p.2 #1 · Post Processing and White Balance with Sony, Greener Grass?
Jeffrey wrote:
Perhaps you missed the memo that shooting RAW images gives you just that. They are flat and boring with no color accuracy. You then need to post process them to achieve a finished look and desired colors of your choice. People bitching about out of camera skin tones, green grasses and other 'issues' simply don't like to use an image editor or are just lazy. That's what JPEGS are for. It's your choice. Frankly I'm surprised that I need to say all this very basic stuff on this forum since RAW files have been around for nearly 25 years. It's astonishing that people here still think they will get the 'skin tone' that they want from a RAW file with no post work.....Show more →
All that pomposity and no admittance to the simple truth that certain brands get closer to the final output (depending on the user's output preferences) than others. You can make any brand look like any other brand. If there's a way to optimize a post workflow, it's usually worth it in the long run.
p.2 #3 · Post Processing and White Balance with Sony, Greener Grass?
For everyone here talking about color accuracy, how are you making that evaluation. Is it how the image appears on you monitor vs how you believe it should looked or how you remember it looked in real life.
Even with a proper calibration, there are not many monitors that can display near 100% aRGB color space. There is a significant expansion in going from the sRGB to aRGB, particully towards green, and even at that, the overall space is below what a decent set of eyes can see. I saw this for myself recently when going from a well calibrated consumer monitor to a used Eizo. It didn't whack me over the head, but but overall balance just seemed, subjectively, better. See https://clarkvision.com/articles/color-spaces/ for a much deeper discourse on this.
From a mathmatical standpoint, using a ColorChecker should get you there on the capture side. It still may not look right on your monitor.
p.2 #4 · Post Processing and White Balance with Sony, Greener Grass?
Personally, I am not trying to reproduce colors scientifically. I just noticed that I am happier with the colors I get in LR from my Nikon cameras, and I have tried to get my Sony colors closer to my Nikon colors.
From what I see online, Sony appears to have improved their colors with the a7rV and newer cameras.
With my a7rII and a7rIV I found two things that help:
1. Use a Zeiss UV filter when photographing outside. There is some type of color shift that seems to happen most often in the corners of blue skies. The Zeiss UV filters have a hard UV cut off that appears to solve the issue. I have not found a way to solve this color shift in LR, as it gets stronger towards the corners.
2. When adjusting my images in LR, I add a bit of saturation to red and blue channels under camera calibration. Usually about +5 to red and +10 to blue. Then I adjust the white balance manually.
Even with the above tweaks, I still prefer the colors out of my Nikon raw files in LR better, but it definitely helps close the gap. It is a bit annoying having to spend more time adjusting the color on every image, so I have been tempted to pick up an a7rV to see if it reduces the work needed in post, but trying to hold out for the a7rVI.
p.2 #5 · Post Processing and White Balance with Sony, Greener Grass?
As others have noted, when working from RAW files, the profile in LR is the primary driver for transforming the recorded data to something you can see on your screen. I've never felt compelled to try, by I'm in RoamingScott's camp, in that with the proper profile, which may not be a stock 'canned' profile, output from almost any brand of camera could be made to look similar to that of any other. This does not discount, that to your eyes, the out of the box profiles for Nikon produce a more pleasing result.
Not that it makes any difference, but my primary system is currently Fuji and, for most cases, I prefer the canned Fuji profiles (primarly Astia and Provia) versus the generic Adobe LR profiles. While generally happy, there are situations where I'm chasing my tail. For years I have been a volunteer photographer at a local car show. This year, mist, fog, drizzle, and ocassionally sun where on offer. Achieving a reasonably balanced color look over several hours of shooting, while trying to realistically improve the cold, flat shots, was a chore.
If you have not played with it, try the "Adaptive Color" profile in LR. Not going to suggest it is better or worse, simply different. Would be mildly interesting to A/B images from different camera brands, taken under identical conditions, using that profile.
p.2 #6 · Post Processing and White Balance with Sony, Greener Grass?
I'm about to move to the Sony ecosystem, or so I'm planning to. The color thing is my biggest concern. I've shot Canon forever and outside some occasional red adjustments, I've just never had to spend a lot of time on color and am almost always happy with people and landscape shots. Despite the fussy comment about this being caused by uneducated plebes, there's simply too much chatter about this to dismiss it as nothing or just confined to rookies with no knowledge.
I'm looking at an a7cr setup with some of the newer Sony lenses, like the 40mm 2.5 and the 16-25 2.8. Is there any change or improvement with this in models released in the last couple of years?
I love the compact form factor of these bodies and lenses, and Canon really hasn't matched that type of form that I can see, or with rumored upcoming releases. Honestly, I find something as basic as having to constantly tweak with color a bit off-putting. Allowing for a calibrated monitor, paying attention to WB in shooting, and reasonable processing knowledge and prowess, is this a serious enough concern to warrant second thoughts?
p.2 #7 · Post Processing and White Balance with Sony, Greener Grass?
Taperwing wrote:
output from almost any brand of camera could be made to look similar to that of any other.
This is what cobalt claim. If you have multiple cameras the relevant cobalt profiles will bring them to the same base level, after which they can be further processed, or treated with additional profiles, as you choose. I have not tried it but imagine it would be helpful if you were using more than one camera type.
p.2 #8 · Post Processing and White Balance with Sony, Greener Grass?
Colfishnski wrote:
I'm about to move to the Sony ecosystem, or so I'm planning to. The color thing is my biggest concern. I've shot Canon forever and outside some occasional red adjustments, I've just never had to spend a lot of time on color and am almost always happy with people and landscape shots. Despite the fussy comment about this being caused by uneducated plebes, there's simply too much chatter about this to dismiss it as nothing or just confined to rookies with no knowledge.
I'm looking at an a7cr setup with some of the newer Sony lenses, like the 40mm 2.5 and the 16-25 2.8. Is there any change or improvement with this in models released in the last couple of years?
I love the compact form factor of these bodies and lenses, and Canon really hasn't matched that type of form that I can see, or with rumored upcoming releases. Honestly, I find something as basic as having to constantly tweak with color a bit off-putting. Allowing for a calibrated monitor, paying attention to WB in shooting, and reasonable processing knowledge and prowess, is this a serious enough concern to warrant second thoughts? ...Show more →
This may help, perhaps, if you find raw files from Sony A7CR on the internet and see if they give you any trouble in post.
p.2 #12 · Post Processing and White Balance with Sony, Greener Grass?
Your real problem is that it is only green here between February and May 1. Outside of that window, we only get varying shades of yellow and brown. 🙃
More seriously, cameras have algorithms to guess what lighting characteristics are, when you are shooting and then try to map them to the cameras’ output. No camera knows how you want the scene to look. Do you want the model to look slightly less pale, the grass a bit deeper green, the sky more blue and less pale? The camera can’t know that.
Photographers used to buy particular film types and/or use particular light bulb color temperatures to have control over the output, because their cameras didn’t know how they wanted the scene to look either.
Shoot RAW, edit one image to your liking. Apply the changes to the others shot in the same conditions. If you like, save a preset with those settings, so that the next time you are shooting in Marin at sunrise, you are closer to what you like.
p.2 #13 · Post Processing and White Balance with Sony, Greener Grass?
@Grenache You are right. I especially your apprciate the historical reference to the analog times. But we have to admit that modern tech, while powerful and convenient, is hard(er) to troubleshoot when something goes wrong. Your camera may have a defective white balance sensor, or Adobe may ship a slightly shittier DCP for your model than others, and you'll be pulling your hair out troubleshooting why everything is just slightly off all the time... That's when everybody's advice on the Internet is not helpful and drives you crazy.
