CHDKPTP - PC Remote Control Performance Analysis - page 46 - RAW Shooting and Processing

SticK

779

Re: CHDKPTP - PC Remote Control Performance Analysis

« Reply #450 on: 23 / October / 2012, 23:30:14 »

Advertisements

@reyalp
Right now for example I have Canon RAW ON and DNG ON. CHDK menus appear to work at the usual speed, so that's fine. However if I press MENU on the camera, there is a delay before the Canon menu appears, but what's more noticeable is leaving (MENU again) // there's a good 1/2 second delay before the viewfinder is back // doesn't feel right, and then many seconds later "DNG Disabled" scrolls down as you know. To validate with 100% certainty I'd have to use a timer and then try it again with 2163-test1.

edit: leaving is 0.8 seconds exactly // a bit long. I have to look at 2163-test1.

« Last Edit: 23 / October / 2012, 23:33:26 by SticK »

Logged

SticK

779

Re: CHDKPTP - PC Remote Control Performance Analysis

« Reply #451 on: 23 / October / 2012, 23:48:08 »

Reporting as things happen ...
>> Had Canon RAW and DNG ON
>> reinstalled 2163test1
>> Right after lens extension, "DNG Disabled" scrolled down but then got cleared from the screen
>> Unlike 2226test1, it did not return under 40 seconds ..
>> I waited about 4 minutes and same thing, the scroll down returned.

So it's a mode I've actually for the first time since I don't use DNGs.

Speed ...

I disabled CHDK and did the Canon menu test ... 0.7 seconds instead of 0.8 // not a big difference. Perhaps I am just not used to operating DNGs and controlling the camera manually // not sure. Menu return on the SX110 is instantaneous. Camera difference?

more edits: So I'd say the "DNG Disabled" scroll issue goes back to at least 2163test1. There was a version where it just appeared but did not scroll, but I don't know which.

« Last Edit: 24 / October / 2012, 00:00:11 by SticK »

Logged

SticK

779

Re: CHDKPTP - PC Remote Control Performance Analysis

« Reply #452 on: 24 / October / 2012, 13:47:46 »

QUESTION on JPG COMPRESSION ... does anyone know if this is possible with CHDK? Both the S50 and SX110 have the superfine option available in their Canon menus. Superfine JPEG results are very acceptable for much of the imaging I do. For example, 5mpx JPGs on the S50 can be as large as 4.5 MB with superfine ON. On the SX110, 9mpx JPGs can be 4.5 MB with fine and 6-7MB with superfine. Sadly and very oddly too, the S90 allows only a fine option in their menu. So 10mpx JPGs are typically a very poor 2MB on average. Being a DIGIC IV, I am guessing the option might be hidden in firmware. I don't see anything obvious in the CHDK menus, but if you know or believe superfine compression is available in Canon firmware on the S90, could there be a way to enable it via a lua command for example? Can anyone help me with this?

Logged

philmoz

3450

Re: CHDKPTP - PC Remote Control Performance Analysis

« Reply #453 on: 24 / October / 2012, 14:56:20 »

Quote from: SticK on 24 / October / 2012, 13:47:46

QUESTION on JPG COMPRESSION ... does anyone know if this is possible with CHDK? Both the S50 and SX110 have the superfine option available in their Canon menus. Superfine JPEG results are very acceptable for much of the imaging I do. For example, 5mpx JPGs on the S50 can be as large as 4.5 MB with superfine ON. On the SX110, 9mpx JPGs can be 4.5 MB with fine and 6-7MB with superfine. Sadly and very oddly too, the S90 allows only a fine option in their menu. So 10mpx JPGs are typically a very poor 2MB on average. Being a DIGIC IV, I am guessing the option might be hidden in firmware. I don't see anything obvious in the CHDK menus, but if you know or believe superfine compression is available in Canon firmware on the S90, could there be a way to enable it via a lua command for example? Can anyone help me with this?

If implemented for the camera, it will be the 'Quality override' menu option in the 'Enhanced Photo Operations' menu.

Phil.

Logged

CHDK ports:
sx30is (1.00c, 1.00h, 1.00l, 1.00n & 1.00p)
g12 (1.00c, 1.00e, 1.00f & 1.00g)
sx130is (1.01d & 1.01f)
ixus310hs (1.00a & 1.01a)
sx40hs (1.00d, 1.00g & 1.00i)
g1x (1.00e, 1.00f & 1.00g)
g5x (1.00c, 1.01a, 1.01b)
g7x2 (1.01a, 1.01b, 1.10b)

SticK

779

Re: CHDKPTP - PC Remote Control Performance Analysis

« Reply #454 on: 24 / October / 2012, 16:00:40 »

When I select the option, in EXIF it does show up as "Superfine," but the JPEG is still 1.6 MB @10mpx. Could there be hook that could be tried so I could test if the camera supports it? It would be great to have this option, if available.

Logged

reyalp

14082

Re: CHDKPTP - PC Remote Control Performance Analysis

« Reply #455 on: 24 / October / 2012, 17:03:33 »

Quote from: SticK on 24 / October / 2012, 16:00:40

When I select the option, in EXIF it does show up as "Superfine," but the JPEG is still 1.6 MB @10mpx. Could there be hook that could be tried so I could test if the camera supports it? It would be great to have this option, if available.

On the cameras where the "superfine" override has been successfully implemented, the file size goes up, but the difference in visual quality is somewhere between marginal and imperceptible. This makes sense to me, image quality is a significant point of competition (see all the web reviews with obsessive 100% crops at every ISO), so it's unlikely Canon would remove it if there was significant quality to be had.

Logged

Don't forget what the H stands for.

SticK

779

Re: CHDKPTP - PC Remote Control Performance Analysis

« Reply #456 on: 24 / October / 2012, 17:37:29 »

On the S90 there are only two choices: normal and fine. When in fine, a 10mpx image comes out between 1.5 MB and 2MB max // that's pitiful and is more like a good "photographic proof" to me. The reason I think they do not have superfine as a choice is because this camera supports native RAWs. A 10mpx superfine would end up being around 8 MB, and compared to 10-11MB for the RAW, they probably figured folks would use RAW anyway, so they omitted it from the menu. It is still odd, because one can choose smaller format JPGs and apply superfine to those, if it were available.

So what I'm wondering is this: could superfine exist in S90 firmware nonetheless? Could the be a hook that could make the CHDK option "Image quality" work on the S90? Or is that impossible ... if not on the menu it simply doesn't exist in firmware ??

edit: on the S50 where I have much experience, there is a very noticeable pixel-to-pixel contrast improvement (scene fidelity) when going fine to superfine.

« Last Edit: 24 / October / 2012, 19:26:48 by SticK »

Logged

reyalp

14082

Re: CHDKPTP - PC Remote Control Performance Analysis

« Reply #457 on: 25 / October / 2012, 01:17:21 »

Quote from: SticK on 24 / October / 2012, 17:37:29

The reason I think they do not have superfine as a choice is because this camera supports native RAWs.

Given that the "superfine" option was removed from most other recent Canon P&S cameras which do not support raw, I doubt this.

Quote

So what I'm wondering is this: could superfine exist in S90 firmware nonetheless? Could the be a hook that could make the CHDK option "Image quality" work on the S90?

Since you see the image quality override option, it should theoretically work. If it doesn't, then this camera is doing something new and different. All the override does is set PROPCASE_QUALITY, and if it shows up as superfine in the exif, the propcase ID must be right. Unlike the exposure settings, this isn't an override that needs to be set a particular point, it should stay set, at least for as long as you are in shooting mode and don't go into the Canon func menu. You could manually fiddle with the PROPCASE_QUALITY value, e.g.

=return get_prop(require('propcase').QUALITY)
=set_prop(require('propcase').QUALITY,0)

On known cameras, 0 is superfine, 1 is fine, 2 is normal. On cameras without a superfine option, this still holds, so we just set it to 0, which isn't available from the menu. IIRC some even

Quote

edit: on the S50 where I have much experience, there is a very noticeable pixel-to-pixel contrast improvement (scene fidelity) when going fine to superfine.

It's clear the superfine option has a reason to exist on older cameras, but that doesn't mean it does on newer cameras.

Attached png is 1:1 crops from my d10. The original images are 2mb for fine and 3.5mb for superfine. The bottom one is difference, I'll let you decide what order the others are in.

fine-vs-superfine.png (745.96 kB, 440x1320 - viewed 145 times.)

Logged

Don't forget what the H stands for.

SticK

779

Re: CHDKPTP - PC Remote Control Performance Analysis

« Reply #458 on: 25 / October / 2012, 11:48:24 »

This is an interesting discussion and the sample you presented is definitely suitable for most photographic analysis purposes I feel. I am not an expert on the intricacies of the JPEG compander // I am a user like most folks. However, the way I use the imaging is different from most folks, because I go down to the pixel level at times in the superfine JPGs when needed on the S50, resorting to RAW only under special conditions. Because the JPEG philosophy is in essence "compress as much as possible and keep the image looking as close as possible to the original scene when viewed by eye at a normal viewing distance," then your conclusion of the small difference between fine and superfine does indeed apply.

In this context, you asked me to make a judgement on what I would call "a floating comparison." What I mean is this: you are presenting me an incremental difference without a "scene reference" or "perfect baseline." When viewed from afar, the images look the same indeed even when reasonably zoomed (I did not examine your dark difference image not to bias my opinion). Here in my lab however, I do the comparisons differently: they are based on shooting a RAW with the JPEG and then comparing each JPEG quality image to the RAW (or a super-superfine version of the RAW converted outside the camera), rather than to each other. Then one can account for CCD pixel-to-pixel gain nonlinearities as well, especially in the low-light regions in the image. Also, the (new to me) CHDK feature allows me to turn off bad pixel subtraction, so I can identify where the bad pixels are and I was planning to work with it on the S90. But because JPG compression is very poor for my application on the S90, I am only left with the one choice unfortunately and it would not be worth doing those investigations, unless a way could be found to enable superfine if it exists in the camera.

Having said all of the above, the evidence I base my judgement on are the high-frequency component differences I detected by eye only. Also, I don't know the intensity nonlinearities of your specific CCD as I do my S50. Keep in mind that yours are two different shots as well, so there could very well be a (very small, on unit pixel order even if on a tripod) displacement component that unfairly changes the pixel-to-pixel conditions between the two images, and is one of the reasons I feel a comparison to a RAW would be more effective. Considering everything, I note the top image has the more high-frequency definition in (my assumed) contrast transitions than the bottom.

Logged

reyalp

14082

Re: CHDKPTP - PC Remote Control Performance Analysis

« Reply #459 on: 25 / October / 2012, 13:18:06 »

Quote from: SticK on 25 / October / 2012, 11:48:24

Considering everything, I note the top image has the more high-frequency definition in (my assumed) contrast transitions than the bottom.

The top one is the "superfine". Good eye

The point though is that on these cameras, you do really have to look very closely to see difference, even in a shot like the one above that was specifically set up to highlight the difference. I understand this may still matter to you (although why not use raw in that case ?) but I think you can understand why I say the override is generally of little value for normal photographs.

As far as fixing the override on S90, as I said before, if it doesn't work now, I don't have any additional suggestion. It does exactly the same thing as the working override on other cameras.

Logged

Don't forget what the H stands for.