rscheffler wrote:
Have you tried tweaking the individual color hue settings? For example, if skin tone is too yellow, pull the orange and yellow hue sliders a bit to the left. Reducing yellow saturation might also help.
The M9's colors remind me a lot of the original Canon 1D. That was also a CCD sensor camera. Not sure how much of a factor that is... It was my first digital camera and I remember not liking how it rendered skin tones. Very splotchy looking at times. Ruddy complexions were especially bad. It was a real shock coming from shooting weddings on C41 emulsions where skin tone was always perfect looking. My guess is the more recent digital cameras have something happening post-capture to improve skin tone rendering. ...Show more →
Ron, that's a very interesting point you make about the 1Ds color. I had one myself, and I think it had the most magical color of any DSLR I have used (maybe the A900 was nicer but with similar drawbacks).
I haven't tried to tweak the color channels, actually this is something I prefer to avoid altogether, because once I start messing with that I get even more indecisive. I try to keep my PP to a very strict minimum: WB, exposure, contrast. Hence I want to find the best profile and stick with it.
Thanks Edward. BTW, Have you tried to make corrections to skin tones with the LR4 white balance brush? I use it sometimes especially in mixed lighting or when I lift shadow details. Sometimes can be useful for a fast and quick adjustment.
Edwin, superb set with the 75Lux!. Really excellent shots.
Yeah, the choice of digital can get overwhelming. Like Edward, I like to figure out my main color signature and leave it there.
The M9 handles color differently than other digital cameras that I've used in the past, and I'm still trying to get a handle on it. Below is one of my throwaway shots with Adobe's Standard profile (using a medium tone curve,) then VSCO's Portra 400NC film simulation, and, finally, my version combining different elements that I like from both of those settings, along with my own tweaks. Pic is from 50/2 collapsible on M9:
Jabberwockt wrote:
Cute kid, your "work in progress profile" looks more dimensional than the VSCO profile.
Thanks. He had a little bit of a rash on his face that day, so I probably shouldn't have posted that pic, but I thought it'd be good for a skin tone comparison. My "work in progress" profile is about 1/3 Adobe Standard Profile, 1/3 VSCO (really just the color settings, which I tweaked further,) and 1/3 my own settings. The toughest thing with the M9 is the over the top magenta, especially in tungsten light, but I'm getting there.
Nice 90 Cron shot. That lens has an interesting signature, from what I've seen.
Douglas, cute shot! Hope your son has recovered? Both the VSCO and your preset looks good. I can't really tell the difference.
Jabberwockt, nice shot! The 90Cron pre ASPH is a very nice classic lens.
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BTW, I have to thank Douglas for the info on the ISOless shooting tip. I haven't been following the talk on this shooting method but I tried some shots today at my son's preschool concert. It was darker than expected and I forgot the flash. The lighting needed an exposure of between ISO3200 and 4000 according to the meter on my Sony RX1 but I needed some reach so that I was not the center of attention instead of the kids This sample shot was set at ISO1250 and pushed +1.11 in LR4 with 0 luminance NR and 25 color NR. What do you think? I think my M9 just got a new lease of life I have a few other shots set at ISO800 and pushed 2 stops in LR4 (3200?) and it still looked better than my older shots at ISO2500.
Looks good, Joe. You might try maxing it out at ISO 640, and pushing from there, if the darker image review on the LCD screen doesn't bother you. I was doing that for a while, and it seems better than ISO 1250, although now I'm taking it all the way and just keeping the camera set to ISO 160 (unless I absolutely need a good image review on camera.) Even at ISO 160, Lightroom allows me to push to the equivalent of ISO 5000.
BTW, FWIW, in terms of banding, I noticed today that, when I shot a quick sequence of 4 shots in lowlight, the first two were fine, and the second two had noticeable banding. I think some of the theories about banding being caused when the camera is writing to the buffer may be true.
Nice job with the profile Douglas. Skin tones look very nice. Cute kid too
Joe, I haven't tried the WB brush in LR. Honestly I rarely use LR because I can't get myself to like it. Most often, I use ACR in PSE 11. Very nice shot of your son's concert. The mom of the little girl on the left won't be very happy though
Joe, cute picture of those kids, the preasph90 has a classic kind of rendering, it has some "flaws" that i think most would either love or hate. I wouldnt mind trying the new version one of these days though.
douglasf13 wrote:
BTW, FWIW, in terms of banding, I noticed today that, when I shot a quick sequence of 4 shots in lowlight, the first two were fine, and the second two had noticeable banding. I think some of the theories about banding being caused when the camera is writing to the buffer may be true.
This is something I've been able to induce repeatedly and consistently in testing with my M9, therefore it's not a theory to me. A key factor seem to be not to review images while the buffer is still writing. Also, the buffer clears faster if the camera is not set to RAW+Jpeg. I had it set to that so I would immediately have a Jpeg file on hand for faster computer browsing and editing - not having to wait for previews to be built. But I abandoned that for the shorter buffer write time of RAW only. The banding will be more apparent in low light images because they're often pretty dark and at higher ISOs where the banding can be a bit more apparent. But I've also had banding become noticeable at ISO 160 when lifting shadows considerably.
FWIW, the image posted on the previous page (sorry for the repost):
It had extremely bad banding along the bottom 10-15% of the frame that I had to crop out to salvage the image. And the banding appeared in all of the images in the sequence… but not in any other sequences on that card from that day. It makes me wonder if there could be RF interference issues at play from external sources?
Joe - looks good. I'll have to experiment with this as well. While browsing the DXO site a while ago and looking at their M9 results, it's interesting to note that each stop increase in ISO results in a stop loss of dynamic range. Therefore, there appears to be little or no difference, on paper, between shooting at ISO 160 and pushing four stops in post and setting the camera to ISO 2500. The difference in reality might boil down to which one is better or more sophisticated: exposure boost from a modern RAW converter such as LR4 or the camera's internal process?
In usage, I've found that pushing in LR4 looks slightly better than in camera, and a guy on the Leica forum tested and measured the noise to be lower, too. The beauty is that, as raw converters get better, so will this technique. The bad part is that you're often left with a less than ideal image preview on camera.
Back to adobe vs embedded, as I mentioned earlier, under normal lighting, the differences are very minimal, but I would like to show a shot under strange very warm fluorescent lighting. The 2 profiles produced very dramatically different interpretations that are (to me) impossible to match with the usual WB sliders. I gave the guy the adobe version, but personally prefer the embedded.
Joe, nice film shots. They certainly have a different color than digital. The pushed M9 example is interesting as well and looks quite good in my opinion, I think I need to try this out myself some more.
Edward, nice photos with the 50 Planar. Favorites are the first of the last set and the one with the barbed wire.
Jabberwockt, nice photo with an interesting lens.
