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Archive 2017 · A7rIII skin tones still not to A9 levels?

Mescalamba
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p.3 #1 · p.3 #1 · A7rIII skin tones still not to A9 levels?

Given A7RII color separation quality, only problems with skin color are down to development process and accuracy of color profiles (or lack of it).

A7RIII colors seems fine to me (especially in C1). DPreview has decent samples too btw. more real-life like (read high ISO, insane WB conditions and so on).

Also, I dont really know whats considered "good skin colors"? Accurate ones? Pleasing ones? They often not the same (more often than not, as actually many things photo related).

Its like translating poems, either is beautiful or accurate. If photos were 100% accurate, they would be rarely nice. Thats why photography is considered art.

With A7RII results in color separation test, Im guessing its down to color profiles and ability to CC stuff. And individual "feel". To me pics from that look good. But I would buy 5DMKIV, if I wanted to shoot people exclusively.

Nov 10, 2017 at 05:00 PM

philip_pj
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p.3 #2 · p.3 #2 · A7rIII skin tones still not to A9 levels?

Yes, Mescalamba, I think it's cultural, and Canon's culture is not Sony's. I actually went looking for Canon skin tones in the Canon forum. They also don't appear to have a culture of posting images in vast image threads like Sony users do (the FE image thread will soon be nearing 100,000 images), perhaps they are elsewhere I don't know about.

Anyway, you can take a look at a few in a p1 thread called 'Canon Sep 2017 - Dec. 21 2017' which has all of 15 pages of mostly bugs, sunsets, close ups of birds and BIF, with a few sporty humans in there as well. They (the humans) look anemic and bloodless so it may be that is the standard to which people aspire - inoffensively pale skin. Neither realistic nor pleasant.

DxO have a measure for color, and Canon don't do so well there either. Their 5DSr and 5DIV are down hugely on Sony's a7rII for color sensitivity, and down on all other measures as well:

https://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Compare/Side-by-side/Canon-EOS-5D-Mark-IV-versus-Sony-A7R-II-versus-Canon-EOS-5DS-R___1106_1035_1009

Nov 10, 2017 at 07:15 PM

russkny
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p.3 #3 · p.3 #3 · A7rIII skin tones still not to A9 levels?

BlueBomberTurbo wrote:
Basic kit is an X-Rite ColorChecker Passport and Adobe DNG Profile Editor. There is more complex, paid software out there, along with larger/more complex/more expensive charts, but these are a good start if you're fine with tonality and just want to improve color.

The problem with C1 is that it uses ICC profiles, which Adobe DNG Profile Editor cannot output. I have yet to find a solution to create usable custom profiles for C1.

With DNG Profile Editor and LR it was easy. Just take a picture of the color chart in desired lighting conditions, import image into DNG Profile Editor, map the four color swatches and that's about it. And the resulting profiles were MUCH better than stock LR ones. I just wish it was this easy with C1.

I tried a few different programs to create ICC profiles for C1 one, but they always made the images look terrible, with completely wrong colors, artifacts and brightness/contrast issues.

During my research I also read somewhere that ICC profiles don't behave the same way DCP profiles do, and even if you do manage to create a usable ICC profile for C1 it would only work for a specific set of images that exactly match the conditions in which said ICC profile was created. Basically one would need to create a new ICC profile for each shoot, unlike DCP profiles, which could be re-used with any images shot in similar lighting conditions (in the range of 5500-6500k, if not creating a dual illuminated profile) with the same camera/lens combination.

So if anyone knows of a way to create reliable, usable (and re-usable) C1 profile, please let me know!

Cheers,
Russ

Nov 10, 2017 at 07:38 PM

Mescalamba
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p.3 #4 · p.3 #4 · A7rIII skin tones still not to A9 levels?

philip_pj wrote:
Yes, Mescalamba, I think it's cultural, and Canon's culture is not Sony's. I actually went looking for Canon skin tones in the Canon forum. They also don't appear to have a culture of posting images in vast image threads like Sony users do (the FE image thread will soon be nearing 100,000 images), perhaps they are elsewhere I don't know about.

