At the end of the year we headed out to try the new tram model that’s being introduced in Zürich. I took my small LX7, and put it in black-and-white mode, shooting raw.
I know that getting the ‘in-camera look’ is not the purpose of shooting raw; however, I cannot replicate the the amount of details (or, at least, perceived sharpness) the JPG preview in the raw file (despite being only 1920x1080) displays (check out the ‘Auzelg’ destination indication on the tram, the Yamaha sign on the right, or the shop displays and signs on the left). Any help would be much appreciated. I use darktable, but you’re welcome to post versions processed using any of our tools and toys.
Thanks, everyone! You’ve all done way better than I have, despite having spent quite a bit of time on this image. I look forward to checking out all the sidecars and learn from you.
@kofa I own a very old predecessor to your LX7: the LX3.
Its noise levels are horrible! But darktable’s denoise (profiled) seems very good at handling that amount of noise.
I cheated a bit: The Yamaha sign is blurry on the red channel, so if you use mostly the green for the BW conversion, you get a nice clear sign. Unfortunately, the number 11 on the tram is white on a green background so it disappears. I masked the tram out and used the red channel for the tram and the green channel everywhere else.
I downloaded your jpg, loaded it as a sidecar file, and discovered I need a cube file. The message that appears saying that when you open the file doesn’t stay open long enough for me to get the name of the cube file. I have a lot of them from recommended sites and may have the file needed, but since I don’t know exactly which one it is, would you mind posting that?
One thing I have determined is filmic turns the number sign, top, front of bus, to all white. Yet, playing around with all the settings brought no improvement. @anon41087856 What could explain that?
Thanks – but you did blow out much of the highlights (not that they are important), and lost the number 11 on the tram, too (and the tram is the subject). The colour version by @age is very close to the original scene.
