Posted by Jack Brauer on March 30, 2010 at 1:21 PM
This last weekend I went winter camping up on Hurricane Pass, on the western side of the Tetons. This shot here is more or less the goal photo I was envisioning for the trip, but I got some other unexpected photos as well... check them out here: http://www.widerange.org/gallery/hurricane-pass-tetons/
This one: Canon 5D2, 24mm TS-E.
Also a question for you Canon shooters: I'm finding that many/most of my photos (particularly winter photos) from the Canon 5D2 have too much cyan color to them - more than I'd say is natural. WB adjustments aren't really the issue - it's more an overall color rendering characteristic. I don't believe it's a faulty camera, just a strong cyan characteristic of the sensor. I'm having to do pretty significant color balance corrections in PS. Anyone else agree with me? Any advice to combat the cyan (besides PS work)? Thanks...
Posted by Mel Ladewig on March 30, 2010 at 1:38 PM
Jack,
Most of this is based around my experience with my Rebel XT in Lightroom 2.X. My Panasonic LX3 does not have camera profiles available, so I can only use Adobe's raw rendering algorithms. And I don't use any of these tools with my film scans.
I think the choice of the camera profile helps alot. I've seen a strong cyan response in alot of canon shots, especially if the landscape camera profile was used (both in DPP and ACR/Lightroom). The Adobe lightroom portrait camera profile produces a similar contrast and saturation baseline in most colors, but it removes alot of cyan from the sky. Adobe's standard profile also tends to remove alot of cyan, but it also tends to push the red/orange (eg Moab Sandstone) tones from red to a muddy orange/brown.
The choice of saturation tool can help as well. Vibrance tends to push up blue with a little less cyan than saturation.
You can also use the selective adjustment tool in lightroom with a hue shift to remove cyan from the sky.
Just some rambling thoughts.
Mel-
Posted by Brett Deacon on March 30, 2010 at 3:09 PM
Jack, as usual, your photographs are stunning! I particularly like "Sun sets behind Battleship Mtn." One really gets a sense of the harshness of the environment and an appreciation of the work you went through to be in it. Not many people have the skills and nerve to do something like that, and this is one of the characteristics that really sets you apart from the rest of us (not to mention your amazing photographic skills). Great work!
Posted by Todd Caudle on March 30, 2010 at 3:16 PM
What Brett said, and double it! As for the cyan bias, I especially notice it in skies, which tend to take on a greenish cast in the lighter areas. I don't really notice it globally throughout the image. I'd take that cyan bias all day long if Canon could figure out how to prevent their sensors from massively clipping oranges and reds, which makes sunsets and sunrises especially trying.
Awesome, as usual Jack! I like #2 the best, followed by the first tent shot (killer). As for cyan, well yeah welcome to the world of 5D...I routinely calibrate upwards a slight amount for the blues, although it seems to be image dependent for some reason (or maybe light dependent) cause some images seem to escape the cyan completely. I think my 5D was worse, although that may be because i sometimes used the "Landscape" mode that Mel mentions.
Not sure if it would help but, if you use lightroom, you might try creating a custom calibration for your camera to get the cyan levels where you want.
You could either do this through a color-chart (a la Macbeth Color Checker) or by working on a few images, geting a cyan level in the calbration panel that you like and saving that as a user preset.
I do this for my live music photos and, although never spot on, it reduces the need to roundtrip to PS.
Posted by Jesse Speer on March 31, 2010 at 4:07 PM
Signature Brauer here ... but I'm really impressed by #2.
I have more than a few LR presets that include various profiles. Easy, quick to toggle through them and see how they affect color shifts like this. A constant battle, for sure - regardless of brand.
Discussion
17 repliesThis one: Canon 5D2, 24mm TS-E.
Also a question for you Canon shooters: I'm finding that many/most of my photos (particularly winter photos) from the Canon 5D2 have too much cyan color to them - more than I'd say is natural. WB adjustments aren't really the issue - it's more an overall color rendering characteristic. I don't believe it's a faulty camera, just a strong cyan characteristic of the sensor. I'm having to do pretty significant color balance corrections in PS. Anyone else agree with me? Any advice to combat the cyan (besides PS work)? Thanks...
Most of this is based around my experience with my Rebel XT in Lightroom 2.X. My Panasonic LX3 does not have camera profiles available, so I can only use Adobe's raw rendering algorithms. And I don't use any of these tools with my film scans.
I think the choice of the camera profile helps alot. I've seen a strong cyan response in alot of canon shots, especially if the landscape camera profile was used (both in DPP and ACR/Lightroom). The Adobe lightroom portrait camera profile produces a similar contrast and saturation baseline in most colors, but it removes alot of cyan from the sky. Adobe's standard profile also tends to remove alot of cyan, but it also tends to push the red/orange (eg Moab Sandstone) tones from red to a muddy orange/brown.
The choice of saturation tool can help as well. Vibrance tends to push up blue with a little less cyan than saturation.
You can also use the selective adjustment tool in lightroom with a hue shift to remove cyan from the sky.
Just some rambling thoughts.
Mel-
Todd: Yeah, the red & orange clipping w/ Canon sensors is especially problematic for me. The only three colors we have are red, orange and blue.
Not sure if it would help but, if you use lightroom, you might try creating a custom calibration for your camera to get the cyan levels where you want.
You could either do this through a color-chart (a la Macbeth Color Checker) or by working on a few images, geting a cyan level in the calbration panel that you like and saving that as a user preset.
I do this for my live music photos and, although never spot on, it reduces the need to roundtrip to PS.
I have more than a few LR presets that include various profiles. Easy, quick to toggle through them and see how they affect color shifts like this. A constant battle, for sure - regardless of brand.