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I'm using Mavericks and I'm not too sure what you mean... as I can preview DNGs from within Finder...

RAWTherappe is even slower. You can make batch: modify one DNG, click with right button on icon, copy settings, place on others, and put it on qeue... but the AMaZE is very slow too, and using the highlight recover is impossible in my opinion.

RAWTherapee is not too bad - using the command line to 'batch' process an entire directory full of DNGs doesn't take so long, although it does mean that you no longer have raw files to deal with, but 16-bit TIFF instead (and they take up more space!).

But I think RAWTherapee is do-able as part of the workflow... just.

Any developer can explain how these artifacts occur in the image? It is the line skipping? On 3x crop this occur too, so... I really don't understand it.

I agree... it's odd that the 'prehistoric' TL [New System] didn't suffer from this, but anything subsequent does seem to...

Lost of information here: http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=6658.0

Also Adobe Camera RAW will fix most of these problems.

Thank you!!!

I've actually had RAWTherapee on my Mac for ages and never used it! It took me a while to find the relevant 'Hot/Dead Pixel' tickbox, but when I did...  Dots gone! Brilliant!

Now I need to work out how to batch process and save them - ideally back into DNG, but I think the only options are JPEG, TIFF or PNG. Anyway, I need to do some searching about using RAWTherapee, but I feel I'm a step closer to getting rids of those dots.

Many thanks for that link.
DV.

I tried the MLV video recording module and used mlv_dump with the no-cs, cs2x2, cs3x3 and cs5x5 chroma smoothing options and none of those worked.

Interesting results with Lightroom 5.3 - I don't have LR on my iMac (just RAWMagic -> Resolve 10 -> FCP X)... if it does a good job of removing the dots across the entire frame I may well pay the £70 / $100 for it as it would be worth it; but is the workflow with it?

Do you have to batch process the DNG's after raw2dng, deal with them one by one, or...?

DV.

I'm really curious to know the real reason you do not use TL and not ML NB ... @a1ex has said several times that packets of TL 2.0 for 600D are outdated (since June) and that the version is unstable (overheating, and memory blocks are not as vast as the current ML NB). Why use? Even in H.264, bitrate is the same.

I believe that only software we will be able to remove the dead pixels. Unfortunately I have no programming skills, but I'm studying to do so, since the matter related to the topic seems to be dead. No one is posting anything, not even discussing ... well, this is not the correct way to resolve things in an open source project.

I use both TL and the nightly builds... both give me the dots, which I do not believe are dead pixels at all. If I fire up TL [New System] from back in June, I can shoot raw with none of these pixels occurring. I've now stopped using raw, as much as I love the quality, having so many of these dots all over the image is no good 

I'm currently back to using nightly builds and H.264.

This was something of a last ditch attempt to find a quick way of getting rid of / reducing the dots in raw recording. I decided to shoot a few seconds of my wife knitting - lit by a compact fluorescent light (camera right), a halogen light (above camera right) and tungsten light (directly above camera)... so a total mish-mash of lights!

Anyway, the clips were shot at 1152x432 (2.66:1) which gets automatically upres'ed to 1280x720 in Davinci Resolve; I wondered if scaling it down to 1024x383 to retain the 2.66:1 aspect ratio would get rid of the dots.

It didn't

But the raw handled different light sources really well

Unfortunately, it's quite difficult to see the detail that is still in the MP4 file that I uploaded - the Vimeo compression seems to have made it rather darker than it really is (Oh well, not to self - must take that into account next time).

I've been plagued by dots on raw recording since moving away from Tragic Lantern [New System]... I'm now using NewMem as the base, and updated with the nightly build from Dec 22nd. Whether I just use NewMem, or the nightly build, I get dots; for a long while I thought they were black dots which you can clearly see in this video, especially where there is a very light background.

And then I took a much closer look at them, and there is a sort of pattern to these invaders, as the image below shows:



You can see that the dots are not black at all, but take on the surrounding hue; there's always a central 2x2 pixel formation which is surrounded by a sort of brighter halo.

I've seen and read loads of posts about pink dots, green dots and all sorts of dots, but haven't seen anything about this particular pattern... anyone know why it occurs, and how to get rid of it? It's the only blot on the otherwise excellent raw recording. Unfortunately it's a bit of a showstopper for me - I love using the raw workflow and the capabilities it brings, but an image full of clearly visible dots is of no use (to me).

