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TAM63 wrote:
Interestingly, color balance was the same between the two photos. When I said I was seeing similar in many of the shots, I meant that softness. The lens seems to be sharper on the D810. I haven't fooled with that a lot yet, as I doubt I am keeping the camera.
I will look into the color checker - haven't needed it previously. The colors, I guess, may be a little 'off' on the D500 - but it is the editing latitude I miss from the D810, and also that undefinable 'harshness' that bothers me - I doubt that a color profile will correct that. I don't really see it significantly in the bluebird photos - I just don't have a good example where I shot the two side by side other than that one....Show more →
The color was definitely not the same in those two photos - you might have used the same settings in Lightroom/PS though, but that doesn't mean anything when using different files. A colorchecker profile will affect contrast and saturation as well.
I still don't see any harshness in the image, can you post a 'harsh' example? If you crop too much or over-sharpen, that will give the images a harsh look, and you can definitely crop or sharpen the D810 files more before that happens. No doubt the D810 has more editing latitude.
TAM63 wrote:
I'm not familiar with color checker - when I look it up, it seems to be saying it is used to set white balance in camera - take a photo of it each time you take a series of photos? Which isn't going to work very well out in nature, and lighting changes quite a bit. Is there a different use you are referring to?
(and should I start a different thread on this, we're way off topic now?)
So the color checker works very simply, really. One side is a WB card for your convenience, the other side is all the colored squares. You take a photo of the CC in the lighting you will be shooting in - you only need to do it once for sunlight, shade, overcast, etc. but you have to do it for each camera. If you are ever doing portraits or other critical work, you can always make another custom profile for those exact conditions, but it is not necessary for general shooting.
You save the images of the colorcheker as a DNG in photoshop, open it in the colorchecker software, and it automatically makes a profile and saves it in your LR/PS profile's list. Voila.
Now, at the end of a day's shoot, you just highlight all the images under sunlight and one click you get great color - same for any other photos taken under the same lighting. The amount of time this has saved me I can't even quantify.
You can also use it to correct WB either during the shoot with a custom WB setting in camera, or after the fact with the photo you took of the color checker and the Photoshop WB eye dropper, then you can just copy that WB across all similar photos if needed, or tweak it to your liking. Honestly I think it's a tool that should be in every photographer's kit - even if you only use it occasionally for very specific profiles.
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