Posted by Adrian North on April 22, 2007 at 3:54 PM
Ring-necked Pheasant, Phasianus colchicus, Berkshire
This is an image I took last weekend. I am trying to get some images of wildlife with some more of the environment in it. Does this wrk in that way? Comments are as always welcome. The technical details are:
I like the composition, but for me, in this case, the OOF vegetation in lower right is just a bit too distracting.
Also, it might be my eyes, but there seems to be a bit of a (blueish?) colour cast.
Like the idea.... environmental images are never easy, Clives tweak to remove the blue cast has made an improvement..
Posted by Adrian North on April 23, 2007 at 4:09 AM
Mmmm looks like it's time for a monitor change as it's just been calibrated Mind you I was trying some new technique for processing and errrr I may have got it a bit wrong (OK very wrong ) - Thanks Clive - I'll try again - Oh well my teachers always said "Must try harder" in my school reports
Hope you don't mind - perhaps this repost might help you to see the colour issue... used the Photoshop Levels command to reset the black and white levels settings to neutralise the cast (not claiming it's perfect though ).
Is your original shot out-of-camera? Or have you applied some PS work to it? If you haven't done any PS tweeking, then what white balance did you use when you took the shot? The reason for asking is that your images haven't particularly exhibited any casts before...so what did yo udo different this time????
I'll leave you to try out different crops
Posted by Adrian North on April 24, 2007 at 4:41 AM
Nick,
Good question - My previous image showed a slight blue cast so I was trying a technique for removing colour casts which went wrong and made any colour cast worse! The only reason I can think of for the colour casts suddenly appearing is that I recently had my camera body looked at by Canon (due to a problem with it locking up periodically (usually when I really want to take an image with an "Error 99" - anyone any ideas as to what causes this) and it came back with various settings changed - some for the better, some for the worse (i.e. they had changed it so that the camera only took JPEGs rather than RAW) and some I haven't found yet and I'm wondering if there could be a setting that gives me the colour casts - Does anyone know of any setting that may do that? Oh and the Error 99 still occurs
They could have set a colour temperature adjustment/compensation value - details on how to change it are somewhere in the manual (can't give you exactly where - I've never bothered 'tweeking' the setting on my cameras ). Alternatively, they could simply have changed the White Balance setting using the WB button on the back of the camera - check see if it is set to something other than AWB or Sunny....
If you check my website, you'll find a short article on colour correction using Photoshop levels...it's not the most accurate way, but it generally works OK if you've black, white or grey somewhere in the shot. Might help you out on a couple of shots until you sort out the root cause.
Err 99 can be caused by lenses - the 70-200 seems to be one of the biggest culprits. May be worth checking that the electrical contacts on your lenses are clean, and that the screws on the lens bayonet mount are firmly fastened down. (A friend nearly binned a camera & lens because of errors due to loose screws on the lens )
Adrian,
Reading Nick's advice regarding loose screws reminds me of just how easy this can be to overlook.
Not long after having purchased a Canon 24-70mm lens I noticed one day that removing the lens from the camera body proved almost impossible,at least after 20 minutes of frustratingly trying to figure out why,thankfully the lens did eventually unattach,the culprit was one of the tiny screws had become just a fraction loose which was causing the lens mount to jam on the camera body.Because the lens was still fairly new it would never have occured to me that any screws may be loose.Thankfully a costly and inconvenient repair was avoided but it just goes to show how easily this can go unnoticed.
I had an annoying spate of error 99's on my 20D,I was informed by Fixation that it could just be a case of them re-installing the firmware,I believe they had to uninstall all firmware and reinstall each successive firmware,as opposed to just the latest one.This fixed the problem.
So perhaps this could be the reason for your error 99's.Just a thought.
Discussion
9 repliesThis is an image I took last weekend. I am trying to get some images of wildlife with some more of the environment in it. Does this wrk in that way? Comments are as always welcome. The technical details are:
- Camera: Canon EOS 1D Mk IIN
- Lens: Canon 500mm f4 IS + 1.4x
- Aperture: f7.1 +1/3
- Shutter Speed: 1/500s
- ISO: 400
- Metering: Evaluative
- Exposure Control: Aperture Priority
- Camera Support: Gitzo 1325 + Wimberley Gimbal
- RAW Conversion: RawShooter Premium
- Post Processing: Levels, Curves, Contrast, USM
Many thanks for looking
Adrian
Also, it might be my eyes, but there seems to be a bit of a (blueish?) colour cast.
I think you need to check out your monitor calibration. There's definitely a strong blue bias to the shot.
I too like the composition but it does look bluish - here's a 'quick and dirty' levels channel tweak (Just the way you like 'em...).
Cheers,
Clive
Thanks everyone
Adrian
Hope you don't mind - perhaps this repost might help you to see the colour issue... used the Photoshop Levels command to reset the black and white levels settings to neutralise the cast (not claiming it's perfect though
Is your original shot out-of-camera? Or have you applied some PS work to it? If you haven't done any PS tweeking, then what white balance did you use when you took the shot? The reason for asking is that your images haven't particularly exhibited any casts before...so what did yo udo different this time????
I'll leave you to try out different crops
Good question - My previous image showed a slight blue cast so I was trying a technique for removing colour casts which went wrong and made any colour cast worse!
Adrian
If you check my website, you'll find a short article on colour correction using Photoshop levels...it's not the most accurate way, but it generally works OK if you've black, white or grey somewhere in the shot. Might help you out on a couple of shots until you sort out the root cause.
Err 99 can be caused by lenses - the 70-200 seems to be one of the biggest culprits. May be worth checking that the electrical contacts on your lenses are clean, and that the screws on the lens bayonet mount are firmly fastened down. (A friend nearly binned a camera & lens because of errors due to loose screws on the lens
Hope that helps a bit.
Reading Nick's advice regarding loose screws reminds me of just how easy this can be to overlook.
Not long after having purchased a Canon 24-70mm lens I noticed one day that removing the lens from the camera body proved almost impossible,at least after 20 minutes of frustratingly trying to figure out why,thankfully the lens did eventually unattach,the culprit was one of the tiny screws had become just a fraction loose which was causing the lens mount to jam on the camera body.Because the lens was still fairly new it would never have occured to me that any screws may be loose.Thankfully a costly and inconvenient repair was avoided but it just goes to show how easily this can go unnoticed.
I had an annoying spate of error 99's on my 20D,I was informed by Fixation that it could just be a case of them re-installing the firmware,I believe they had to uninstall all firmware and reinstall each successive firmware,as opposed to just the latest one.This fixed the problem.
So perhaps this could be the reason for your error 99's.Just a thought.