The Mystery of RAW Converters, Take Two 
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Author: Eric Cheng ( echeng )
Related Link: Mystery of RAW Converters
Four years ago, I wrote a RAW converter comparison article called The Mystery of RAW Converters. Here’s a one-image update to the article.
RAW converter comparison for underwater sunballs
In the 2004 article, I concluded that I prefer Canon’s Digital Photo Professional for RAW conversions when the image contains an underwater sunball. That conclusion still holds.
In general, I find that the Canon 1D series cameras (Mk III, these days) produce “natural”, pleasing colors. I almost always like the embedded thumbnail’s look more than the thumbnail images that pop up once Aperture or Lightroom generate thumbnails upon import. Aperture tends to boost the image somewhat—colors are stronger and contrast is higher, but it’s not always pleasing when compared to the original.
Underwater photos that contain “the blue” get whacked really badly; photos and distant reef subjects tend to take on a green cast when compared to the colors in JPG images taken straight out of the camera (extracted from RAW files).
Sunballs are still a disaster when images are converted with Aperture or Lightroom. Underwater, I would rather shoot sunball images in JPG mode than use Aperture or Lightroom to convert RAW files—and believe me, it takes a lot to convince me to shoot JPG over RAW. Luckily, Canon’s free software, Digital Photo Professional, continues to do an excellent job in converting underwater sunball images, closely matching the RAW converter built into the camera.
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Comment(s):Really interesting. I am certainly going to pick up a copy of Nikon’s NX and see how that does in comparison to Lightroom with my photos.
That Mintz gets into everyone’s photos.
Alex
Posted by Dr. Alex Mustard on 09/16 at 10:31 AMI have a similar opinion with regard to using Capture NX for Nikon.
I have not compared sunballs as you have, but more and more like using NX for my Nikon RAW conversions. Unfortunately it screws up the whole worklflow concept of Aperture / Lightroom.Posted by loftus on 09/16 at 10:34 AMI know this may sound dumb, but looking at Aperture’s conversion, the outer transition area actually looks smoother than the others, though ultimately the final transition to the blown area is more drastic.
Posted by loftus on 09/16 at 10:39 AMWhich version of Aperture is this?
I noticed that version 2 handles highlights better than 1.Posted by aczyzyk on 09/16 at 11:16 AMFor Nikon anyway (D200) I’ve found the 2.0 converter in Aperture is much better at handling sunballs than was version 1.1.
Note that if you have an image converted with the older version you need to re-convert it to get the benefit of 2.0. You can do this in the adjustments panel or with the Migrate Images feature.
Disclaimer: I work for Apple but not on Aperture.
Posted by gecko1 on 09/16 at 11:37 AMCan a copy of this RAW file be made available?
Posted by Craig Jones on 09/16 at 01:15 PMI’m using Aperture version 2.
Posted by Eric Cheng on 09/16 at 09:52 PMHas Capture one made any improvements? It is now up at Version 3.7.4
Posted by Divnivn on 09/17 at 01:48 PMThat Mintz needs to get some modeling contracts. LOL
Great to read as we ran into this conversion problem on a quick run while in Yap with some Manta images. Using PS produced much better results. I will try the Canon product and see if it fares better for me and the images I captured.
Cheers
Todd
Posted by yahsemtough on 09/22 at 01:53 PM
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