Micro 4/3 Panasonic LX / Leica D-LUX Image Thread

Thanks!. This is exactly why I love the Leica D-Lux 4. It really is an extension of what I see. This was shot while I was driving to work early morning. These are the moments when I just react to what I see and have the Leica in my right hand.
 
Juniper Street, Phila. Pa LX5

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This is stunning, I really love it
 
I tried Silky Pix tonight. I am not sure about processing RAW and what the image should look like when you leave. On my computer any change seemed to take a really long time as little areas of pixels changed shape. I then converted to bw in ps.Any suggestions are most welcome.Thanks. View attachment 1008
 
Ricks, Personally, I do not shoot RAW at all. The few times I have shot RAW i had the same problem you mention. ''what the image should look like when you leave'' In the few times when I was fairly happy with the RAW file, it ended up looking like the Jpeg. In the end, I have always tried to get the picture as close to a finished product from the camera as I could. As far as the photograph goes, the upper portion seems a little to dark for this type of picture. The forefront is great and I love the light and darkness. The shadow work is great.
 
ricks, I'm sorry I can't help you with this Silky Pix question, but I do suggest you make a new thread with Silky Pix in the title and add put it over in the Image Processing forum where more people will see it and it won't get lost in this image thread. I am sure you'll get some help from those who do use this software for RAW processing.

P.S. I like your picture - it has a soft, old fashioned feel to it...and the light is very eerie....almost as though we're about to enter into a film noir scenario.
 
Thanks Javier. I think I might be a jpegger also. This was taken handheld under the street light with automatic iso. I think it probably went to 1600. At any rate there was a lot of noise in the sky and the top of the porch so I darkened it down to make it less obvious. I'll try and lighten it up a little.
Thanks BB. I think I will try a post in the mage processing forum. I think a major part of the problem is that I am not familiar with the raw format at all. I am a big fan of film noir.
 
Ricks, I think it would be good to approach your question a little differently - it's not about what the images 'should' look like, it's about what you 'want' them to look like. You can process multiple versions of any image, all looking different from each other depending on your purpose, your mood, your inspiration. The most obvious examples of this are when you process an image in both B&W and colour, or when you process an image with different crops. So I would say, kill that "should"; it will only choke your creativity.

By way of illustration here's a picture I took in the English Garden in Munich last winter - neither of these is the way the image 'should' look, but both are the way I 'wanted' it to look. (Full disclosure - taken with a DSLR, not a SC.:sorry:)

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Regarding RAW or JPEG, I am a RAW shooter and always have been. But I always set the camera to RAW and JPEG. If the JPEG is good enough you're happy; if it could benefit from the extra tweaking that RAW offers you have the RAW file available. Even if for now you decide to stick to JPEG I would advise you to shoot RAW and JPEG. That way, if at some future point you decide that you would like to work with RAW files, you will have them available. The only cost is using up some extra memory. Likewise if you decide ultimately that you really don't need RAW, just delete them. At least if you shoot both JPEG and RAW and keep the latter on file you leave the option open.

Some processing packages are very resource intensive on your processor and memory. My old computer could just about run LR2 and no more but also took a long time to generate previews of changes. It could be that your computer needs a bit of tweaking to run the programme more efficiently or it may be that SP itself is a bit more resource intensive than other RAW editors. I do recall when I used Sony's own brand RAW editor that it was painfully slow - it felt like I could almost see each pixel changing.
 
Thanks for the illustrated information. What a wonderful winter scene. The red version of the water reminded me of some little rivers in southern New Jersey, that I used to canoe down 40 years ago. I was told it was from tannin in the cedar trees. Your advice on taking both sounds unimpeachable. And a new computer would probably solve a lot of problems.

So all of your processing is done in the raw processor? I keep reading in the threads how people move into Nik or some other program. I wasn't sure if there was a way to bring out the most information in the image in raw and then make the decisions of how you wanted it to look in another program. Thanks for your help.
 
Ricks, for me LR is nearly always enough, though I know some people who always do a little more in PS or PSE afterwards. I've never felt the need. I do occasionally use PSE for perspective correction but I've gotten lazy recently since the latest verison of LR has a lens correction ability that does much the same thing (tough I think the PSE approach is still better).

There are huge numbers of plugins for LR ranging from very expensive programmes to little free utilities - a search on Lightroom Plugins will give you an idea of what is out there. I have downloaded and used quite a few of them over the couple of years I've been using LR but one of reasons I like LR is becuase of its simplicity and adding on lots of plugins goes against that. I found that when I first started using LR I wanted to try everything - I later decided that simplicity is best (that's my excuse anyway).

I do have some of the Nik Plugins - which are among the best I've tried - but as LR's own abilities have expanded I use these less and less. The only exception is Nik Silver Efex which is a B&W converter programme - it is possible to replicate some of the effects in LR but Silver Efex makes it much easier.
 
Fan-tas-tic

I could not decide which of the two I liked better. Which one or none.
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In 3 words: FAN-TAS-TIC ;)
I can not chose between them at all, so dynamic, alive, just wow, both of them ... .
 
Thanks Olli. It seems like Lightroom is the way to go. I went to the site and found out that my computer is sadly way below the minimum system requirements, so I guess first I will have to update the computer, then Lightroom, Siver Efex.
 
one, no, two more

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Two more that got my special attention, amazing, when I look at these I wanna look further in the picture, deeper, between the people to the end, a never ending picture.
And that set of colours, wow.

I hope it get better weather soon, when I see this, I have to hit the streets with my Pan-a-Leica :D;)
 
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