Trying to save RAW colour and mono jpg

[Stuart444]

I love my OM1ii, but at times I feel it's trying to frustrate me! Any help on the following would be much appreciated.


I'd like to set it to take mono jpgs and colour raw, and to store one on card 1 and the other on card 2. Two separate problems have emerged.



1a. The instruction manuals say I should set the camera to take jpg + RAW, then set picture mode (shooting menu 1) to monochrome. However if I do this, after downloading to my computer, I find that both the jpg and RAW files are in mono.

That seems odd - I thought RAW files were completely unedited data from the sensor?


1b. Alternatively I can set jpg + RAW again, then use Art mode. I can use Grainy film 1 and 2, which is not what I want usually, or I can use Dramatic Tone 2 which gives more control just as when shooting mono with a film camera and colour filters, which is what I want. This does give a mono jpg and colour RAW file. However when in art mode I cannot use exposure modes like shutter priority, I'm stuck with program exposure mode. Other settings are inhibited, SCP and LCP won't work for example. Plus when I switch on, I have to press "OK" to confirm I want Dramatic tone II before the camera will work. So I feel uncomfortable about using this by default, but it seems like the only answer.



2. Progressing with 1b, now trying to separate the jpg and RAW results to separate cards, I read that to do this I set Card slot save settings to Dual independent (with an up or down arrow), then I set slot 1 to (say) RAW and slot 2 to (say) LSF. What I'd hoped to be able to do in the camera was to look at card 1 and see the (colour) RAW, and look in card 2 to see the (mono) jpg. However when I do this I see a mono whichever slot I select for playback.


When I examine the cards, I find that I've got -

in slot 1:an 18.9MB raw file and a 4.25MG jpg
in slot 2: a 7.82MB jpg
All with the same file name (apart from the extension).
What's going on here? I suppose it is displaying the jpg by default when examining slot 1. But why is that jpg there in the first place, and why a different file size to the one in slot 2? (Looking at the info in playback, I see it is LN, whereas the slot 2 jpg is LSF). Can I make the camera show me the RAW file not the jpg by default when examining card 1?


Actually this double jpg creation seems to be limited to Art mode. Using the same settings if I swap to (say) S mode and take a new shot, then I find I've got the RAW in slot 1 (only) and the jpg in slot 2 (only).



Thanks


Stuart

[Internaut]

The raw will be colour.... Of that I’m sure. If you are looking at the file in Olympus Viewer 3, then it will appear Mono, per the camera settings. Simply change the colour mode to something like Natural.

[pdk42]

Raw is raw is raw. It's neither colour or mono per se. What's happening is that there is a marker in the raw file with the shooting parameters used. The marker will say mono, but the raw data is still the raw data - which will include all the channels. You simply need to tell your raw processor to ignore the shooting params. If you use Lightroom it does this by default. I'm not sure what OV3 does.

[Stuart444]

Oh good, thanks for your help. Yes I see now that whilst it appears in mono on OV3 and XnViewMP (which is my usual viewer program), when I open it in Affinity Photo then it's loaded as a normal, colour RAW file. Good, at least I know now that the RAW file is unadulterated. Sounds like the shooting parameters in Art mode are not saved or used in the same way. I can't find any way to get OV3 to show it in colour though, nor XnViewMP.


As far as my original objective was concerned, can I get the camera to show me the RAW file in colour after taking using shooting menu = monochrome? That would obviate the need to use the art mode.

[OM USer]

Originally Posted by Stuart444

I can't find any way to get OV3 to show it in colour though...

Open up the .ORF (RAW) file, click on the edit "Pencil" (top right on the icon bar next to properties) to show the edit pane, click on the RAW tab (to the right of the EDIT tab), go down to "Picture Mode", and use the drop down to chnage from "as shot" to "natural" or "vivid".

Originally Posted by Stuart444

...can I get the camera to show me the RAW file in colour after taking using shooting menu = monochrome? ...

Go into playback, display the image, press "OK", highlight raw data edit, press "OK", highlight "yes", press "OK". It will re-render the RAW into a new jpeg with the colour intact.

[DerekW]

Thank you - you have caused me to look at OV - I have very rarely used the program apart from applying firmware updates.

[OM USer]

For the in-camera option you may have to change the camera settings away from monotone to to natural/vivid via the SCP/LiveView/CustomSetting before you re-render the RAW to jpeg as it may just pick up the current camera settings (i.e. the ones that created the monochrome jpeg when you first took the picture) when creating the new jpeg..

[pdk42]

Originally Posted by DerekW

Thank you - you have caused me to look at OV - I have very rarely used the program apart from applying firmware updates.

I wouldn't bother - it's as slow as molasses!

[Stuart444]

Hi,

These work-arounds are interesting, thanks.

