erl Posted October 19, 2009 Share #1 Posted October 19, 2009 Advertisement (gone after registration) I have read a lot of criticism of the M9's ability to reproduce good skin tones and whilst it is not yet "up to speed" according to consensus so far, I wish to offer a sampling that I think makes it out to be better than reported so far. The following pics were shot at a recent childs 5th birthday party under a variety of lighting that existed, which was daylight(1st pic) and a mixture of daylight and tungsten. A series exceeding 300 was shot, from which these were selected as 'reasonable' sampling to show skin tones. Processing was in C1 Pro. Camera M9 with 75mm Summicron and 35mm Summicron. Note that in the 'magician' pics, the black fabrics were a variety. Some observers will note a 'warmth' in the second 'magician' pic. I attribute this to the obvious tunsten content and deliberately left it in for accuracy of atmosphere. I would be interested in any critical analysis of image quality, relative to the M9, (not my photography ). Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here… Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! Link to post Share on other sites Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! ' data-webShareUrl='https://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/100675-m9-and-skin-tones/?do=findComment&comment=1080444'>More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted October 19, 2009 Posted October 19, 2009 Hi erl, Take a look here M9 and skin tones. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
erl Posted October 19, 2009 Author Share #2 Posted October 19, 2009 Whoops! That 3rd pic has had a nasty accident on the girl's coat. No idea what happened, but I guess it doesn't affect the intention of the post so I'll leave it. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
adan Posted October 19, 2009 Share #3 Posted October 19, 2009 It's the alien invasion, Erl Just to increase the variety, here are a couple of samples from today from my M9, run through Adobe Camera Raw with my first cut at a profile. Several points occur to me - first, in my long group shot, well, which skin tones are supposed to be right? The guy in the striped shirt looks a bit magenta, but most of the others, to me, look a bit sallow and yellow - or would, if I corrected for the pink guy. Denver has a high proportion of Hispanics, and I just now remembered that with the M8, I had tweaked my profile a bit towards pinker reds (i.e. skin) to try and strike a mean that would keep hispanic skin (also asian) from going too yellow. Second, I also come from the Kodachrome-25-underexposed-1/2-stop-Velvia school of color photography. So I just don't get upset if skin has a lot of rich color to it. Your shots look more like what I'd expect from color neg portrait film - a bit undersaturated for my taste (and we are talking taste here) but probably about on target for hue. Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here… Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! Link to post Share on other sites Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! ' data-webShareUrl='https://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/100675-m9-and-skin-tones/?do=findComment&comment=1080471'>More sharing options...
erl Posted October 19, 2009 Author Share #4 Posted October 19, 2009 Andy, I think we really concur. I just don't see a serious problem with my shots or yours wrt skin colour. Anything that is 'not to someone's liking' is so easily adjusted. Same as for any camera in my experience. I suppose my original premise was/is that the complaints about skin tones on the M9 is NOT due to the camera, but rather to operator intervention (or lack thereof!). P.S. I should have mentioned previously, I am currently using Jamie Robert's original M8 profile for the M9 in C1 as a base for my corrections. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikenic Posted October 19, 2009 Share #5 Posted October 19, 2009 Hi Erl FWIW from an ex wedding/portrait shooter, I would be very happy with your skin tones. Very natural looking on my screen and good saturation levels also IMO. No problems there that I can see. Mike. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
adan Posted October 19, 2009 Share #6 Posted October 19, 2009 Erl, absolutely I agree. Just for the record, this color swatch is the color that Gretag Macbeth calls "light skin" on their ColorChecker: 194R/150G/130B in sRGB. Nobody has to take their word for it, but there it is. Another point that occurs to me is that my background is photojournalism/documentary. My subjects are not my "clients", so I don't have to worry about nailing some "ideal" skin tone the way a wedding or portrait pro does (for good reasons). I'm going for the effectiveness and truthfulness of the total picture, and if some guy who got too much sun yesterday comes out too pink - so be it. Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here… Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! Link to post Share on other sites Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! ' data-webShareUrl='https://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/100675-m9-and-skin-tones/?do=findComment&comment=1080523'>More sharing options...
