Bibble or Fuji-Software for RAW-conversion?

[S2-Dirk]

Hello everybody,

I am new to the forum and do not have a S2 yet. But I hope that I can learn a lot from your advice as I am planning on buying one soon. Up to now I am still in the learning phase. I checked the previous posts but I could not find the answer to my specific question:

Is Bibble a useful tool for converting the RAF. files - or do I need the EX-software? I have Bibble already as I played a little bit with a D1x and it worked beautifully. Is Bibble fully functional with the Fuji-files? Unfortunately I could not get an original .RAF yet and the Bibble manual is not quite clear about the functionality.

And - are the tiff or jpg's from Bibble equivalent to the Fuji-results?

Thanks for clarifying, happy shooting, Dirk

[Tom Nolle]

I haven't tried Bibble or Qimage in their latest version for RAW conversion, but when I tried them out earlier in the year neither was even close to EX IMHO. I thought Qimage was better than Bibble. Tests with the new Adobe Photoshop CS Raw converter seems (so far) to indicate that EX will still be best for producing images of greatest detail, though some of the features of CS's RAW converter are strong enough to make it the preferred strategy for anything other than large prints.

If you're a Photoshop user, my advice would be to upgrade to CS and don't worry much about other options unless you're making large prints and absolutely have to extract the last bit of detail. In that case, EX is the only game in town.

Tom

[S2-Dirk]

Thanks Tom for your answer.

Do you remember your version of Bibble? Currently it is 3.1a - that's the one I have.

I guess, I will have to try it. Is there any place, where I could download a .RAF file? I know, they are 12 MB - but one would be sufficient for me to play around.

Thanks again, Dirk

[jknights]

I would agree with Tom on this.

I use Bibble all the time for my D1X NEF files but the Fuji EX is definitely better.


I did a review of the RAW file readers for Fuji S2 but since the resulting files were so large I only posted a set of my results as a text file.
See here for my thoughts. Please note these are my personal preferences/view.
FYI: http://s2pro.com/forums/showthread....mp;threadid=338

I compared 10 different images shot under different lighting conditions. The resulting files took up >3GB of disk space.



Thom Hogan has also done a good review and finds different results. http://www.bythom.com/raw.htm
As Thom says these assessments are very difficult job to keep the tests up to date and results are skewed by personal workflow and preferences.

[S2-Dirk]

Thanks Jonathan, for your info.

So the Fuji EX is the way to go - well, well. Unfortunately, this is not included in the German package, so I need to buy it additionally.

Or may be Bibble upgrades at some time...

Anyways - many thanks, Dirk