RadBadTad

Are there cameras out there that DON'T have this warning? Is there a camera that won't stop recording when the battery dies?

I believe there is an option to bring in the file using your lightroom adjustments, but I'm not positive. I tend to do the conversion first thing, so I don't have to deal with Lightroom struggling to read the RAF file. The resulting file pops back into lightroom for me, but doesn't stack, it merely sits next to the original. Again, I'm not sure if that's the only way to do it, I haven't tried anything else because that behavior doesn't bother me, I'm sorry that I can't help there!

Lightroom creates a TIFF and hands it to X-Transformer, but X-Transformer ignores it, and goes hunting for the original RAW file to use instead.

There are certain things that simply can't be achieved in Lightroom, no matter how you use your sliders and settings. The level of fine detail you can get is one of them. Also, I'm pretty sure Adobe said they were going to fix that problem around 2014, and it's only gotten worse. I've been participating in a couple of threads over with Adobe and some engineers for a couple of months now, where tons of people are talking about the poor performance they get with Lightroom, and Adobe reps are still trying to figure out if there's a problem at all, and are nowhere near to solving it. Lightroom performance has become infuriating over the past couple of years for ALL file types, and triply so for RAF files, which take an estimated 4-5 times as long to process as my similarly sized Canon files. Camera profiles, VSCO presets, and library management are about the only things that Lightroom has over Capture One at this point.

I'm sorry to say I haven't experienced this, so I'm not able to help, unfortunately. I would probably uninstall and re-install, and if that didn't work, I would reach out to Iridient to see if they would be able to help. I've heard that they are responsive to their users.

Yes I have it selected. I left all of that tab alone with the defaults actually, and lossless compression was checked automatically. I unchecked it, and ran a 2nd conversion. Original File (Raw not compressed) - 48MB Conversion 1 (Lossless compression) - 68.3MB Conversion 2 (No compression) - 122MB (!!) Wow. That's a big difference. I'm pushing and pulling the file, and adding and removing sharpening, trying to tell the difference between the compressed and uncompressed output from X-Transormer, and can't discover a difference in the two, so I'm going to keep compression turned on!

The RAF file is 49MB. The converted Tif is usually around 63MB after X-Transformer.

I would guess that you're shooting compressed raw, so it makes sense that the decompressed file would be larger. 70mb seems high though. Mine are almost always 49mb and change.

I don't understand exactly how the process works, but if you go into the link for setting up X-Transformer as a plugin, there are multiple spots where the author basically says "Don't worry about it!" I'm under the impression that while Lightroom spits out a file for X-Transformer to work with, it doesn't actually use that file, and it goes back to the original raw file and starts from there. Or possibly it knows what to look for in the file to strip out the adjustments Lightroom has made, I'm not quite sure. Either way, the end result is that you don't get Lightroom's junk, so whatever the method, the concern you're bringing up is addressed and isn't an issue in practice.

I'm also unhappy with the overall performance of Lightroom, but that's a separate issue. I'm currently participating in a thread over on the Adobe support page trying to help devs nail something down in terms of processor usage and optimization - https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lightroom-cc-2017-poor-performance?utm_source=notification&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=new_comment&utm_content=topic_link

First, a comparison between X-Transformer's rendering, and straight Lightroom. Settings are exactly the same between the two images. I've always struggled with the weird rendering of detail that I get with my RAF files in Lightroom. I've tried a few different processors to get my fine detail, but they either don't do much to solve the problem (Capture1) or are incredibly cumbersome to use (Photo Ninja) or are not available to me on Windows (Iridient) I recently found X-Transformer (By Iridient) and found that it works more or less perfectly, and lets me keep my Lightroom workflow, so I thought I would share my process for anyone else interested or struggling with the same issues I was. THE METHOD I'm on Windows 10, using Lightroom CC I went and got X-Transformer by Iridient I then set it up to work as a plugin for Lightroom CC Then, in Lightroom, once you find the files you want to work with and get your detail out of, you just choose to edit them in X-Transformer And then put in these settings which strip out the horrible noise reduction and sharpening, and demosaic the data much better than Lightroom. Then, once it's done running through X-Transformer, your image is back in Lightroom as a TIFF that you can treat exactly like your RAF files, except it's got fine detail in it. It's the least cumbersome method I've found so far that gets really really good detail out of your shots, without forcing you to learn a crazy new half-broken editing software. The other program I found that gets this level of detail is Photo Ninja, but it is really difficult to work with, and feels almost like an Alpha for the first version of Lightroom. I don't advise it. Many photographers won't care about the improvement, and that's fine. Fine detail doesn't make or break a photo if the rest of the content/light/processing is good. But for those that want their full 24 megapixels worth of data, this is a great solution without having to give up Lightroom. Disclaimer: I haven't used the brand new CaptureOne which supposedly does very well with RAF files. Links to two full res comparison photos

I wouldn't say that any of that is even remotely a deal breaker. They're minor niggles that won't come close to affecting 90% of the people who use the camera. And I would trade down to 15fps in my viewfinder if it meant no blackout during burst shooting. Blackout is a dealbreaker. 60fps is not. 1/32000 shutter speed is a fringe case in the first place, so having to use manual or shutter priority to get it isn't meaningful. The f/11 thing might be a problem, but I don't really understand what they're saying about it. That you can't use f/16 and also track focus? That doesn't seem possible, but I guess I could be wrong. If that's the case, I can see that being an issue, though most sports tracking happens much wider than f/11.

Is this what you're referring to? "So about those footnotes. Some are ignorable, a few are important. For instance, while the buffer and frame per second calculations are correct for one card slot, the second card slot is not UHS-II. Why camera makers think this is a good thing to have differing slots when they are constantly performing integrity checks on the disk tables on cards, I don’t know. Basically you’re always limited by the slowest card in the camera. So shooting to both cards at the extremes of what the camera is designed to do is likely to have some downgrading effect, probably mostly on buffer. Likewise, that 120 fps viewfinder is actually 60 fps if you want the uninterrupted view with the electronic shutter. Not a terrible deal, but bragging about a spec in one place and then disclaiming for a critical use elsewhere takes away some of the excitement. Likewise, the 1/32000 shutter speed is only available in the Manual and Shutter Priority exposure modes (otherwise you’re limited to 1/16000). Note also that at apertures beyond f/11 focus doesn’t track with the electronic shutter, too." http://www.sansmirror.com/newsviews/sony-goes-further-upscale.html

As you go up the ladder in terms of features and expense, your returns diminish while your costs increase. Do you believe a 1Dx is three times as good as a 5Dmk3? Do you believe that a Ferrari is 10 times as good as a Honda Civic? I don't, but they'll sell less of them, to people who absolutely need (or absolutely want) the few improvements that it provides, and the a9 is the same. The a9 isn't competing against the X-T2, it's competing against the 1Dx, and the D5.

Thanks for this. I'll head over there and do some reading. If it's helpful, I'll report back.