird Kingdom in Niagara. I used higher ISO (for me up to 800) quite a bit, so I thought I'd give DxO another chance. I've almost given up on Bibble, and LR is not great at high ISO, so it was an ideal opportunity.
My usual workflow is from RAW to TIFF, and then into Photoshop so that I can use my plugins of choice to sharpen and denoise. I make JPGs from Photoshop and then delete the TIFF files.
About halfway through processing the RAWs in DxO, I realised that the noise and sharpening tools are so good that I could go straight to JPG. I was also very impressed with the color adjustments. I'd used flash in about half the shots, and DxO nailed the colors every time.
Some samples, all with the A900:
70-300G at 180mm, F/6.3, ISO 320, 1/40th (!). I tried higher ISO and faster speed, but SSS did the trick anyway. I found that the SSS on the A900 with the 70-300 G performed admirably at relatively slow shutter speeds, far better than the KM 100mm macro. Not sure why, but it does for me:



70-300G at 300mm, F/8.0, ISO 320, 1/125, HVL-F8 flash:



KM 100mm macro, F/8.0, ISO 320, 1/100, KM Ring Flash:




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Mike

These are very impressive Mike.

Congatulations! The colours and the amount of detail and contrast is striking.

Thanks for sharing,

Yildiz

I like the sharpness. hmmm, I should give it a try. TFS

aster wrote:These are very impressive Mike.

Congatulations! The colours and the amount of detail and contrast is striking.

Thanks for sharing,

Yildiz

Thanks Yildiz!

Dr. Harout wrote:I like the sharpness. hmmm, I should give it a try. TFS

Hi Doc

Both my lenses are supported lenses in DxO. If you have supported lenses, it's well worth trying!

Great pics!
I really like DxO too, great colours, distorsion correction, sharpness and the DxO lighting module is awesome, when you learn how to use the advanced settings it gives you a lot of flexibility. But I'm not a big fan of its default high ISO NR, I prefer to set the luma NR at 10% so it won't soften the image too much.

roysmith wrote:Great pics!
I really like DxO too, great colours, distorsion correction, sharpness and the DxO lighting module is awesome, when you learn how to use the advanced settings it gives you a lot of flexibility. But I'm not a big fan of its default high ISO NR, I prefer to set the luma NR at 10% so it won't soften the image too much.

I agree the defaults are set too high, but the tools themselves are quite good at retaining detail in detailed areas and applying NR in backgrounds - once you get the settings right. Similarly, the sharpening or as they call it softness tools are good at what they do without adding white borders to detailed areas and artefacts to backgrounds.

I'm sure there will be some shots where this won't work, in which case it's into Photoshop for selective adjustments. But in all these cases here, especially the macros with background shadows, it worked just fine.