Anyway, you can take a look at a few in a p1 thread called 'Canon Sep 2017 - Dec. 21 2017' which has all of 15 pages of mostly bugs, sunsets, close ups of birds and BIF, with a...Show more →

I was referring to ability of discerning between colors (aka metamerism index), which btw. is identical for 5DMKIV and A7RII under daylight and tiny bit worse for 5DMKIV under artificial light. From samples I have I would say that 5DMKIV has actually rather amazing colors (but again, A7RII isnt worse soo..).

Main point is that 5DMKIV has very good profiles in every RAW developing SW I tried so far. Or just has CFA thats more generic, so everything works better with it. A7RII files I have (with ppl in it) seem to have good colors too, except red channel is sometimes bit overshot in most profiles or just needs bit different mixing to reach pleasing colors of skin (and in general for further post-processing).

Difference between these two is in how are channels mixed. Probably reason why skin tones and colors in general from 5DMKIV are very easy to work with and Sony A7RII needs some adjusting to get best of it.

Tho after tweaking, Im pretty sure you can take same pic with both of them and if you got means to do it, you can match them in colors. Just Sony will take a bit more time (probably not for someone experienced in this department).

5DMKIV - daylight 85, artificial 78
A7RII - day 85, art 80
A99 - day 85, art 81
A9 - day 81, art 77
A900 - day 87, art 82
D850 - day 79, art 76
1D/sMKIII - day 86, art 80

A900 has highest recorded I think (at least I havent found higher, my wild guess is that Kodak SLR/n could be one thing to beat it).

Canon had pretty low scores from 1D/s MKIII era till today 5DMKIV.

Does it translate somehow into real photos? Usually it does. But results depend also on lens used, light supplied and ofc color profiles. A900 in artificial light with Sigma lens wont produce results as 1Ds MK3 with Leica R lens with some sweet daylight. Reason why 6D actually gives watchable results with Leica R and Zeiss (or some high quality L lens).

Think I said my piece.

Sorry for that much text. Also metamerism index unfortunately doesnt say where colors are right and where cameras fail. So its completely possible to have camera that just nails skin tones and has rather low index. It might just have CFA tuned for those skin tones..

Nov 10, 2017 at 10:42 PM

hannes
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p.3 #5 · p.3 #5 · A7rIII skin tones still not to A9 levels?

Mescalamba wrote:
Also, I dont really know whats considered "good skin colors"? Accurate ones? Pleasing ones? They often not the same (more often than not, as actually many things photo related).

the real question we should ask is what do we aspect from our camera / software / profile combination ? should it give a natural scene referred rendering or a tuned one ? what we call good skin tones very much depends on our culture background, fashion trends and taste.

I very much prefer a natural color rendering as a starting point, hasselblad is very good in this regard in opposite to phaseone. I want to determine the look, I don't need others to do color voodoo for me. so a good profile in my view gives a well balanced saturation and does not compress colors or applies. hue shifts such a profile this will also produce a natural not digital looking skin tones. sounds simple but obvious hard to accomplish.

Nov 11, 2017 at 06:29 AM

hannes
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p.3 #6 · p.3 #6 · A7rIII skin tones still not to A9 levels?

So if anyone knows of a way to create reliable, usable (and re-usable) C1 profile, please let me know!

there are 2 options available - basic color input ( imho only good for retro work ) and Lumariver profile designer wich is great but also rather complex.

Nov 11, 2017 at 06:35 AM

pgeorges
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p.3 #7 · p.3 #7 · A7rIII skin tones still not to A9 levels?

I ended up biting the bullet and getting an A9, very nice skin tones out of the box when using C1. It's right up there with the best Nikon cameras now which is huge for Sony to have achieved.

Nov 11, 2017 at 08:04 AM

russkny
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p.3 #8 · p.3 #8 · A7rIII skin tones still not to A9 levels?

hannes wrote:
there are 2 options available - basic color input ( imho only good for retro work ) and Lumariver profile designer wich is great but also rather complex.

