{"id":792,"date":"2022-05-03T03:38:51","date_gmt":"2022-05-03T01:38:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stuff.tamius.net\/sacred-texts\/?p=792"},"modified":"2022-05-04T22:52:37","modified_gmt":"2022-05-04T20:52:37","slug":"of-rawtherapee-and-darktable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stuff.tamius.net\/sacred-texts\/2022\/05\/03\/of-rawtherapee-and-darktable\/","title":{"rendered":"Of RawTherapee and Darktable"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

About two or three times a year, there will be an opportunity for me to take out my camera and take some pictures. My camera of choice used to be Nikon D3100 (with stock lenses, too), which is a nice and decent camera for cosplaying as a pro photographer1<\/a><\/sup>Key phrase: cosplaying as. <\/span>… as long as you’re outside, and the sun is shining, and there’s not a single cloud in sight. The results can be rather nice:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Okay, I know I said “not a single cloud in sight” but this was still bright enough for me to avoid high ISOs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

On D3100, I typically shot at ISO400 and with a f-stop that goes as low as I can go \u2014 normally around 5.6, because I’m a sucker for low FoV, and you can’t open your aperture wider than that. With sunlight, ISO400 and f\/5.6 usually left me with “I don’t need a tripod, yay” one over triple digit shutter speeds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I consider this reasonably good photo in terms of image quality … but let’s skip discussions about artistic qualities.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

ISO800 is where things get noticeably worse, but not disastrously bad. Noise can be noticed from afar, but with enough noise reduction you might be still able to pass it off as an artistic choice or something:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Not an excess of artism \u2014 after all, I was merely getting some test pics with my macro rings. Yes, there’s noise, but the focused part looks reasonably fine.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But ISO1600 is … well. Let’s just say that ISO1600 is that shadowy place over there you aren’t supposed to ever visit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On this picture, there’s me, my friend Kris, and an insane amount of noise reduction working overtime. You could say a lot about exposure, too. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So, in conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

while D3100 has served me well, but it’s really not great in low-light conditions. In addition to that, I was also getting a little bit salty about the lack of certain features \u2014 most notably, video recording on D3100 is kinda trash and you can’t use it as a webcam, either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s time for a new camera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My requirements: must be mirrorless, because it’s 2022. And it must be Nikon, because I have recently spent \u20ac300 on a 70-300mm lens, and I don’t want to spend that kind of money if I don’t have to. Which means that Z50 it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then instead of spending \u20ac300 on a new lens, Tamius spent \u20ac3002<\/a><\/sup>Okay, FTZ is \u20ac260 and the 50-250mm Z-mount lens is \u20ac360 … so things aren’t quite as bad … Except that Z50 + 16-50mm + 50-250mm kit was about \u20ac500 over Z50 body. <\/span> on the FTZ adapter instead. Yay for sunk costs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Z50 seems to get a lot of shit on the internet, mostly because it’s ASP-C instead of full frame. But it’s also half the price of its full-frame equivalent Z6 that outperforms Z50 by one ISO step, so I don’t really care. I know that pro photographers will get triggered3<\/a><\/sup>Assuming they’d stumble over this blog, but it’s not like anyone is reading this.<\/span>, but I’m not a pro photographer. I only cosplay as one. Sometimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Software Stack<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If you’re dropping big moneys on a proper camera, you’re probably doing so because you want to have the ability to edit your photos after you’ve taken them. To my knowledge, there’s about three serious programs for photo editing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n