Maybe I will go back to film. For all the many advantages of digital over film when it comes to developing your shots, you can drown in the complexities and choices. Because chaos binges on chaos, I decided that switching the hosting service for my blog was the best time to also try out a number of raw developers. It didn’t help that most of the top ones that you read about online make themselves available for free for thirty-day trials. It’s like having all the ice cream shops in one block all offering a free scoop on the same day. Are you really going to take a pass no matter how full you may be?
Here’s why I started down this miserable path filled with confusion, lost photos, more confusion, more lost photos, sore eyes, software crashes and swearing, I find Light Room’s cataloging to be confusing and difficult to manage across multiple computers and locations. Now, remember my rule: chaos binges on chaos. In the midst of my developer trials, LR completely revised its offerings into LR Classic and LR CC without warning. Not to be outdone, ON1 Photo RAW 2018 came out in beta (officially released just a few days ago). While I could ad nauseam describe each one of these plus Capture One Pro, DxO Elite and others lesser known or lesser promoted, I will not. Blogs should be fun to read. Not to mention, I’m hardly a strong enough photographer that my opinion matters to anyone other than me. (I have other opinions on other things. Possibly, a few of those might matter to my wife, my 10-year-old daughter or Comet. They all often humor me by at least pretending.) Here is my main observation and it is a stunner: While there are real differences in how each processes RAW Leica SL shots, the differences are often mostly a matter of taste. They key is to use a program that is compatible with your camera’s raw files and, to some extent, the lenses you use. If not, you can end up with some odd artifacts.
So after all the chaos where did I end up? With Capture One as my main developer and LR for some small aspects of exporting which it does better. Yes, I know, two programs that both use a form of cataloging. Which is why I repeat, maybe I will go back to film. One enlarger, some chemical trays, plastic negative folders, contact sheets and physical file cabinet drawers. I feel old.
In directly comparing the programs’ processing of raw files, I used one particular shot for a pixel by pixel comparison. This is it.
I love this photo. I was sitting in the Starbucks in Portsmouth NH on a clouding, cold, damp day. Outside the Starbucks, sitting at one of their cafe tables, was a man with all of his vaping paraphernalia laid out. His vaping exhaust clouds were hovering in the air just outside the entrance and customers were grumbling. This picture was taken just after he was asked not to vape in front of the store. I just turned from where I was sitting inside at the counter and took four successive manually focused shots through the Leica M 28mm lens on the SL. Photo’s like this is why I try to always carry my camera.