Z8 HLG / SDR Tone Mode RAW File comparison

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John Navitsky said:
@Andy Miller Photo UK

if you look at the video Steve posted you'll see the shadow areas were significantly impacted in an adverse way.
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I obviously watched Steve vid too quickly -- I thought it was a comparison of the HEIF and JPG -- but NO it was of RAW files and based on my test and Steves analysis I am reminded Nothing is For Free -- YES stick with SDR

I simply do not understand why the RAW data is impacted by this choice.

I do not use NX Studio - but I do use Capture One and LRC -- Thom Hogan's initial thoughts are C1 does not yet know what to do with HLG. I wonder if LRC/ACR does either.

More testing is needed - but for now I will follow Steves advice -- keep it in SDR which gives great predictable results.
 
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Andy Miller Photo UK said:
I simply do not understand why the RAW data is impacted

More testing is needed
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i don't think any of us do. the one thing i'm clinging on is that one thing i read is that they use the curves to control the allocation of data in the raw file, then they use the inverse of that curve when showing the data. if i'm following that correctly it could suggest you could end up with different raw file sizes for essentially the same visible result because it's allocating more data space to certain parts of the curves (or something like that).
 
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Andy Miller Photo UK said:
Why when shooting Lossless RAW would one not always use HLG?
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I tend to think along the same lines as John - they may be actually be distributing the RAW data differently (more efficiently) in the HLG version. We might not see it yet simply because there's not a lot of software fully supporting it. (although, just guessing).

Also, aside from the noise issue I spotted, you're also stuck at ISO 400 for your minimum. Not always an issue, especially for wildlife shooters, but I still sometimes shoot lower ISOs and would like access to them :)
 
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I seem to the only one being able to photograph only in NEF with TONE MODE set to HST and not in STD. It shouldn't be as Steve recommends in his book to use STD, but if I do this, my camera starts shooting in jpeg. (see p.96-99). I presume I must have another setting wrong, though I followed Steve's settings almost entirely.
Does anyone have a reply to this for me?
 
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Ingrid Vekemans Photography said:
I seem to the only one being able to photograph only in NEF with TONE MODE set to HST and not in STD. It shouldn't be as Steve recommends in his book to use STD, but if I do this, my camera starts shooting in jpeg. (see p.96-99). I presume I must have another setting wrong, though I followed Steve's settings almost entirely.
Does anyone have a reply to this for me?
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Simple go to shooting settings - select RAW (lossless) and then go down to Tone Mode to see what options you can select.
 
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Good to hear -- Many folk seem to move out of S, L and H to the higher framerate options forgetting these are JPG/HEIF only. That is my way of saying NO Worries.
Always head back to SINGLE SHOT and see what works or does not. Then ramp it up.
 
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Hi Steve,
I think your HLG shot was off to the shadows, hence the noise in shadows - it seems a compensation of +2 sets the tone more in the middle.
My concern with HLG is that, maybe, in an attempt to expand the dynamic range, such that one does not need to take multiple shots at different exposures and blend them to create an HDR image, the format “compresses” the image lighting such that there will be less information in scenes that have less dynamic range to begin with.
Yair
 
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I posted a deep-dive into the Z8's HLG implementation here:

Deep dive into Z8's HLG: Nikon Z Mirrorless Talk Forum: Digital Photography Review

Expert news, reviews and videos of the latest digital cameras, lenses, accessories, and phones. Get answers to your questions in our photography forums.
www.dpreview.com www.dpreview.com

Quick summary:

HLG ISO 400 is really sensor ISO 100 that's exposed at -2EV and then digitally pushed post-capture.
 
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Just got my Z8 and I too get significantly better memory card performance (20fps, HE*) with HLG mode seleted. Have any of you here found a workaround for the issues that Steve have shown in his original post?
 
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agrumpyoldsod said:
You are correct - I took two identical shots for comparison both in Lossless RAW and the only difference was the Tone Control selection :
-- the RAW file I shot with Tone Control set to SDR is 48.62 MB
-- the RAW file I shot with Tone Control set to HLG is 43.78 MB
This is crazy -- so I repeated the test in different lighting SDR 52.46MB vs HLG 45.05MB

The RAW file shot with HLG is always smaller and some times much smaller.

As a test I went on to take 60 identical shots in SDR (total file size 3.929GB) and then 60 identical shot of the same target in HLG all Lossless RAW (total file size 3.022GB) = in this test the average size of HLG files is 77% of the average size of size of SDR files same format and file type of the same scene nothing else changed !!!

Why when shooting Lossless RAW would one not always use HLG?

Faster more shots in the buffer and no change to the RAW data in the file. As a Mac user I simply have no idea why not to use HLG.

I am with others come on Nikon give us the firmware update for the Z9 that levels it up with these new options.
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The reason HLG raws are smaller than SDR raws is because an HLG ISO 400 raw is really ISO 100, whereas an SDR ISO 400 raw is really ISO 400; the image compression used for lossless has more heterogeneous data to process at the higher tones/ADU values of ISO 400 (from the analog gain/scaling) vs ISO 100, as a function of being higher up the bit depth in the linear raw data. In other words, an HLG ISO 400 should yield near identical raw sizes to SDR ISO 100.
 
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