Thanks, hannes.

I did try basICColor input, but could not generate a profile that yielded usable results in C1 - colors, contrast, saturation - everything was off. I'd love to try Lumariver, but unfortunately the demo doesn't save ICC profiles, so I wouldn't be able to check if it works with C1.

-Russ

Nov 11, 2017 at 01:23 PM

hannes
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p.3 #9 · p.3 #9 · A7rIII skin tones still not to A9 levels?

with lumariver profile designer you can load images in the profile comparison panel guess this works in demo mode too. I´m using LRPD since it is available, it is not without flaws the gamut compression for example can produce undesired effects but you can turn it off. there is also a problem with high saturated reds like traffic lights but this only affects icc profiles, dng´s are fine. as a starting point I recommend everything on default but as operator chose rgb/luma.

Nov 12, 2017 at 03:49 AM

alundeb
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p.3 #10 · p.3 #10 · A7rIII skin tones still not to A9 levels?

philip_pj wrote:
DxO have a measure for color, and Canon don't do so well there either. Their 5DSr and 5DIV are down hugely on Sony's a7rII for color sensitivity, and down on all other measures as well:

https://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Compare/Side-by-side/Canon-EOS-5D-Mark-IV-versus-Sony-A7R-II-versus-Canon-EOS-5DS-R___1106_1035_1009

The problem with color sensitivity as measured by DxO, is that it is directly linked to noise and dynamic range. We can easily see that without digging into the definition, because it declines with increasing ISO. It is valuable as a corrective to noise measurements from the green channel only, but does not tell much about color quality. If it did, we could get the same color quality from a camera with weaker CFA only by lowering the ISO. That is not the case.

All the DxO graphs are related to noise. As long as noise is not a limiting factor in our images, they don't mean much.

Color quality is about how the CFA spectrum is robust in different lighting conditions, and how they overlap, not necessarily how much they overlap. If the overlap is not a monotonic curve, we are in trouble.

Nov 12, 2017 at 05:24 AM

philip_pj
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p.3 #11 · p.3 #11 · A7rIII skin tones still not to A9 levels?

Indeed, but you cherry pick. The point is that technically Sony color is excellent, you can't succeed without very good color representation. People act like color is easily agreed and it is not. Most Canon users have not known anything else, but are lightning speed at criticism. Few here would ever go on the Canon forum and can their products, who knows why these characters act out here.

Nov 12, 2017 at 06:34 AM

Ayoul
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p.3 #12 · p.3 #12 · A7rIII skin tones still not to A9 levels?

Mescalamba wrote:
5DMKIV - daylight 85, artificial 78
A7RII - day 85, art 80
A99 - day 85, art 81
A9 - day 81, art 77
A900 - day 87, art 82
D850 - day 79, art 76
1D/sMKIII - day 86, art 80

Interesting. Maybe I missed something, but where did you get this numbers?

Nov 12, 2017 at 06:42 AM

johnctharp
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p.3 #13 · p.3 #13 · A7rIII skin tones still not to A9 levels?

philip_pj wrote:
Most Canon users have not known anything else, but are lightning speed at criticism. Few here would ever go on the Canon forum and can their products, who knows why these characters act out here.

As a 'Canon user', I'd use whatever works; Sony has yet to make a camera to get me to jump, but the A7R III is darn close.

Why do 'Sony users' feel that their company is the one true company? Didn't most avid users of the A7-series jump because they could adapt Canon-mount glass, back when Sony had exactly one outstanding AF lens for the system?

And hell, I see people swearing by- and off!- every system based on their own reactions to 'skin tones'. And given that they're the customer, I can't criticize: you like Sony colors? Canon's? Nikon's? Pentax's? Olympus'?

Hell, if I had to pick one other than Canon, I'd pick Fuji's. I still might.

Oh, and I'm here to learn. And I learn a lot. And I try not to step on any toes while participating in discussions

Nov 12, 2017 at 08:10 AM

alundeb
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p.3 #14 · p.3 #14 · A7rIII skin tones still not to A9 levels?

