Samsung Adobe DNG: An unexpected benefit

Luckypenguin

Hall of Famer
Location
Brisbane, Australia
Name
Nic
In the last two weeks I've been making the transition from the Samsung NX200 to the NX300 and have been a little surprised that it has not been entirely smooth so far. Today I found an interesting anomaly to do with processing the native SRW raw file compared to a conversion of the same file to the Adobe DNG standard. My struggle so far has been the NX300 has seemed to be particularly susceptible to red/cyan CA that isn't entirely removed by ticking the "Remove Chromatic Aberration" option in Lightroom 4.4. The odd thing was that the same problem wasn't present on the NX200 which shares a similar but not identical sensor.

In trying to eliminate any workflow differences I decided to try to convert the SRW raw files to DNG as I did with the NX200. In the case of the NX200 I did this because that camera did not apply a lot of compression which resulted in 30 or 40Mb raw files, a problem that no longer exists on the NX300. While there is no longer any real file size benefit from converting to DNG, I did get the following results which solved my CA issues.

Firstly, a comparison of the same file imported into LIghtroom 4.4 in SRW and DNG forms with the "Remove Chromatic Aberration" option unchecked; SRW on the left, DNG on the right.


Uncorrected_zps581a3e5b.jpg
Join to see EXIF info for this image (if available)



The difference in the the files is very obvious with the DNG file including automatic CA correction. If I then check the "Remove Chromatic Aberration" option for both files I get the following result below. While CA removal was unnecessary for the DNG file, the SRW file is much improved but still not perfect. This test sample reflected the real world results I was getting where in difficult situations the CA wasn't entirely going away.

Corrected_zps6eed0a1b.jpg
Join to see EXIF info for this image (if available)



While this has obviously been a big win in working the NX300, it has me curious as to whether other cameras might unexpectedly benefit in some way by converting to DNG before processing with Adobe raw conversion software (LR or ACR). The odd thing about the NX300 is that there really shouldn't be a raw file compatibility issue because the software that ships with the camera is in fact Lightroom 4.
 
I prefer Aperture for managing my photo collection, so I convert all Samsung files to DNG before importing them to Aperture and the end results are very good. At times I try the Lightroom 5.2 raw processing and the results are also very good.
I am glad that you are enjoying the NX300, personally I am having a great time with mine.
 
Interesting to know, thanks. I haven't yet decided whether to upgrade from LR 4 to 5 yet, and it might well be that the CA correction will work properly with it and the SRW files without having to convert to DNG. For the moment I'm happy to have a workaround. This CA issue aside, it's taken me a week or so to get my processing of the NX300 files right but I think I'm basically there now and very happy with what it is delivering.
 
Back
Top