Camera Labs

I just learned Canon DPP Utility added HDR capability, and the Canon USA website is down, ugh. Tried the Canadian website, it crapped out when I tried to DL it. Plus my firmware is out of date now. Fun.

What version are we on now? I've lost track. There's the 5D3 launch version which as far as I'm aware was not made for general download. And everyone is waiting for the one after that with bug fixes? Haven't heard of it being out yet.

edit: 3.11.26 link was on Canon HK site, but it seems to point to another site that doesn't have the file.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

I finally got on Canon USA's website and DL'd 3.11.4.10 and I couldn't find anything related to HDR. It disappoints because I read this on thedigitalpicture.com's 5DIII review:



So, I don't know that's going on with DPP. Sorry about this post, it seems a waste of time.

The new features were introduced with 3.11.10 which is the version that shipped with the 5D3. I don't think they made it available for general download. Since there was a bug found in that, I think they're holding off general release for the bugfix version.

3.11.4.10 is the version I have too, which has been around for a while I think.

According to Canonrumors the new version is due by middle of this week so keep watching.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

3.11.26 on Canon Canada http://www.canon.ca/inetCA/serviceDetai ... pe=D&opt=1
Just grabbed it and will give it a quick play soon.

edit: supported lens list is very short. I'll have to hunt for something with a suitable lens. It needs further downloads of 111MB for the 5 lenses I selected.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

Ok, very quick play but bed time now so no samples. Try your own!

I found it hard to find samples quickly so in the end used one on 100-400L, which doesn't really need much correction anyway. The lens optimiser just seems to alter sharpness, but I'm not sure if it's much benefit over conventional sharpening techniques. Later I hope to find a good sample with the 15-85 and see how that does.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

I'm not sure what the lens optimizer feature is. Is it related to chroma and vignetting correction? (I used those with the 100mm non-L macro USM and 17-55 2.8 back on version 3.9.)

I'm particularly interested in the lens profiles you mentioned. I've never downloaded lens profiles before. Could those be applied to in-camera correction as well as DPP?

Thanks.

Its a new function they introduced along with the 5D3, but it works with other bodies and lenses too. Supposed to be able to correct for lots of things. Believe it is a DPP only function, although depending on the body some features can be corrected in jpeg.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

Some samples after a quick play.

Test file was from 7D with EF-S 15-85 at f/5.6. I shot jpeg+raw on that day so I can compare. The lens has quite a bunch of distortion on the wide end as used, as well as some lateral CA. Both DPP and DXO support lens specific correction. The version of ACR I have doesn't. Following 100% crops are from near the top left corner of the shot.


Camera jpeg - kinda soft with hints of CA. The softness probably helps masks that.


ACR6.5 crippled version in PSE9 with defaults. Much sharper but shows up the CA more too.


DPP 6.10.26: left image with DLO only at default setting of 50/100, right image adds LAC at defaults (mostly distortion correction).
This suppresses the CA while preserving a nice level of detail, until you turn on distortion control which softens the image once again.


DxO 7.2.2: both images based on defaults, but left image has distortion correction disabled. Again the CA is controlled but the detail feels more harsh than with DPP, probably from over aggressive sharpening as a slight halo can be seen. This could be manually tweaked I guess. It doesn't take as much detail hit from distortion correction compared to DPP.

As others have reported using the version of DPP shipped with the 5D3, using DLO appears to append the processed info back into the raw file, doubling its size.

It is also interesting to compare the distortion correction between DPP and DXO. Both are quite noticeable compared to the uncorrected image, but DXO seems to correct a bit more than DPP. Short of shooting a grid I couldn't say who is more correct.

Overall, this limited test doesn't show any significant benefit over other raw converters for me to make a switch.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

Ok, next up, a quick test of the HDR mode.


I took a 3 shot bracket hand held on a windy day here. This is the middle shot for illustration, processed using DPP defaults whatever they are. Two more shots were used, 2 stops above and below this. The sun (through the clouds) is in shot to the top-left of the image.