Don't know if people think of me as a Canon user in the wrong place, but I am both a Canon and Sony user. Regarding color and skin tones, I have struggled more with old Sony Cameras like NEX 5N, 7 and A7r than with any Canon camera.

Nov 12, 2017 at 08:59 AM

Mike Veltri
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p.3 #15 · p.3 #15 · A7rIII skin tones still not to A9 levels?

philip_pj wrote:
Yes, Mescalamba, I think it's cultural, and Canon's culture is not Sony's. I actually went looking for Canon skin tones in the Canon forum. They also don't appear to have a culture of posting images in vast image threads like Sony users do (the FE image thread will soon be nearing 100,000 images), perhaps they are elsewhere I don't know about.

Anyway, you can take a look at a few in a p1 thread called 'Canon Sep 2017 - Dec. 21 2017' which has all of 15 pages of mostly bugs, sunsets, close ups of birds and BIF, with a...Show more →

Wow, what an immature statement. I wonder if your between 20 and 30 years of age.

There are plenty of people that are interested in new tech, and what Sony may or may not have to offer to ones own photography.

Not sure what Canon has done to so many users that don't choose to use the brand. I choose to drive an import and don't go around telling everyone not to buy Ford or GM.

A good sales person will always educate the consumer to why the product he sells is better and let the consumer make the final choice. When digital first came out, I went to a local camera store to see the latest Nikon and Canon offerings. The woman at the store would not talk about the Canon much and praised the Nikon, She said I would not buy a camera with a cmos sensor. Funny Nikon went from ccd to cmos sensors as well, throwing here excuse out the window.

It would be nice of you to explain the differences between the two brands, rather than just trashing the brand you don't use like everyone else does.

As far a looking at the Canon forum thread, you should have looked at this recent post of people taken with that crappy Canon gear you talk about. Or maybe post some of your really good images so everyone can see what your talking about when you pit Sony against Canon or Nikon or Fuji or anyone else you wish to knock.

https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1516789/0#14248694

By the way, this woman is an excellent photographer that has won many time here. I don't think there all Canon users that like her imagery.

A camera is a tool, and I personally don't care what the brand is, but what results the photographer produces with the brand they are using. When does the photographers skills come into the equation?

Anyways, its laughable that people are saying when software company X comes out with the right profiles to get it right. ahahaha

How about Sony getting it right out of the box?

This is not intended to offend you, but if you care to explain your hatred of the Canon brand, and what Canon did to you to create this hate, then that would be an interesting read. And one that many others might like to read as well.

Nov 12, 2017 at 09:52 AM

Mescalamba
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p.3 #16 · p.3 #16 · A7rIII skin tones still not to A9 levels?

Ayoul wrote:
Interesting. Maybe I missed something, but where did you get this numbers?

Its kinda burried in DxO test charts, you need to examine each camera individually there, its under color response.

https://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Leica/SL-Typ-601---Measurements

IMHO, from my experience its one of most important metrics when it comes to colors. Its not 100% accurate due number of reasons, but as I said, it usually does good job in judging how good colors will be (with color correction ofc). I havent seen it fail so far. Just be aware that it doesnt mean that colors from 85 point cameras will be same, CFAs are not actually pure RGB these days, mostly colors "close to it" and rest is tweaked by manufacturer to actually fit where it should. Reason why 5DMKIV and 1DsMKIII colors are both very accurate, but not same.

alundeb wrote:
Don't know if people think of me as a Canon user in the wrong place, but I am both a Canon and Sony user. Regarding color and skin tones, I have struggled more with old Sony Cameras like NEX 5N, 7 and A7r than with any Canon camera.

Thats due Canon having superior color profiles in about every RAW developing SW in existence. Its long time this way, probably cause they do have pretty big market share. Or they just try harder. Sony does require custom color profiles or just having luck that used RAW developing SW has some decent color profiles.

