Yes, this is a \"problem\" - though I\'d prefer to think of it as a reality - of digital sensors and exposure. It is all too easy to blow the red channel, even when shooting raw, if you don\'t look at the multi-channel histogram. It does, indeed, mean \"underexposing\" by a stop or two when one channel is very hot in your subject. This channel is typically the red channel. We\'ve all seen countless photographs of subjects like sunset illuminated clouds and mountain peak, flowers, and more that are clearly blown out. I see it sometimes even in the work of some well-known photographers who might know better.
Exposure has always been tricker than people want it to be. While your meter could have given you a simple \"correct\" exposure with film, sophisticated film photographers understood (and still understand) that the actual content of the scene will often call for a very different exposure and very different methods of chemical post-processing, otherwise known as \"developing.\"
The same is true with digital. While we might like to think that if we just expose the way the camera \"says\" to, that the exposure should be \"right,\" subjects are still just as variable and complex today as they were when we shot film.
The issue of color spaces is a different thing that is related to what you do with the raw file, and not to what is in it. If you blow out a channel in the camera, you aren\'t going to get it back in post. (Sometimes you can sort of fake it, but you are still faking it.)
Dan
ausemmao wrote:
As the others have said, I don\'t think it\'s a problem unique to the 5D3 - My D7000 and D3100 do it and the D700 and D800s I\'ve tried do as well - it\'s due to the amplification applied to the signal. If the red channel is properly clipping, the only thing I know of that works is to go into 3 channel histogram at exposure time and make sure red doesn\'t clip, which usually involves a stop or more of \"underexposure\".
With that said, what skibum is referring to is that the profiles that LR applies can provoke clipping where there is none in the raw file. Setting the LR colourspace to prophoto RGB and then manipulating it in there could mitigate the problem.
JameelH wrote:
Don\'t have the Mark III yet, so cannot comment. The Nikons don\'t appear to have as serious an issue with blown red channels from what I have heard from the Nikon folks. I dont have any 1st hand experience though
Hahahahahahhaaha. I wish that were true. When people talk about not liking Nikon skin tones, it\'s usually because they\'ve unknowingly run into this. The orange/yellow shift it creates is not pleasant.
Jun 04, 2012 at 04:32 PM
Previous versions of gdanmitchell's message #10694408 « 5d iii help: horrible over saturated reds. »