For the in-camera procedure, I've found that if I follow you but deviate a little -
Playback, display the RAW file;
Press OK;
Press OK when on "RAW data edit", this reveals a list "Current, Custom 1, Custom 2, ART BKT, No". If I hightlight say Custom 1 (right arrow to edit what Custom 1 does, eg the picture size, natural/vivid etc), then OK;
I then get a colour version;
Yes if it's OK;
No to avoid letting it reset what you've done.
Then I have a new jpg in card 1 as set above, which playback shows in colour.....but the RAW still appears in mono.

However alas it's not what I want - sorry I wasn't clearer previously. What I'd hoped was that some setting would make all the RAWs taken with monochrome set for the jpg version appear in colour without attending to each one individually and without creating a new jpg file for each one. It's a similar story with OV3, clicking Edit and changing Picture Mode to vivid does make it be shown in colour. Then going Back, the browsing view does show the RAW in colour now, but all other RAWs taken are still in mono, so it seems I have to attend to each and every one, which is time consuming. So I have learned something about both the camera and about OV3, which is great, but alas it's not what I was seeking. It seems to me that there is no way to set it up so that it stores the jpg in mono but displays the RAW in another setting every time a new picture is taken, and a similar story for OV3.

Dear Olympus, I'm sure a firmware update to do this would be appreciated by mono photographers!

[pdk42]

I'm not at all surprised that the camera is doing what it's doing.

You have set the camera to mono picture mode and asked it to save the files as raw + jpg - and that's exactly what it's doing. The jpg really is mono (colour info lost) and the raw is raw (all channels) but since you asked for mono then it will be displayed as mono. By doing a raw data edit, you are selecting a new picture mode and creating a new jpg. That's how it works. I think what you're trying to do is overly complicated and I'm not surprised that the firmware doesn't do it.

Personally I never do anything fancy in camera. I do the minimum at capture time and then sort out the final output later on the PC from the raw file.

[Stuart444]

I agree in the light of this thread, post processing in the camera is much too time consuming and not practical for me.



Please let me explain my reason for trying to do this. I plan to concentrate more on mono this coming year, and I got interested in the idea of making the jpg mono in one Custom mode. However I still expect to work from the RAW for the final photo by editing and converting in Affinity, NIK, Silver Projects etc. So I'd hoped to see the RAW files in the camera in colour, as if the jpg looked poor then inspecting the RAW in colour would give an insight into what might be possible working from the RAW when the contribution of the colour channels can be changed. If it had worked this way for all exposures without any in-camera post-exposure work (the RAWs going onto card 1 and playback shows them in colour, the jpgs going onto card 2 and playback shows them in mono), then that would have satisfied my aim. Looks like it can't be done with the current firmware, so I'll go back to using Picture mode = natural.

[pdk42]

If you intend to produce mono as final output then I think it's a good idea to set the camera to mono but to save the files as raw+jpg so that you can later tweak the final output as you wish. I sometimes do this with my Pen-F. However, you'll have to live with the camera playback being exclusively in mono.

If you use the right PP software then you'll be able to see both the raw in colour and the jpg in mono. Lightroom does exactly this. Plus LR has a ton of presets you can use to turn the raw into various mono variants.

[Stuart444]

Yes, I can do that, nothing to lose. One benefit of user settings here is I can see which works better in practice by quickly changing between colour an mono.


I didn't know LR does that. I bought a copy for my Camera Club's loan computer, but didn't try it much so hadn't noticed that. I got soured to Adobe products years ago, and adopted Affinity which I think is brilliant as well as a bargain. I'm working on converting my Camera Club to it!
Stuart

[pdk42]

LR isn't the best, but it's not at all bad and I've got years of shots in its library and hundreds of hours of experience using it so the inertia to change is pretty high.

[Ulfric M Douglas]

Stuart please correct me if I'm wrong, but you want to see (and quickly flick back and forth) both mono and colour versions of each shot, right?
And then you want to work the RAW to produce a better mono jpeg using selective filers on the RAW's colour channels.

Have you tried RAW+Jpeg with art-filter-bracket one colour(vivid or whatever) plus one mono(whichever flavour).

In all my Olympus cameras this produces a RAW plus two jpegs (maybe an extra spare RAW to delete, can't remember)
but I have no idea about the 2-slot card behaviour, don't own your camera at the mo'.

Edit : I just tried with my e-pL7
RAW+Jpeg, art-filter-bracket Dramatictone and mono selected in that menu,
SCP panel top right set to vivid
one shot
Results : four files : one ORF with it's thumbnail appearing as vivid in Faststone browser,
three jpegs : vivid, Dramatictone, mono.

You can play about with the various permutations and numbers of files selected in art-filter-bracket to get (mostly) what you want.

Edit2 : interesting : with art-filter-bracket set to only mono (yeah, how can you bracket with one?) I get two different behaviours
depending on what SCP shows top right.
1. SCP shows mono : result = two files, ORF with thumbnail showing mono and mono jpeg
2. SCP shows natural : result = three files, ORF with thumbnail natural, one natural jpeg, one mono jpeg.

Bingo??