Also Canon CFA and color mixing is usually post-processing friendly, while other manufacturers aim for different goals. I think Canon might actually design a lot of stuff with post-processing easiness in mind. Even when output of some of their cameras is subpar, its still pretty easy to PP it.

Mike Veltri wrote:
Wow, what an immature statement. I wonder if your between 20 and 30 years of age.

There are plenty of people that are interested in new tech, and what Sony may or may not have to offer to ones own photography.

Not sure what Canon has done to so many users that don't choose to use the brand. I choose to drive an import and don't go around telling everyone not to buy Ford or GM.

A good sales person will always educate the consumer to why the product he sells is better and let the consumer make the final...Show more →

People dont like Canon due its unwillingness to join mirrorless and them milking customers over and over with outdated sensor tech. And maybe we (alt users) view Canon users as a bit "not really bright" when they keep drinking Canon coolaid without good reason.

But I would say that it changes (at least for me) with 5DMKIV, which by my standards is one hell of the camera and its done very well on so many levels, that along with A7RMIII I view it as something I would actually gladly buy if I wanted full-frame.

Also please chill a bit and dont take it that personally. Its just regular brand war, nothing else.

EDIT: Sony has it right out of box, if you are using certain RAW developers supplied with good color profiles, which mostly ISNT ACR/LR. But then a lot of ACR/LR profiles are pretty subpar for just about any camera.

Nov 12, 2017 at 12:58 PM

bjornthun
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p.3 #17 · p.3 #17 · A7rIII skin tones still not to A9 levels?

I think that the Canon EOS lens system with the EF mount is one of those things that Canon has done really, really right with a fully electronic lens mount since 1987. Look at the Nikon F mount with all it's mechanical and electronic couplings changing ever so slightly every few years, which has now evolved to become partislly incompatible with itself. Nikon looked smart when they added AF to the existing F mount in 1986, but now Canon looks smarter with a fully electronic lens mount since 1987. I moved from Nikon to Sony and sold everything Nikon, and now I have only native full frame Sony FE mount lenses with electronic communication. This is one of the important lessons Sony and all mirtorless manufacturers learnt from Canon. There's a reason why Canon lenses are the only ones that can be adapted to both Sony and m43 via third party adapters in addition to the EF-M mount, namely a fully electronic lens mount. I'm happy I no longer depend on Nikon's complicated and only semi-self-compatible lens mount.

The easy way that Canon EF mount lenses can be adapted to mirrorless also enables Canon DSLR users to wait and see before they go mirtorless, since their investment in lenses is relatively safe. Nikon users aren't that lucky because of Nikon's complicated F-mount. Nikon has also dropped in market share from 33% to now 21.7% of the total system camera (MILC & DSLR) market.

I think the EF mount is the most significant reason for Canon's success.

Nov 12, 2017 at 01:22 PM

chez
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p.3 #18 · p.3 #18 · A7rIII skin tones still not to A9 levels?

And here I thought we were discussing A7R3 skin tones compared to A9. 😦

Nov 12, 2017 at 02:05 PM

IrishDino
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p.3 #19 · p.3 #19 · A7rIII skin tones still not to A9 levels?

"Character" comes from the lens choice

"Skin tones" comes from the lighting and post-processing

I guarantee you can make a A7R3 file look indistinguishable from a Canon 1DX, Nikon D850, A9, etc. with some small adjustments in LR.

Nov 12, 2017 at 02:21 PM

BlueBomberTurbo
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p.3 #20 · p.3 #20 · A7rIII skin tones still not to A9 levels?

ZachOly wrote:
I guarantee you can make a A7R3 file look indistinguishable from a Canon 1DX, Nikon D850, A9, etc. with some small adjustments in LR.

That's pretty much the issue we're talking about. Built-in profiles are so random, it's hard to do that. Even "Standard" profiles aren't standardized to one consistent output, so it would take adjusting almost everything on a really bad profile to get it to match. Now if you profile all 4 cameras well, then yes, it'll only take a little adjustment, if any, to get them to match.

Nov 12, 2017 at 03:27 PM

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