Minolta RD 175 images don't open

Hi, I tried to open the files taken from a Minolta RD 175 (1995). Although the camera is listed as being supported the files don’t seem to be recognized. Can anyone help?
TIA,
Edd

I can try one on my RT win10 if you like

Ideally, if you could open an issue here and please share a file for us to test here, we can take a look!
If you don’t want to use GitHub, please share the file here.

Thanks Guys! I tried to open an issue on the link you provided, but the filebin website is not accepting any uploads right now, I will try again later. Unfortunately I cannot upload the file here as it says the files are not supported. They are .MDC files btw. Do you know anything else I can try?

There is one sample raw file for the RD 175 on https://raw.pixls.us, so I tested that and found out *.MDC is not a supported file extension in RT yet. If you add that yourself, you should at least be able to open the file:

There is zero guarantee for the image quality though. If you would like to improve the image quality, you should try to provide the requested sample files as described here: Adding Support for New Raw Formats - RawPedia

Thank you! That worked, I can now open and edit the files, although your suspicions were correct about it looking pretty terrible quality :P. I know it’s not going to look fantastic, but I think it’s supposed to look better than this. I read through the link you gave about adding support for RAW formats. It was quite funny where it says you should be uploading at least 8 images because you should shoot at every ISO. The RD 175 only has one ISO setting (800), hehe. Anyway, I did shoot a colour target, so hopefully that’s useful and I will upload it with as much info as I can to Filebin once it allows uploads again.

Thanks again. I feel like I’m getting somewhere now :slight_smile:

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Thanks, with your colour target shot (in raw format not jpeg though…) we should be able to improve the quality a lot. If your camera has only one ISO setting, life gets much easier, less shots to take and analyze :wink:
If filebin isn’t working for you, you could use a service like wetransfer.com instead.

Hey thanks, that seemed to work. Let me know if you can’t see this: https://we.tl/t-O3kJva8kkL

These files don’t do exif data and the camera’s display seems to be broken so it’s difficult to know the settings, but I do know the ISO was 800 and the aperture is at least f/6.7 (minimum the camera allows). The focal length was 70mm but the camera has a 2x crop (so 140mm). There are no menu settings as such on the camera (no rear screen), so I assume there is no long exposure noise reduction.

I got the file! What a wonderful relic :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: I’ll take a look at it later.

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Anything you can do is hugely appreciated! I hope you find the process fun :). I’m enjoying collecting these old DSLRs. This has been by far the hardest one to get working for me so far (the memory card formatting is crazy). If I manage to find anything older I will let you know :stuck_out_tongue:

@artmonkey I have been playing a little with your ColorChecker shot, but even with some tricks I think it is a little too overexposed. This is particularly problematic for the three brightest gray/white patches that also seem to have some severe blue tinting that needs to be correct.
Are you able to create a shot with a lower exposure somehow?

What I learned from inspecting this raw and two other I found (here and on raw.pixls.us), is that the raw pixel values on this camera are not linearly encoded. So when RT decodes and assumes it needs to convert linear pixel data to something with a gamma~2.2, it doubles the effect and the image becomes much too bright. But this can be circumvented luckily.

Just to show the current progress. I am able to go from this:


to

Oh wow, that example is such an improvement! Great work there Roel! I managed to find the exposure compensation button and see through the broken LCD enough to get you 4 different exposures: https://we.tl/t-uR6D2mNpjb
These images are as follows:
M006.MDC: -0.5 EV
M007.MDC: -1 EV
M008.MDC: -2 EV
M009.MDC: -3 EV

I also took these on a tripod (@ f/8, ~65mm) so could be a better example for sharpness too. Hopefully one of these will help, but if you need anything else just let me know :).

Oh, just in case it helps - the lens is a Minolta AF 35-70mm f/4. Pic here: Minolta RD 175

Hi Edward @artmonkey, those additional shots work well, thanks!
I’ve made this DCP file: Minolta RD-175.dcp (981.3 KB)
If you go to the Color Management module in RT and load this file:
image

Then, go to the RAW tab and set Green equilibration to 100 under Preprocessing, and enable the auto-correction under Chromatic Aberration Correction. That should give you a fairly decent starting point! Although I doubt you want to do some serious photography with this camera :wink:

image

Edit: I’m not sure if it’s worthwhile to distribute the DCP file along with RT for such an ancient camera without metadata support… @Morgan_Hardwood, any opinions?

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Well, at least we have the camera name…

Loading Minolta RD175 image from...

Thanks a lot for the help with this, Roel!! No, it’s not too serious, but I have been enjoying writing reviews of these old DSLRs and now I can get to work on this one. I wrote one for an old Kodak here: https://www.edwardnoble.com/760 if you’re curious, but the Minolta has been more of a challenge (which makes sense).

I have plenty to talk about just getting it working. Let me know if you would like me to mention you in the review :slight_smile:

Hmm probably not worth the 1MB, unless we make a tiny DCP/ICC.