Rick Posted October 19, 2009 Share #7 Posted October 19, 2009 Advertisement (gone after registration) Adan, we aren't talking about someone with too much sun turning out pink. We are talking about the magenta cast on skin tones, like the pictures you posted on the other thread. And, Erl, your pictures show red desaturation in the facial tones in some of your shots. I assume you did this to get rid of magenta. These shots don't make it all right for me. Sorry. Again, I hope my M9 takes sufficiently long to get to me so these profiles are worked out. I hope it isn't an I/R problem. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
lars_bergquist Posted October 19, 2009 Share #8 Posted October 19, 2009 I once discussed this with a salesperson with my Leica retailer. When younger, he had worked in a portrait study. One of their clients had been a lady with a really beautiful set of wrinkles. But she would not accept that. So the crew set to work again. And they softed. And they retouched. And they scraped away. At last, the lady looked like eighteen. "That's the way I want to look!" she said. And that was how she did look. On paper. They could not soften and retouch the original of course -- that is a different profession, and a very busy one too, I gather. I simply do not understand this nattering about 'correct' skin tones. Whose skin tones? Some of us Swedish people today have quite beautiful dark-chocolate skin tones. Also, colours depend on the lighting and the environment. A 'correct' skin tone is an artefact, as contrived a product as pancake makeup. Real people do not walk around looking like they had been airbrushed. And that goes for all other 'correct' colours. There are no colours. There are different mixes of wavelengths, and the tags that our visual sense puts on different mixes are 'false colours' as arbitrary as those of any satellite scan. Add to that the fundamental epistemologically question: Is my red your red? Maybe you experience 680 nanometer red like I experience green? How can we ever prove that we do not both call a birch leaf 'green' only as a conventional verbal tag, covering entirely different physiological experiences? It's all nonsense. There are no 'correct' colours. There are only acceptable colours. Acceptable to most or to some of us. Especially to the customer, of course. The old man from the Age of Kodachrome 64, minus one third. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
erl Posted October 19, 2009 Author Share #9 Posted October 19, 2009 Adan, we aren't talking about someone with too much sun turning out pink. We are talking about the magenta cast on skin tones, like the pictures you posted on the other thread. And, Erl, your pictures show red desaturation in the facial tones in some of your shots. I assume you did this to get rid of magenta. These shots don't make it all right for me. Sorry. Again, I hope my M9 takes sufficiently long to get to me so these profiles are worked out. I hope it isn't an I/R problem. RickLeica, I totally accept that it is not 'right' for you. It is for me, and others concerned with the particular images. Regarding 'red desaturation' you refer to in my pics. Well I have to say "I don't know!" I did not deliberately desaturate anything. Also, I did not measure any colour content. I never do. Just my quirky way of working. I rarely work (these days) in a critical colour environment, but prefer what I consider natural colour, where possible. I differentiate between correct colour and natural colour. To me they are not the same. Sometimes radically different. Maybe that is where we are separating on opinion. As I said somewhere else (can't remember where), it is early days yet as you would expect for good profiles to be available for the M9. Remember the kerfuffle with the M8 profiles? Time will deliver you what you want presumably, so hang in there. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
erl Posted October 19, 2009 Author Share #10 Posted October 19, 2009 snipped: Another point that occurs to me is that my background is photojournalism/documentary. My subjects are not my "clients", so I don't have to worry about nailing some "ideal" skin tone the way a wedding or portrait pro does (for good reasons). I'm going for the effectiveness and truthfulness of the total picture, and if some guy who got too much sun yesterday comes out too pink - so be it. Andy, although I do have clients, they fit the same 'bag' you describe as yours. I think our tracks are parallel enough for a locomotive to travel. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Posted October 19, 2009 Share #11 Posted October 19, 2009 Erl, And, you and Adan can agree with each other that you "don't have to worry about nailing some "ideal" skin tone." I get that. You don't worry about it. But, skin tone that isn't magenta is high on my PP list of checks. I'll leave it here since I don't have an M9 yet to make any really meaningful comments. I guess I just find myself critical of the magenta problem because I had to deal with it on my M8. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
adan Posted October 19, 2009 Share #12 Posted October 19, 2009 Rick - in poking around on the Web to get a feel for what is an ideal caucasian skin hue, I ran across several references to "never let magenta be higher than yellow" in adjusting skin in professional studio portraits. But when I looked at the sample pix that matched that ideal, I would have sent the poor subjects in for liver biopsies - they looked "jaundiced". However... It is interesting that you note having magenta issues with the M8 as well. Most of those taking issue with the (usually not yet calibrated) M9 skin tones are saying "Oh, my M8 skin tones are so much better!" What we have not yet seen from anyone (including me) is a professional strobe-lit controlled-light studio portrait with the M9 and a good profile, with ColorChecker/gray card included. Available light is alway going to introduce some tints. I guess I'll have to try out the M9 self-timer and shoot my battle-scarred self. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sclamb Posted October 19, 2009 Share #13 Posted October 19, 2009 I read this a couple of years ago and it seems pretty good advice in general: help - How to get pleasing skin tones on prints Simon Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Posted October 19, 2009 Share #14 Posted October 19, 2009 Adan, I agree with you that it would be interesting to see a more controlled setting before anything is generalized about the M9. Many of the pictures on this forum are all over the place as far as available lighting color temp. that they are taken under. By the way, at this point in time I don't have issues with magenta on the M8. When I first got the M8 a couple of years ago I did for sure Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
adan Posted October 19, 2009 Share #15 Posted October 19, 2009 Simon - funny, that's the same site I found, and thought those tones were on the yellowish side. Obviously, I'm no substitute for Avedon or the Kodak "Shirley" - but here is an M9 studio-flash self-portrait. No color adjustments from what came out of the camera except white balance and color neutral adjustments for brightness, contrast, etc. And a profile based on the ColorChecker, rather than the default embedded M9 profile (which DOES produce pinker skin). 75 Summilux, ISO 200. Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here… Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! Link to post Share on other sites Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! ' data-webShareUrl='https://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/100675-m9-and-skin-tones/?do=findComment&comment=1081420'>More sharing options...
