LATEST ADDITIONS

DxO Labs has unveiled www.dxomark.com, a new website delivering key objective metrics of sensor performance for a variety of cameras measured directly on the RAW image. Available as a free online resource, dxomark.com makes it possible for the first time to assess the intrinsic quality of a camera before the impact of any RAW conversion.

“There are many valuable resources reviewing the image quality of digital cameras, but none of them consider the actual RAW signal straight from the camera sensor,” explains Nicolas Touchard, Vice President of Marketing, DxO Labs Image Quality Evaluation business. “Demanding photographers who shoot in RAW should only care about the genuine quality of the RAW image, yet until now they have had to rely on measures based on converted RAW images, obviously biased by the processing applied to them, whether embedded or performed offline with a software RAW converter. Furthermore, as RAW converters evolve and improve, the latent potential of RAW images can only be gauged by analyzing the RAW images themselves, projecting the potential quality achievable with the ultimate RAW converter. This is why we believe that our approach will dramatically change the way photographers evaluate digital cameras.”

dxomark.com provides in-depth measurements of all the relevant characteristics of a sensor: actual ISO sensitivity (which generally differs from the value reported by the camera), signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), dynamic range, tonal range, color depth and sensitivity, metamerism, etc. dxomark.com already covers 50 popular cameras, including Digital Single-Lens Reflex (DSLRs) and high-end bridge cameras offering RAW image format. The site will be updated on a regular basis with new cameras.
dxomark.com RAW image quality database relies on DxO Analyzer, the world’s leading turn-key laboratory solution for image quality evaluation. Thanks to its accuracy, completeness, and reliability, DxO Analyzer has become the reference tool for numerous leading imaging industry players, photography magazines and websites.

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Trial downloads of the Adobe Creative Suite 4 product family are available now on Adobe.com, allowing users to test out the software before purchasing. Delivering radical breakthroughs in workflow efficiency – and packed with hundreds of innovative, time saving features – the new Creative Suite 4 product line advances the creative process across print, Web, interactive, film, video and mobile.

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The problem with most photo backpacks is that they’re perfect for carrying cameras, lenses and a ton of small accessories, but perfectly awful when it’s time to pack anything larger. Yes, I know—some models will accommodate a notebook PC. But many of those require the mouse and AC adapter to share space with camera accessories.

First to bring you up to date. Since my workflow article ran in the December issue of Shutterbug, word has gotten around and back to me providing lots of information for a better picture of the problem. I have done more testing, which concluded even for a well color managed system like my own with LCD’s there is some darkening in print results because of color correcting and editing with an LCD with screen brightness set exactly at a luminance of 120.0 CD/m2. I confirmed this by opening some finished scanned image in Photoshop, files done when I had CRT monitors installed and then stored on CD’s that have been printed in the past. These image files look fine in terms of density on my LCD screen, and print as they did in the past achieving the same print density the screen appearance would suggest to expect. I have to assume the reason is that the image brightness midpoint setting in Levels made using a CRT monitor with a white point luminance of 90.0 CD/m2 (which was not changed for this current and test and printing), and the correct brightness of the print is because the brightness range of the CRT closely matched the density range of a high quality inkjet print.