Canon Powershot G10 review and Adobe Raw support

Today dpreview posted their review of the Canon Powershot G10. "At base ISO and in high contrast conditions, this is the highest resolving compact we have ever tested." But is this still enough to remain one of the best compact cameras on the market, or has the competition (read Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3) beaten Canon? Find out here.

And related to the Canon G10, and other recently released compact cameras like the Panasonic LX3 and the Leica D-Lux4, Adobe updated Camera Raw. The new Camera Raw 5.2 plug-in is available for Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop Elements 6 and later. When you still work with CS3 or before you can download the DNG Converter 5.2. The new Camera Raw supports the next compact camera models: Canon Powershot G10, Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX150, Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ28, Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 and the Leica D-LUX 4. Also the Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 is supported in Camera Raw 5.2. Camera Raw 5.2 can be downloaded here and the DNG Converter 5.2 here.

There is still a caveat with the RAW support for Panasonic cameras. From the Adobe website:

With the release of Camera Raw 5.2 (and upcoming Lightroom 2.2 release) there is an important exception in our DNG file handling for the Panasonic DMC LX3, Panasonic DMC FX150, Panasonic DMC FZ28, Panasonic DMC-G1 and Leica D-LUX 4. For those choosing to convert these native, proprietary files to the DNG file format, a linear DNG format is the only conversion option available at this time. A linear DNG file has gone through a demosaic process that converts a single mosaic layer of red, green and blue channel information into three distinct layers, one for each channel. The resulting linear DNG file is approximately three times the size of a mosaic DNG file or the original proprietary file format.

This exception is a temporary solution to ensure that Panasonic and Leica's intended image rendering from their proprietary raw file format is applied to an image when converted DNG files are viewed in third party software titles. The same image rendering process is applied automatically in Camera Raw 5.2 and in Lightroon 2.2 when viewing the original proprietary raw file format.

In a future release Adobe plans to update the DNG specification to include an option to embed metadata-based representations of the lens compensations in the DNG file, allowing a mosaic DNG conversion. In the interim Adobe recommends only converting these files to DNG to allow compatibility with third party raw converters, previous versions of the Camera Raw plug-in or previous versions of Lightroom.

Posted by Wouter Brandsma

Comments (12)

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I was a bit sad to see the high-ISO results, it would have been good to have some real competition for the LX3 - to get Panasonic and other manufacturers on improving their cameras. Though this review may not be the final word on the matter, it seems that Canon is not going to be a big game-changer in advanced compacts any time soon.
Hi Amin,

I'm waiting to hear any more review on the G10 vs LX3/Dlux4 from you! I'm more interested in which camera you like better in actual day to day use.

Great work.

Kuan
improbable's avatar

improbable · 854 weeks ago

That's a pretty cryptic comment from Adobe. I think it says that they will support lens corrections from the proprietary raw file, but can't (at present) store instructions for these in the DNG file, so will perform them at the time of creating the DNG (thus necessarily de-mosaicing it at that point.)

Do you read it the same way?
4 replies · active 854 weeks ago
improbable's avatar

improbable · 854 weeks ago

I just tried converting the raw samples you provided here:

http://www.seriouscompacts.com/2008/10/leica-d-lu...

... into DNGs, and importing them alongside the in-camera and "converted_raw" versions. And, if I'm not mistaken, the geometry matches the in-camera versions perfectly, while the other one shows obvious barrel distortion. Which means either the DNG converter or lightroom is doing the lens distortion correction, and I guess it's the converter, as nothing has changed with lightroom.

Someone please tell me I'm not imagining this.

And CS4? I don't have that.

This is great news, if you ask me. I can't imagine they'd build this step into the pipeline for the LX3 and keep it a secret non-adjustable step only for this camera.
improbable's avatar

improbable · 854 weeks ago

Answering my own question (again!) it seems like everybody has been discussing this for ages on dpreview. The DNG converter is indeed doing the distortion correction, same as the camera's. Unfortunately you can't turn it off, or adjust it.

Fingers crossed about lightroom 2.2...
Don't expect an option to turn the correction off in Lightroom 2.2 in my opinion. Because I think Panasonic doesn't want it to be turned off.

And for CS4, the same distortion correction is applied when opening the proprietary raw files in Camera Raw 5.2.
improbable's avatar

improbable · 854 weeks ago

I was thinking that if they can make the processing happen in the lightroom pipeline, then they've done all the work needed to give people the distortion slider they've been asking for since the beginning. I was encouraged by some cryptic comment from someone who works at Adobe, in reply to much the same thought. This could all be wishful thinking of course...
the distortion correction of panasonic's LX3 and G1 is not just a simple slider-thing. panasonic seems to have some real matrices for correcting the lenses at each focal length which was given to Adobe and which is then simply "applied" by the DNG converter or ACR 5.2
exactly the same matrix is used in silkypix. just convert the same raw file with silkypix and with DNG converter or ACR 5.2 and you will see that they match exactly.
when i tried to correct the distorion in raw therapee with the internal slider, it worked more or less, but the effect was different.
still i prefer a profiled distortion correction like with PTlens which does the best job of all.

btw, what happened to amin. is he already preparing the new shootout? i hope he's fine, it's been so long to read anything from him!
improbable's avatar

improbable · 854 weeks ago

Yes, sorry I said slider to mean controls. Agree it's not just one variable. One slider from fully corrected (using a database like PT lens's) to not at all would be enough, most of the time.
Hi Oluv, I'm here and doing okay. Work has been very demanding lately, but I hope to get more done here on the blog soon!
good to hear you're fine. have i already told you the latest news? i ordered a G1 some days ago. after seeing the samples from björn and having played with his raw-files i decided that the LX3 is a fine camera, but the G1 will give me more of the quality i am after ;-)
still looking forward to reading your continued shootout. after dpreview's G10 review there is lots of talk which one is "better" now. from my experience i would say at raw-level there is hardly any difference between both, with a slight resolution advantage for the G10.

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