I've tried the MLV recording too, using chroma smoothing options, but that made it worse 

I took a closer look at these 'black' dots, and they're not black at all.

I swapped over to MLV recording and then used mlv_dump in various ways to see what happened with converting to .raw, converting directly to .dng (using each option for chroma smoothing) and found that the best results were with direct to .raw, or .dng (no chroma smoothing).

Anyway, when I looked at the dots this is what I saw...



There are many, well over 20, of these spread throughout the image, and whilst the central cluster of four pixels can be in any arrangement (i.e. the darkest one isn't always bottom right), that cluster is always surrounded by brighter looking pixels.

So, just looking for a black pixel isn't going to cut it... any ideas?

I've searched for marekk's profile and found his 8 pages of posts - to be honest I'm thinking dealing with the black dots issues is way beyond my skillset! The bottom line is that I really don't know / understand what to do.

a1ex: I'm very grateful for your hints, but I'm stuck. I'm also really aware that asking for assistance when the answer has already been given on the forum is not a way to endear yourself to the developers / helpers... but I've searched and searched! It seems that others who are also running Resove are having the same issues. I've tried different versions of raw2dng, and RAWMagic, and on Windows and Mac systems... the same output on all of them.

Raw recording is just so good, but with the black dot issue, it means that I can't really use it - and that's such a hard decision as the workflow is good, the grading is great, it's sharp and I enjoy working with it. But if I can't get a solution (and I have spent hours looking) then I'll have to either go back to the [New System] build or revisit raw in the future.

Can anyone help? I'm using Mac OS X 10.9 (Maverick), Davinci Resolve 10 Lite and FCP X 10.1 (if that's any use).

Thanks,
David.

I'd always been really put off shooting the 600D at anything over about ISO400. But I think I was wrong - wrong to judge it so quickly, especially as it seems the mistake I made was to underexpose the footage too much, resulting in lots of noise. Having recently tried a test using raw recording and an ISO1600 setting - video above - I thought I should see just how noisy ISO3200 was.

I popped down to the town (Farnham, Surrey (UK)), and took a few handheld shots of the christmas lights, using just ISO3200 and the standard kit lens set at 18mm (between f5.6 and f8).

Converted in RAWMagic, edited and graded in Davinci Resolve 10 Lite, music / titles added in FCP X.

Am I on the right lines... do I need to create a .badpixel file listing the x,y co-ordinates of the black pixels? Then use RawTherapee, or whatever, to overwrite those pixels based on the values of the pixels around it?

That's as far as I've got so far 

Hi a1ex,

I know ML / TL moves fast, but is June prehistoric? On second thoughts, it probably is 

I don't have ACR, only FCP X and Davinci Resolve 10 Lite. I did do some searching of other posts about black dots, and  came across a pretty recent one that said this hadn't been fixed. I'm now wondering if they meant that it hadn't been sorted within the raw module.

5-10 lines of codes, eh? It's been a long, long while since I did any coding (20 years ago)! I've found plenty of posts of green dots, purple dots, etc. but they all seem to require Adobe-something. I'll search again for dots and raw2dng and see what I can find... any hints on the coding required?

DV.

Really quick comparison test of different versions of raw recording on the 600D.

I started using the Tragic Lantern [New System] back in June, and then updated to [NewMem] late November (2013). I've been plagued by multiple dots in the image when using [NewMem], that I didn't recall seeing in the older [New System].

So I ran a quick check... there aren't any dots in [New System] as you can see in this video. Take a look at the upper centre of the first clip, in the sky area, to see the dots. Same camera, same lens, same workflow (RAWMagic -> Davinci Resolve) for both raw recordings... interestingly applying the exact same 'look' to both recordings resulted in a different response by the clip.

To be fair, on another check I did, [New System] did suffer from some banding in the image, but I need to do further checks on that.

I'm about to go and do some lowlight checks with [New System] and see how that looks - if it's OK, I may just go back to that raw recording.

@MichaelxBarakat:

The sensor does not need cleaning - as you'll have seen in my text, I said I hadn't removed the dreaded dots from the video. Check out this forum - it's a known issue with raw recording and the 600D, particularly noticeable in the highlight areas.

