Thanks a lot again inded for your suggestions!
I do appreciate your work on RawTherapee.
The only commercial software I am still using is Affinity photo for focus stacking tasks (tried Hugin and Enfuse but the duo is a bit too “cumbersome” for me…)
Being also a D700 shooter, some hints…
Yep. I took thousands of macro shoots with this reflex.
Never had any problem so far in 10 years of everyday very intense use.
At work we are saving money for purchasing a Nikon D850 in the near future. Luckilly, its price has dropped a bit lately. Later on, we hope to buy a new macro lens: so far I have been using a macro lens Nikkor 60 mm - f 2.8, which has served me extremely well too.
I am a bit worried about the size of the Raw files produced by the Nikon D850 and I do hope RawTherapee is going to handle them gracefully (together with a beefy computer of course…).
Luckilly, I alwasy shoot my plants diseases subjects with a tripod otherwise I would be also in trouble with such a big sensor as regards the sharpness side:-)
Thanks. Never used the AF so far with my macro plants subjects
As a plant pathologist, I mostly take pictures of fungi and bacteria samples.
When are savings are enough, I suppose I am going to opt for a macro lens in the 50-60 mm range. It is not necessary to have it internally stabilized because I always shoot with a tripod in our laboratory.
I’m also a plant pathologist, so if you can share photos of diseased leaves, maybe as a Play Raw, I’ll be on it!
It would be fun indeed but I do fear we are going to “scare” the photographers of this forum with our pictures of very diseased leaves
Joking aside, here is a picture of a bacterium, on Pepper leaves, quite common in Northern Italy, that is Xanthomonas vesicatoria (leaves + gyca and csga petri dishes with the bacterium at 2 days of growth) :
I am a scientist myself and work with images mainly in high-resolution microscopy.
If I don’t photograph professionally, I do so only from the “artistic” aspect, the accuracy of the reproduction plays hardly any role for me.
The possibilities of post-processing in digital photography make it very difficult for me to find the boundary between necessary improvement and unwanted change of “reality”.
Nevertheless, I would like to show a technique that I sometimes use to “sharpen” and make fine details more visible.
However, this use of tone mapping is not really suitable for scientific photography.
Only one color cuvre in darktable plus (right) and minus (left) tone mapping.
Are you intending to sharpen the unfocused areas so that they are more alike the more focused ones?
Nope, my note about the tail not being completely in focus was just a casual remark.
Actually, I took many pictures of this lizard and one of them it appears most suited to make some experiment about sharpening.
Here is the NEF file (Nikon D700) in case you are interested:
BTW, let me ask you a question since you are extremely knowledgeable about G’MIC
Can you suggest some unusual G’MIC filter in this domain to try in order to sharpen these pictures of mine?
At present, there are tons of them for this particular purpose, with little documentation, shipped with G’MIC and I am a bit lost…
@Silvio_Grosso, Here is a bright version. Tried to make the paper white and the lizard less dark. Are the colours right? Cropped to make it photographically interesting (for me, of course). LIZARD_SHARPENING-TEST.jpg.out.pp3 (11.9 KB)
If I don’t photograph professionally, I do so only from the “artistic” aspect, the accuracy of the reproduction plays hardly any role for me.
As for myself, I take pictures mostly for work, as a plant pathologist.
I consider this both a bliss and a curse.
A bliss because I always strive to take the most accurate picture out of my samples (low ISO, no strong shadows, no diffraction etc). By doing so, in post production I limit myself to some little cropping and a bit of sharpening. Most of all, I never change the colours of my samples in the pictures (they must be accurate as regards the subject displayed).
A curse because I have never learned properly how to work with RawTherapee since my pictures have usually little noise to correct, no strong shadows to decrease and so on. As a consequence, I am not forced to learn this software and I am still a beginner as regards its tools…
For your use-case I would also consider a Pentax-K1. You are working under well controlled conditions where you really can get an advantage by using pixelshift.
Maybe you should then use a color target for your images for obtaining more correct colors. A raw file or a camera jpeg are not reliable in this respect.
For your use-case I would also consider a Pentax-K1. You are working under well controlled conditions where you really can get an advantage by using pixelshift.
SURE!
I have pondered about this choice quite a lot indeed since this Pentax reflex is cheaper than the D850 and I have read really good reviews.
In the end I have opted for the Nikon D850 for these “questionable” personal reasons:
I am a Nikon guy (just joking of course…);
We have got plenty of old Nikon lenses in our laboratory;
Nikon D850 Raw files and features are usually better handled with commercial softwares (e.g. Capture one as regards the tethering implementation). With RawTherapee, I hope it will play along fine (as the Nikon D700 did superbly).
there are tons of tutorials on YouTube for the Nikon D850;
I am going to use the Nikon D850 always on a tripod in our laboratory and I don’t mind it is not internally stabilized as regards its sensor (the Pentax has this nice feature instead).
But again, it is a very tough decision since they are both incredible and amazing reflex!
I’m a Nikon guy myself, though I would still prefer a pixelshift-capable cam for your usecase.
One downside of this choice is the biggest size of the Raw files (judging only from what I have read of course and I may be completely wrong here…). Therefore, much time to process them in the camere itself; much time to download them; much time to edit them etc.
In truth, I am sure I am going to miss my Nikon D700 a lot
When I take my macro pictures of plant diseases, very close to the subject, I am always forced to focus stacking them (in short take many pictures) in order to assemble them later on with another software (now my workhorse is Affinity photo but I have tried also Zerene which was a magnificent software at this task). As a consequence, I suspect the pixel shifting feature is not good enough for this task (but again, I may be 100% wrong…)
But indeed, I am persuaded the Pentax choice is a very good option as well
No need (and no advantage) to process them in the camera!
Of course pixelshift quadruples the amont of input data for RT. The amount of output data is the same as for non pixelshift, but better in terms of colors, noise, and details.
As my father is still in the ICU, I won’t be giving too much input.
The reason that I ask is because there are many approaches to sharpening, de-blurring, and contrast or edge enhancement. I would say that the ones used or suggested so far are good enough for general purpose sharpening. If they work for you, then great. However, if you have a specific set of criteria as to what constitutes good sharpening, do share.
It might help to provide examples of sharp frames taken by yourself or someone else, and annotated examples of where post-processing sharpening is ineffective.
You flatter me. I tend to make my own newbie filters for personal use. They aren’t ready for release. Ask folks such as @garagecoder@iarga@Iain for direction.
In general, I find myself using these two the most often (the type, not actual filters). a Similar to ImageMagick’s Laplacian Of Gaussians (LoG, Convolution of Images -- ImageMagick Examples). I don’t know how it compares to RT’s edge and micro-contrast methods. b Detail layer obtained by the guided filter (or any other robust edge-aware smoothing filter).
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I tend to make my own newbie filters for personal use. They aren’t ready for release. 
Ask folks such as