MAC OS-X 10.5.7 good news for tethered shooters

If you use an Apple MAC and have OS-X 10.5 then most likely you've been running 10.5.6 lately, but now 10.5.7 is now available to download and if you didn't get it already do so...

In MAC OS 10.5.6 Apple seemingly broke the tethered shooting functions making it very tough for users to shoot with cameras connected to the laptop. Typical symptoms include freezing of the whole computer, lock up of DPP or EOS Utility or similar. Usually it happens after around 15 minutes of continuous tethering, sometimes after 20 or more images have been transferred. MAC OS-X 10.5.7 seems to fix this, though there's no mention of fixes to USB on the update release notes.

To try it out we hooked up an EOS-1D Mark III and left it in live view mode for over 30 minutes it was still all alive and working and we could then pick the camera up and shoot a couple of hundred frames straight in to the MAC; just like you could do with MAC OS-X 10.5.5.

One thing that 10.5.7 brings is support for RAW images from EOS 5D Mark II, EOS 50D and PowerShot G10 according to the release note information.

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Does sharpening add up in DPP?

Recently the world famous camera store in New York known as B&H has made available a really interesting video of a seminar presented by Erik Allin from Canon USA. The seminars are all about the Canon software. If you want to find no better use for the best part of two hours it's worth a watch. Even better is that the section with the demonstration of techniques in the Canon Digital Photo Professional software are covered in probably some of the most depth ever seen in the wild. Check out video 2 of 3 and 3 of 3 particularly. Big thanks for that Erik and B&H

However on the topic of sharpening we'd like to dispute the claims made in the video that you can choose to do sharpening in either the RAW or RGB tabs of DPPs tool palette. In our quick test the two sharpening sliders are cumulative. So set +10 sharpening in the RAW tab and then set +500 sharpening in the RGB tab. We found that with both sets of sharpening set to the max then it's more sharpened than when either of them individually is set to the maximum. 

These images are screenshots from DPP edit image window and are in split screen mode at 100% view.

RAW +10 sharpening, RGB 0 sharpening

RAW +10 sharpening, RGB +500 sharpening

RAW 0 sharpening, RGB +500 sharpening

To me it seems that the RAW sharpening is applied to the RAW data and then additional sharpening on the RGB data is applied, one small contradiction in an otherwise great presentation.

So to answer the title question, RAW sharpening in DPP does add up.

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RAW support added to the PowerShot SX1 IS

A tiny bit of news, but valuable for those who use Canon's Digital Photo Professional software for processing their RAW images.

With the announcement of the PowerShot SX1 IS for the USA market yesterday Canon also announced that they are making a firmware update to add RAW image support to the camera for the exisiting customers. Let's not forget that the PowerShot SX1 IS already has a Canon CMOS sensor and full HD video capture; RAW is a nice addition for free. The new firmware will be available to download from Canon's BeBit site http://web.canon.jp/imaging/BeBit-e.html from mid-March, and there will also be an updated version of Digital Photo Professional to work with the RAW images. This now means that photographers who mostly use EOS cameras can also work with the RAW images from the PowerShot G10 and (soon) the PowerShot SX1 IS. Maybe this helps your choice of compact camera, because it seems like there's no new Canon DSLR going to be announced for PMA, the first time since 2001.

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Why DPP?

So, DPP then. What's all the fuss? 

Well for a start, Canon include it with the camera. That's a bonus right off the bat. Unlike some other manufacturers, when you buy a Canon camera it's all there in the box. Thoughtful of them isn't it? 

So if it's all provided, why are there so many third party RAW converters? Well, it's simple not everyone is the same and many people think if the software is given away free, it can't be any good. And that, dear readers, is mistake number one. 

Now, the reasons to use DPP are several, I'm going to put two to you now:

1. No-one knows Canon files like Canon

2. Picture Styles

Number one is pretty self explanatory really. Since Canon make the camera and the CMOS sensor and the DIGIC processor, you'd think they'd know what the output would be and would therefore make a nice bit of software to make the most of it. And you'd be right. 

Number two probably needs more explaining. Here's goes....

While you may choose not to use Picture Styles, the fact is when you take an image on a Canon EOS camera, the LCD display will show you a preview with whichever Picture Style you happen to have set. If you happen to take a quick chimp at the LCD panel and decide you've got the shot you're after, you'll move on. All well and good so far. Trouble comes when you put the RAW into a third-party RAW convertor. They don't deal with Picture Styles, so your image will look a little flatter and less vibrant than it did on the LCD panel. If you did indeed take a look at the LCD display and decided you liked the shot, this can be a let down. 

Before you all comment and tell me that you can process back to where you were using the tools in your RAW convertor of choice, remember that means more time in front of the computer. If you're a photographer who tries to get it right in camera (and that should be all of us, right?) then you may not want to spend ages processing each image back to get it where it could be if you only used Picture Styles and DPP. And as far as I'm concerned, the less time I have to spend processing images, the better. 

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