Having tried some tests with raw recording at high iso, and having amended how I approach it, I had the opportunity to pop down with the camera gear to shoot a quick video.

The Farnham Art Society had opened a 'pop-up' gallery for the second year in a row, and on the day it was closing, I got in to shoot some footage and interview one of the committee members. This gave me a chance to try out the higher ISO settings (800-1600) as well as the Tascam DR-60D audio recorder.

There has been no noise reduction applied to the footage, and you'll also see that I haven't removed the dreaded dots that appear with raw recording.

This was shot using just the Canon 600D, with the 18-55mm kit lens, audio recorded with a phantom-powered RODE lavalier mic, fed into the Tascam DR-60D.
Edited and graded in FCP X and Davinci Resolve 10 Lite.

Beautifully shot and edited; thank you for sharing this.

David.

Looks nice

I've just upgraded to OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) which meant that I can now run Davinci Resolve - what a difference that makes! I can now do the whole conversion on the iMac, whereas before I had to load the .RAW files on to an old laptop, run BATCHelor, import teh DNGs as a sequence into Adobe Premiere Elements to convert them to a YUV4:2:2 file, which I could then transport across to the iMac and into FCP X. So, I feel your pain

DV.

Thanks armir,

I don't have a steadycam (or similar - although I have been known to use my tripod as a sort of counterweight). I see that you have a DIY glidecam... any pictures of that?

Thank you for the information A1ex.

All the best,
David.

Hi A1ex: I think you maybe right... I've noticed that I have a tendency to underexpose shots, and started using the waveform display. But that got me into the habit of ensuring the majority of the exposure was around the mid-level. I've now gone over to zebras instead and I'm finding that much easier and quicker, not least because I can see very quickly if it's just a specular highlight that is blowing out, or something that I really do want to retain.

Either way, I'm so glad I came back to raw recording with ML/TL and did these quick tests. I'm spending quite a bit of time just running various real-world tests with the camera and different lenses, then running the results through Resolve. I'm liking what I'm finding - ML/TL is just awesome and I'm looking forward to using it for my Farnham360 project where I'm likely to be interviewing and shooting people and places in relatively dimly lit conditions.

Just need to get rid of the green dots now, so that's my next search on the forum...

A while ago I ran some tests comparing raw recording against the standard H.264 recording in the Canon 600D. I rather liked the ability to use raw, even with the additional work that's required, but I completely changed my view when I saw how it reacted to lowlight situations, as even the slightest grade seemed to make it fall apart completely.

Coming back to it 6 months later, and with a new build of Tragic Lantern, and now using Davinci Resolve 10 Lite for grading, I decided to try lowlight  (ISO 1600) again. The results couldn't be more different, and I now wouldn't hesitate to use raw for lowlight recording.

How have others found raw lowlight capabilities with the 600D?

(None of the footage in this short sequence has had any noise reduction applied).

Canon 600D, Tragic Lantern [NewMem], ISO1600.
Lens was an old M42 mount Prinzflex 70-162mm f3.5-f22 macro (set at f5.6 or f8) for this test.
Graded in Resolve 10 Lite.

Good to see everyone out running! Tough work for you too - running along, looked a bit slippery, spectators and trying to handle the camera too. Well done!

My wife just recently ran something called the "Grim Challenge" - here's my short video for that (also shot with the 600D running ML2.3, but no raw recording this time).

All the best,
David.

@aaphotog (and anyone else really): you can download a clip of a shot down Castle Street at http://www.dropbox.com/s/6o1ktjrng22en06/01-F360_022.RAW - hope we get to see what you do to it, as that's the great thing about grading: there's no right answer and I love seeing how others grade their footage. The file is 289MB or so.

All the best,
David.

aaphotog: it won't be today.. sorry - but I will try tomorrow. Will a 300MB .RAW file be OK? I'll load it up to Dropbox and put the link on here for you if that's alright. The clip is likely to be one of the ones looking down Castle Street (that is in my video).
---

Today, I popped down the town again to visit the Town Council and start arranging interviews, but whilst down there I popped into the Victoria Garden as it's so close to the Town Council offices to get some shots as a sort of visual notebook for a later video. Here's what I shot (all handheld).

This time shot at 1152x464 (RAW) and upres'ed to 1280x500 in the final using QuickTime 7 Pro.

Cheers,
David.