PhotoLab is not alone in ignoring the flag. It also doesn’t work on:
- Capture One 12
- Luminar 3
- ON1 Photo RAW 2018
- Raw Therapee
True - and it’s a shame because a flip is really easy to implement from a math point of view.
What I think you’re asking me is why bother to take photos with film camera, when I can use a digital camera.
It’s a good question, and I don’t have a good answer. Maybe it’s because I enjoy the relative simplicity of shooting film. Once I loaded a roll of film, the basic things to worry about were focus, holding the camera steady, and exposure. My concentration was on composition and timing, not camera settings. I found that relaxing, enjoyable, and satisfying.
Oops, my mistake. I didn’t realize my D750 had the ability to shoot in TIFF. In that case, I agree with you. I thought my choices were RAW and JPG. Oops… 
I mostly agree with you, but here’s one thought to consider. When in your mind you think a photo is “finished”, “balanced”, and all the rest, reversing it (even if with a mirror) will show you how other people might react to the photo.
My buddy Gregor will be sure I’m not nuts for saying this, but I have always thought that how I react to one of my photos is influenced by how I thought when taking it, including the surroundings, the activity, what was happening before, and after… none of which make it into the final result.
Or worded differently, to me, maybe I like my photo because of the memory of taking it, while anyone else only sees the photo. One way to achieve that is the mirror trick. If the image still looks good when reversed, then it probably is good to start with, but if it looks unbalanced, more work is needed.
This happens to me a lot in India. I remember so much of what was happening as I took a photo, that these memories influence how I feel about the photo when I see it.
Then you, or others here, look at the picture and see flaws that I didn’t notice, because my mind was “seeing” a memory.
Thanks for the time to create those images and histograms. Something else I was oblivious to. I wouldn’t have expected that.
I love the photo, with all the shading, and shapes, and detail. I wish the wire wasn’t there. I’m guessing this came from your large format camera?
When I do my usual “trick” to see if a photo is balanced (squint my eyes), it’s perfect. I think if I saw it as a huge print hanging on a wall, I would love it even more.
That’s interesting. Now that my camera is setup as I want it, I don’t find it all that different to shooting film.
Let’s say I am about to go somewhere to shoot some landscape stuff with my D810…
First of all, I choose my “film” by setting my ISO to something that will suit the light where I am going to be.
Most of the time I use aperture priority, just as I used to with Pentax ME Super, which had TTL metering. Or I can choose manual mode for more precise exposure control.
Then I compose my image, wait for the moment and take an exposure.
Of course, I could also adjust the exposure compensation, put some filters on the front of the lens, use an external meter, etc., just as I would with the film camera.
Oh, and I suppose using two little wheels for shutter speed and aperture instead of a dial for speed and a ring on the lens for aperture, but that is almost just cosmetic.
I don’t see anything extra that I am doing that is vastly different from the ME Super. Once I have been through the torture of setting up the menus to do as little as possible automatically, once only, the only real difference is that I can vary ISO from shot to shot. But then I could do that with sheet film on the LF camera anyway 
It’s an interesting experience using a 5" x 4" camera, where everything is both inverted and flipped on the ground glass screen. As you allude, it makes you see the composition as elements, not just as a whole scene.
Although, once you get used to seeing things mirrored, your brain can play weird tricks. Once, when I was teaching an LF workshop, I came out from under the darkcloth, convinced that what I had seen was the right way up 
It’s funny you should say that because, on the finished version, the wires have evaporated…
And here’s another one for good measure…
Nope, just my Nikon D810, processed through PL4 
For a while, I turned off “Image Review”. That experiment didn’t last very long. As the sunlight was coming and going, because the clouds moved around, I found myself looking at the histogram. I’ve trained myself to avoid “chipping”. Sometimes I can’t resist though.
Leica sells a version of their latest camera with no viewing screen on the back. No image review. Since you have the ability to “know” the right settings, you would probably be comfortable with that. I’m not that experienced.
Hey, I like your “evaporated” photo more! I “know” that the best things about your photos are due to you, not to which camera you used.
Interesting reading, but now it’s well over $8,000.
From the article: “Forget all the trappings of modern cameras and just take pictures.”
In regards to the orientation I was in touch with the developer from Photo Supreme. The problem is that portrait style pictures are rotated to the left if I look at them in Photo Supreme. Photo Supreme came back with the following reply:
" I hope that by now you know that DXO is lousy at writing metadata.
Run right click -> Run Script from Repository -> Metadata -> Full Exif Dump
Notice that the orientation tag reads “Normal” and the XMP orientation tag reads “Clockwise 90”. So tools that read Orientation will not rotate the file and tools that read tiff:orientation will rotate the file. In this case, apparently the XMP orientation is wrong. Please report to DXO that they should also write the correct XMP orientation.
But PSU can fix messes that other tools create. And that is what right click -> Metadata -> Convert metadata to XMP. PSU will then fix the XMP by updating the values in XMP so all levels of metadata are then (again) correctly in-sync.
Most important: DXO should fix this. They do know about this because I know of at least 5 people who already reported to them what they do wrong in metadata. When you report this you’ll get a standard reply that it is passed on to the developers and then you won’t hear anything anymore. But please don’t let that discourage you and do report this again. Hopefully at one point they will fix this after they receive enough reports."