Mokkacream Posted October 19, 2009 Share #16 Posted October 19, 2009 I'm very satisfied with the skin-tones, that the M9 already produces together with ALR 2.5 and the Chromasoft M9 profil. Sometimes you can see a redish tone in light skins due to infrared sensitivity. The infrared light enhances the reflections of hemoglobin within the skin vessels. And the following 2 photos demonstrate ths even in a very special mixed light situation: daylight/tungsten direct and indirect through one orange and one red glass lamp above the table. AUTO WB M9, automatic WB ADLR 2.5: Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here… Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! 100% crop: manual WB on the "white" wall ADLR 2.5: Link to post Share on other sites Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! 100% crop: manual WB on the "white" wall ADLR 2.5: ' data-webShareUrl='https://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/100675-m9-and-skin-tones/?do=findComment&comment=1081505'>More sharing options...
Jamie Roberts Posted October 19, 2009 Share #17 Posted October 19, 2009 The color ratios on the site quoted above (while simplistic) are traditional for print: more yellow than magenta than cyan in Caucasian skin. Erl--in your shots the one with the accident has gone a bit overboard getting rid of red / magenta. You could add red back in (they're too cyan right now) and get back some of the life in the skin pretty easily. But all of Erl's and Andy's) look fine to me. I'm sure some people like more red or yellow, but these look good to me from a casual look. Andreas's are messed up--way too much magenta--and it has nothing to do with lighting or IR, IMO, but rather with ACR / LR's terrible profiles for the M9 right now. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Posted October 19, 2009 Share #18 Posted October 19, 2009 Adan... thank you. That looks fine. I'd even say it could have increased red and I'd still be fine. That makes me much more certain that I'll be happy with the M9. By the way, if you saw my work (some of it is on my site) you would laugh about me worrying about natural color. I consider color just one more dimension of the creative expression and I'll change it drastically to get the emotion or final result I want. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mokkacream Posted October 19, 2009 Share #19 Posted October 19, 2009 Andreas's are messed up--way too much magenta--and it has nothing to do with lighting or IR, IMO, but rather with ACR / LR's terrible profiles for the M9 right now. Jamie, admitting not having posted optimal photos to demonstrate natural skin tones in daylight, I would like to point out, that everything in the photos is reflecting the strong red and orange light sources. And despite them or even because of them, I was surpised, how nice they look to me. The photos reflect the real atmosphere, not the quality of the ALR profile (in this case the Chromasoft M9 profile). I guess, it would be impossible to produce a neutral looking picture under those circumstances, and for me it would't be desirable. It is like a photo of faces in front of a campfire in the evening. Those faces would not look natural/neutral but rather orange. You may look at this one, daylight through the window. I like the colours. ) http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/people/102770-look.html#post1083400 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
woodyspedden Posted October 20, 2009 Share #20 Posted October 20, 2009 Here is a shot essentially straight out of the camera. Processed with Raw Developer (One of the best imho) with no color changes made. I love these skin tones..........ymmv Woody Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here… Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! Link to post Share on other sites Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! ' data-webShareUrl='https://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/100675-m9-and-skin-tones/?do=findComment&comment=1082700'>More sharing options...
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