As I hand held this, I used the auto-align function. This seems to crop the image somewhat as the following images show less field of view than this unprocessed one. I took it through the various built in presets before trying my own settings. Unfortunately this image looks a lot worse reduced to this web size, but I don't think it worth showing bigger either...


Natural preset. It does feel natural but really dull and low contrast. Might be an ok starting point for further processing.


Standard preset. This perks up a bit. Everything in the dynamic range looks clearer.


Bold preset. This is more like HDR - saturated colours and generally more in your face.


Embossed preset. I don't get this one. Seems to be quite a bold setting with strong but not complete colour desaturation.


My custom setting after playing about a bit.

I don't know what all the options mean yet. There are two boxes. The first one labelled Tone/Color is more simple. Here you adjust Brightness, Saturation and Contrast. The second box is where the HDR goes on I guess, but I don't know what they do exactly. Labelled Detail Enhancement, you get to alter Strength, Smoothness and Fineness. The preview process isn't the fastest if you're used to getting instant feedback.

There is a bit of halo-ing going on around the rock cluster to the left. I don't know if there's a way to control this better yet.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

Thanks for the update. Nice to see HDR in DPP.

Hi there

i am just beginning to play around with HDR and i use Picturenaut (as its free and im still dabbling) but i have DPP 3.1 which was shipped with my D550. Am i right in thinking that i can download the newer version of DPP which has a HDR merge function in it ?

Also i was trying to use the RAW image i take alongside the large JPEG as a single shot that could be exposure bracketed for HDR...im winging it here ...but i thought that if i have a programme that lets me alter the exposure bracket of the single RAW image then i can save the same image as +1 stop, +2 stop, -1 stop -2 stop and then use the bracketed RAW images for HDR ?

Probelm is i dont know which programme can actually alter the Exposure bracket on the RAW file ...i was hoping DPP would enable me to do it..but my vresion doesnt seem to, i tried Photoshop, but my version is 7 and that doesnt seem to have an option for modifying ev (??? - i think its ev)... so am i on the right thought lines and does the new version of DPP do this ?

cheers for any advice, apologies if im in the wrong thread for the question.. and please slap me if i am being an idiot..(/slap)

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Canon 550D, Canon EFS 17-85 IS USM, Canon EF 75-300 IS USM, Canon EFS 10-22mm USM, Canon EF35mm F2.

Got some of the gear but really still no idea...

Yes you can update your DPP to the latest version.

As for HDR techniques, generating multiple outputs to re-merge into HDR doesn't really get you any more info than from a raw in the first place. The only reason you might want to do that is if the HDR software you use doesn't have good raw handling.

_________________
Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

OK thanks.. i havent done much processing with RAW so far. Will upload the latest version and see where to go from there..

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Canon 550D, Canon EFS 17-85 IS USM, Canon EF 75-300 IS USM, Canon EFS 10-22mm USM, Canon EF35mm F2.

Got some of the gear but really still no idea...

Well, I gave it a whirl. I used 3 massively underexposed shots (-2,-1,0 EV). I used the auto align since they're handheld. I left brightness (50), saturation (50), contrast (30), and fineness (0) alone. I boosted Strength (100) and Smoothness (100) all the way up. I found that the strength is like the "secret HDR sauce" but needs the smoothness to reduce the noise and ghosting around the edges caused by the strength setting. Since my photos were underexposed, chroma noise in the shadows is pretty bad. I did not like the fineness slider. It just made it waaay too over-sharpened. I also found that the picture and noise reduction settings on the photos before conversion has a noticable effect on noise in the combined output.


HDR test -2EV by bkslopper, on Flickr

HDR test -1EV by bkslopper, on Flickr

HDR test 0EV by bkslopper, on Flickr

HDR test combined by bkslopper, on Flickr