I hope DXO will fix this in the next version.
@mikemyers
Forget about this nonsense, to capture new pics with your Leica M3 plus develop your film just to digitize afterwards. – Apart from equipment, you only introduce additional factors you have to handle with and make life difficult.
Get used to ONE of your digital cameras.
I suppose you can handle your M10 the very same way (if you want). Why do you ignore it?
When missing focal range, get the lenses – and don’t forget to post your pics in the Leica forum. 
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Now you’re the one who said…
Years ago, I did a wedding (only one) on a Mamiya 645, which does have TTL metering. If you find it hard to resist chimping with a digital, don’t forget that agonising wait for the film to go through the lab.
Fortunately, in those days, we were made of sterner stuff and learnt how to get things right first time. I even put a test roll through the Mamiya a week before, just to make sure I really knew what I was doing. Added to which, Mamiya really know how to make a trustworthy TTL meter.
LF photography is just as much, if not more, “fun” when you are travelling distances to take pictures on film that costs up to €10 a sheet including processing.
Most LF cameras don’t cost as much as that Leica. They have a viewing screen, it’s just that the only view you get is upside-down and flipped and only available before and after you’ve put the darkslide in 
What I had to realise was that digital was neither harder nor easier - it was just different.
Here’s an image taken on film with a dynamic range of 14 stops between the sky through the window and the lit gas mantle on the desk, through to the detail on the hearth around the fireplace…
To get that, I had to carefully measure the exposure in several places and use the Zone System to calculate by how much I had to over-expose and under-develop to compress the dynamic range onto a sheet of film with only ten stops, to print onto paper with a range of only eight stops.
Now I take shots with similar dynamic range on my D810, but using ETTR and spot metering the highlights instead of the shadows, to give me results like this…
I’ll bet you made some stunning shots on film too and the manuals for film cameras were not that hard to understand. My Ebony camera came without any manual at all!
I believe a lot of people are intimidated by the thick tome of a manual you get with a digital camera and think they have to know everything that’s in it before they can turn out a half decent photo. So they give up on any kind of sophistication, turn it to auto and turn out mediocre pictures.
But, it’s true, it’s not the camera that makes the picture, it’s the photographer. The difference between the average and the great is the time and effort they put into getting to know their camera. Nowadays we have the internet to help us find out how to do stuff (as long as we are discerning about what we trust) and these forums have been and will continue to be a great source of knowledge, not just about how to use DxO products but, also, I hope, about how to take the best images to give PhotoLab a chance to give the best results.
Wolfgang, you’re talking to the wrong Mike!
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I opened an image in pl4, rotated it 90 and saved as a tiff.
Both exif and xmp orientation says 1, normal. That’s good since it was saved in that orientation.
Pl4 writes correct but doesn’t read the orientation.
George
Wolfgang, you’re talking to the wrong Mike!
Oh, sorry – just corrected. 
I won’t disagree with anything you wrote here, but you left out what might be the most important part - your ability as an artistic to create something beautiful. You probably do this without thinking about it, but most people (99%) don’t have your ability. I don’t think it’s possible to teach it - a person either has it, or struggles to get “good enough”. I think Ansel Adams (and you) knew/know exactly what you want, and you both have mastered the tools. Beautiful is not the same thing as “excellent”. A photo by someone artistically inclined is likely to be a better photo than one by a technical expert with minimal artistic ability.
Someone who struggles with this (such as me!), can sometimes get close. On the other hand, out of Ansel Adams’ photos, a very small percentage are what he called “His Monolisa’s”. A huge number were just average, including things he was testing to see what he could accomplish.
Yeah, in a logical world, what you write makes a lot of sense. If I was doing this as a job, I would be doing just what you wrote, but I’m doing it for fun. I’m not “ignoring” my M10, I guess a better term would be “multitasking”.
The only things I find here that are “difficult” are things like what Joanna just wrote, about using “the Zone System”. I’ve read about it recently there is an excellent video by PhotoJoseph that explains what it does, but I don’t understand it even to try to use it. This morning I ordered an attachment for my Sekonic exposure meter, that I think allows me to do things like this.
As to the M3, I’d like to go back in time, and do things as I used to. The only way to share the results is to digitize the images, so that happens too. Just like there is no way to see Joanna’s LF images without her digitizing them.
Most of the recent confusion came about from my assumption that my Epson scanner was all that I needed, and if I don’t want to go beyond a certain level, maybe it is. NONE of my old images from years past are capable of being posted on-line, unless I learn how to scan them, and the video I linked to recently is pretty thorough about what’s needed. That’s just one more example of finding out I didn’t know what I thought I knew. Just like PL4, the only way to learn it is by doing it. I thought I knew what I was doing, but the feedback here made it obvious how much I still needed to learn.
By the way, if I didn’t find all this stuff enjoyable, I wouldn’t be doing it. Maybe I never should have sold all my old darkroom gear. Maybe.
I think it’s time for me to stop “typing”, and go back to “doing”.
…and get a second condo for darkroom 
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Maybe it depends on the camera used. I have the problem with a Canon 40D
Where, and how, can I find these numbers?
Never even thought about this before.
Is it something in the EXIF data, or something like that?