NEF files quality

[aroy]

Are you talking about the contrast fringe around the tree branches? I occasionally even suffer those during daylight shots, especially with a blue sky. They very often appear in bird shots. I still don't know the actual cause.

Fringes appear at high contrast boundary, especially when the bright side is over3 EV above the maximum. It is due to electrons overflowing from the "over full" well to adjacent wells. You can easily duplicate the effect by using spot metering for a dark object, say a person with a dark dress in bright daylight. You will then see the fringes. If I recollect one of our forum members had the same problem while shooting tennis players.

These fringes also appear in mediocre to bad lenses, the 70-300 AF (non VR) is one such lense which exhibits colour fringing beyond 200mm.

 

[aroy]

Hi everyone!
Just recently started shooting both NEF with a copy of JPEG.
Installed NX2 to be able to read them, and quickly noticed there is a huge quality drop, when comparing the JPEG to the NEF of the same image!.. shouldn't be the other way around?
I retouched some images with the same software and saved them in JPEG excellent quality, but the bad quality persisted!..

Cheers

As others have pointed out RAW is unprocessed, while JPEG is processed by the camera. View NX supplied with camera is a basic viewer with minimal adjustment facility. If you want to have more adjustments while processing the RAW file, then just download the Capture NX-D from Nikon site. The software is free and if you do not want exotic functions, is all that you may need. NX-D is all that I use.

Posterization in images ;apart from other causes; is due to limited range of colours. For 8 bit JPEG there are only 256 shades. For the 12 bit RAW there will be 4096 shades and for 14 bits 16K shades. The more the shades the smoother the colour transition. While converting RAW to JPEG, raw processing software does a better job of smoothing the colours than the camera, another reason to shoot RAW.

 

[J-see]

Fringes appear at high contrast boundary, especially when the bright side is over3 EV above the maximum. It is due to electrons overflowing from the "over full" well to adjacent wells. You can easily duplicate the effect by using spot metering for a dark object, say a person with a dark dress in bright daylight. You will then see the fringes. If I recollect one of our forum members had the same problem while shooting tennis players.

These fringes also appear in mediocre to bad lenses, the 70-300 AF (non VR) is one such lense which exhibits colour fringing beyond 200mm.

I've seen them in bird shots taken with the more expensive lenses and they show up all the same so no lens is free of it. Full well overflow is unlikely since that would imply my sky or bird to be clipped. Unless you imply it in a different manner

Still, in the RAW itself it doesn't show. It only appears the moment it is sharpened.

It's possible it is due to photon behavior and the fringe is the result of additional photons from the light of which the path in our shot is blocked by the bird.

 

[Horoscope Fish]

... Still, in the RAW itself it doesn't show. It only appears the moment it is sharpened.

Based on what little I know about the technicalities of how digital photos are sharpened, that makes perfect sense.

As I understand it digital photos are "sharpened", at least in part, by increasing contrast on the borders where there is a significant change in... I'm guessing luminosity, but I'm not really sure about that, it's probably far more complicated. But yeah, when I think it through, it make sense to me sharpening is what is causing the halos.
....

 

[J-see]

Based on what little I know about the technicalities of how digital photos are sharpened, that makes perfect sense.

As I understand it digital photos are "sharpened", at least in part, by increasing contrast on the borders where there is a significant change in... I'm guessing luminosity, but I'm not really sure about that, it's probably far more complicated. But yeah, when I think it through, it make sense to me sharpening is what is causing the halos.
....

It's only when there's a severe and abrupt difference in luminosity levels. Dark part of the bird in the lighter part of the sky. Sharpening seems to do something strange there by turning pixels brighter than their neighboring pixels are.

I've been checking photography life in the past and the shots of Nasim Mansurov, who isn't well known for shooting shabby lenses, show the same fringes when the same conditions are met; dark pixels directly next to light pixels on the outline of the bird.

Cheaper lenses might have more chromatic aberration but this is something else entirely. They also often appear as an outline on roofs of buildings when you shoot them during a clear blue sky.

 

[Horoscope Fish]

It's only when there's a severe and abrupt difference in luminosity levels. Dark part of the bird in the lighter part of the sky. Sharpening seems to do something strange there by turning pixels brighter than their neighboring pixels are.

As I understand it, and I'm open to being proven wrong, what you describe is EXACTLY how "Sharpening" works. The algorithm detects an, "abrupt difference in luminosity levels" and then, just as you describe, turns some pixels brighter than their neighboring pixels to increase contrast along the edge to give the impression of a sharper, cleaner border. If I recall correctly, this is controlled by the "Radius" setting (at least in Adobe Camera RAW).
....

 

[J-see]

As I understand it, and I'm open to being proven wrong, what you describe is EXACTLY how "Sharpening" works. The algorithm detects an, "abrupt difference in luminosity levels" and then, just as you describe, turns some pixels brighter than their neighboring pixels to increase contrast along the edge to give the impression of a sharper, cleaner border. If I recall correctly, this is controlled by the "Radius" setting (at least in Adobe Camera RAW).
....

I'm in agreement that it is sharpening causing the problem. Usually sharpening does a good job but in those high contrast cases it leads to very undesired results. The real problem is how to sharpen those images without adding the fringe. Even the standard minimal sharpening LR applies upon load is too much.

I could locally sharpen but then there always will be a soft outline. Another option is sharpening one version and blend that with another.

In this case the luminosity of that outline sharpening creates is that high it is almost pure white making it very hard to blend.

 

[WayneF]

As I understand it, and I'm open to being proven wrong, what you describe is EXACTLY how "Sharpening" works. The algorithm detects an, "abrupt difference in luminosity levels" and then, just as you describe, turns some pixels brighter than their neighboring pixels to increase contrast along the edge to give the impression of a sharper, cleaner border. If I recall correctly, this is controlled by the "Radius" setting (at least in Adobe Camera RAW).
....

Right, excessive USM sharpening can cause a halo around edges. At a contrast edge, USM makes the bright side brighter, and the dark side darker, emphasizing the edge. Same technique was used in paintings in the 1500s (dark or white lines along edges, etc). The name USM (UnSharp Mask) is from film use, when the negative was sandwiched in the enlarger with a second but blurred negative copy (which is positive), which distorted the sharp edges in this way.

Radius defines the relative width of the manipulated edge (however it is not dimensioned in pixels), and Amount is the degree of brighter/darker. A small sample is at Sharpening with Unsharp Mask

 

[J-see]

I've been zooming in at the shot to see what goes on. Apparently it is not a sharpening problem but sharpening intensifies the issue.

Here's a close-up of the fringe in the unedited RAW. You don't see it unless you zoom in.



Here's another; unedited RAW. 0 sharpening.

 

[WayneF]

It sure looks like substantial USM sharpening along ALL edges. What is the default sharpening value in your raw editor/viewer?

 

[J-see]

It sure looks like substantial USM sharpening along ALL edges. What is the default sharpening value in your raw editor/viewer?

Sharpening is disabled. Zero.

The problem is that any processing only makes that fringe shine more. I've seen it with all lenses and not only in my shots so either it is an issue with digital photography or physics are at play.

If you check the shots at this page, you'll also find the exact same fringe but it comes in different variations.

https://photographylife.com/how-to-photograph-birds

I suspect all of us suffer the phenomena at times.

 

[WayneF]

Sharpening default in Adobe Raw is Radius 1, Amount 49. Digital needs a bit of it.

 

[J-see]

Sharpening default in Adobe Raw is Radius 1, Amount 49. Digital needs a bit of it.

I can only fully disable the sharpening applied in my Dev module. Standard is 25. I set those all to zero. Anything applied in program I can't do anything about.