Sony "Dark" RAW Conversion in LR4

Baci

New Member
Thanks to all who responded to my last question. Now another that's been eating away at me!

I shoot RAW + JPEG with the JPEG set to black and white. The family and I went to Yum Cha this morning and I fired off a few frames of the kids. Got home and loaded the card into LR. When the image files import they come across initially as JPEGs (ie B&W). When I see one I like I click on it to check focus and the frame zooms in and I get the "Loading..." message. The file then displays as a nicely balanced color image for a second or two, then often (not always, but often) goes a few stops darker. I have attached a screen shot of the grid view of some of today's shots.

Screen Shot 2012-09-30 at 2.06.10 PM copy.jpg


In the camera they all look light and well balanced. Color space in the camera is set to sRGB. Anyone else have this problem? Is it the camera or have I something set wrong in LR?

Thanks!
 
I've seen that phenomenon, although not quite as strong as what you're showing. Seems like LR may be applying a camera profile to the image that's not quite right.

Have you tried importing both the RAW and the companion JPEG into LR4 simultaneously? There's a setting for that. It will give you side-by-side images to play with, allowing you to adjust the RAW to better match the OOC JPEG if that's what you'd like. Worth trying just to see what LR is doing...
 
Lightroom defaults tend to preserve as much dynamic range as possible. Since LR has no access to the in camera jpeg profiles it relies on it's own set of defaults. LR also ignores any ISO boosting and white/black point modification that is reasonably common in modern cameras. This may/may not be the cause of the change in apparent exposure.

You'll need to create a preset that reflects your preferred starting point and then apply that on import.

Gordon
 
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