I’ve had problems with processing .RW2 files taken with the Panasonic S1, S1H and S5 in RawTherapee (5.8) since there occurred a lot of clipping in the images. I first thought that this had been a problem of the cameras tending to overexpose in automatic metering. But it turns out that this is due to RT clipping values of the raw camera files.
When I use Adobe DNG Converter to turn the .RW2 files into DNGs, (significantly) less clipping occurs. On top of that, the raw histogram of the images differs:
I opened both files, and both definitely have clipping from the camera. Here’s a screenshot of 6319; hope it’s see-able, consider the histogram to the left to be the 14-bit data binned in the 16-bit container. Note the spike on the right side, that’s sensor saturation at 16383, all three channels.
Now, the histograms you posted definitely include some processing; if you want to see the linear data, I think you need to select the RT neutral processing profile.
Thank you so much for looking into this! - But even if I apply the RT neutral profile, I get vastly different exposures and clipping, as well as different raw histograms for .RW2 and .dng respectively:
