rawTherapee and the Ricoh GRD4

date: sat 23 mar 13
tags: taunton

Whilst I did like using Darktable, I yesterday decided to give RawTherapee a go and definitely prefer it to Darktable!I have quite a few archived D700 and D70s NEF files, and I was finding that Darktable seemed to randomly not be able to read about 30% of my NEFs. I also noticed that Darktable seemed to eat up my RAM fast, as I only have 4GB installed. R0011043b I have been experimenting with both "snap focus" and also manual focus on the GRD4 but I quite like using manual focus as it seems more intuitive than "snap" as there is a handy distance scale marked in meters! I think I had the setting either on 1.5m or 2m, but not easy to tell exactly as there are only markings for 1,3 & 5 metres. I'm using the "default" processing profile here, and the only customisations I have made to the profile is to disable sharpening, and added a 1024 wide resize, and saved at 85% "best quality" jpeg. R0011056 I've probably actually focussed a bit too close and 2.5m would have been a better manual focus distance. R0011078 One thing I notice about the streets of Taunton is the amount of chewing gum on the pavement! It was pretty dark when I went out today so was on max aperture of f/1.9 most of the time - I guess I could get more sharpness if I selected a higher ISO and a smaller aperture. R0011042b I'm getting more used to the GRD4 handling now, but not really got the hang of using it one handed - have seen videos of people using it with one hand, but I do not want to risk dropping it so soon after getting it. I'm looking forward to learning more about RawTherapee as it seems to have a lot of potential and produces good results "out of the box".