wlaidlaw Posted November 19, 2009 Share #1 Posted November 19, 2009 Advertisement (gone after registration) After using the M9 for a few weeks now, my only minor reservation is that the AWB is not yet as good as the M8 became. I find it sets the colour temperature a bit too high for indoors by about 200-300º and lower light shots and too low for outdoors by about 300-400º, particularly in shots in anything other than noon day bright sun. Now this is pretty easy to rectify in either C1 or any other RAW developer but if you are running a quick batch convert, you have to check and tweak the CT's individually. With the M8, in general you can get away with being lazy on this and leave any minor tweaking to PS at a later stage. What do others think? I am sure that WB will improve with the next iteration of the firmware. The M8's improved from almost unusable to really very good. Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted November 19, 2009 Posted November 19, 2009 Hi wlaidlaw, Take a look here M9 Auto White Balance - work in progress?. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
jaapv Posted November 19, 2009 Share #2 Posted November 19, 2009 I must confess I haven't even looked at the results of the AWB, but I do find that the M9 handles colour quite differently from the M8, undoubtedly because of the different Bayer filter. I guess we have to adjust our habits.. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
holgerf Posted November 19, 2009 Share #3 Posted November 19, 2009 After using the M9 for a few weeks now, my only minor reservation is that the AWB is not yet as good as the M8 became. I find it sets the colour temperature a bit too high for indoors by about 200-300º and lower light shots and too low for outdoors by about 300-400º, particularly in shots in anything other than noon day bright sun. Now this is pretty easy to rectify in either C1 or any other RAW developer but if you are running a quick batch convert, you have to check and tweak the CT's individually. With the M8, in general you can get away with being lazy on this and leave any minor tweaking to PS at a later stage. What do others think? I am sure that WB will improve with the next iteration of the firmware. The M8's improved from almost unusable to really very good. Wilson When I made some quick "test shots" at Meister on 9/9/09 I also made the experience that the M9 behaves different than the M8. As I am very satisfied with today’s AWB of the M8 this would be a point preventing me from buying the M9 right now. So I too am also very interested in the experience of M9 owners. Best Holger Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mwilliamsphotography Posted November 19, 2009 Share #4 Posted November 19, 2009 Have to admit that I almost never use AWB unless in perfect outdoor conditions. It takes 2 seconds to set the WB manually and just leave it there until the light temp changes significantly. Marc Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted November 19, 2009 Share #5 Posted November 19, 2009 When I made some quick "test shots" at Meister on 9/9/09 I also made the experience that the M9 behaves different than the M8. As I am very satisfied with today’s AWB of the M8 this would be a point preventing me from buying the M9 right now. So I too am also very interested in the experience of M9 owners. Best Holger As I said, Holger, the M9 renders colours differently from the M8. The AWB,seems to be quite decent, certainly not bad. For me, however, it is of very minor interest as I use RAW anyway, and as I find colour very important I will be tweaking it to my taste in any shot I process anyway. And take a look at Bill's last iamges in this thread: http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/leica-m9-forum/106551-m9-vs-m8-pix-redux.html#post1126019 After post-processing it is very hard to tell the colour difference between M8 and M9. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris_tribble Posted November 19, 2009 Share #6 Posted November 19, 2009 Personally I have no problems with AWB on the M9. I've just done a shoot in dreadful light (Downing Street and then on to a Youth theatre near the Oval in London, shooting the M9 alongside the 5D2. M9 was MUCH better in neon and mixed light than the 5D2 and much easier to fix in post. Examples below: 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/104219-m9-auto-white-balance-work-in-progress/?do=findComment&comment=1122879'>More sharing options...
wlaidlaw Posted November 19, 2009 Author Share #7 Posted November 19, 2009 Advertisement (gone after registration) Chris, What are you converting in? Maybe this is a C1 V5.0.1 Beta issue, which is what I am using at the moment. In low light indoors, I am getting very warm tones on some of these and reddish faces. I took quite a lot of photos at Pompeii last Friday and the WB set the CT at around 4800º on a hazy sunny day around midday. I would have expected it to be nearer 5500º. I seem to get more consistent WB with the 35 ASPH Summilux than I do with the MATE. Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted November 19, 2009 Share #8 Posted November 19, 2009 It seems quite possible that you are right in this supposition, Wilson. I see very few problems in C1.4.8.3 either. I would like to point out a problem I have run into and that seems to be in Chris' photo as well. Black faces block up very easily. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wlaidlaw Posted November 19, 2009 Author Share #9 Posted November 19, 2009 It seems quite possible that you are right in this supposition, Wilson. I see very few problems in C1.4.8.3 either. I would like to point out a problem I have run into and that seems to be in Chris' photo as well. Black faces block up very easily. Jaap, I think we may have become used to the expanded dark zones and blown out light zones of the M8 8 bit square root compressed DNG's. I certainly notice much more detail on clouds with the M9 and seem to be having to use shadow recovery quite a bit more (the C1 V5 Pro tool is a much more subtle instrument than the the rather blunt PS CS4 one). However all the data is there and as with the M8, I am always staggered at how much detail you can pull out of apparently black shadows. Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamie Roberts Posted November 19, 2009 Share #10 Posted November 19, 2009 Wilson... I've never seen a colorimetrically accurate AWB in any camera to date, though most of them get open shade alright (though it's more consistent and faster in post if you just set the thing to shade or to a K value I've also never seen one that does skin tones properly or consistently, even if it's close to "correct." So my workflow is different; I adjust (and copy and paste) WB values for a set of same-light shots in the RAW converter, and mostly ignore AWB. This is very fast. More specifically, I try to get it right (meaning consisntent) in camera with a custom WB then tweak WB, contrast and color in the RAW converter for skin tones. That saves me from a lot of time messing with Photoshop. So this is workflow dependent; I wouldn't expect the M9 to have great AWB (but then neither does anyone else IMO). Interesting, though, that it's apparently "worse" than the M8's (which I also didn't care about). Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamie Roberts Posted November 19, 2009 Share #11 Posted November 19, 2009 It seems quite possible that you are right in this supposition, Wilson. I see very few problems in C1.4.8.3 either. I would like to point out a problem I have run into and that seems to be in Chris' photo as well. Black faces block up very easily. In Chris's photo that's pure light fall-off Jaap--look at the "white" card on the left-hand subject's chest. Not really "white" is it? Doesn't look like optical vignetting to me, but that "white" card is coming under 128 R so it's way underexposed (and so is his face). Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted November 19, 2009 Share #12 Posted November 19, 2009 That is true, Chris, but still, I have hundreds of photo's from Africa from the M8 and now a bunch from the M9, all in the same sh****y light, and the M8 ones are easier to correct I find. The M9 ones have more trouble with colour shift when dodging or doing shadows-highlight. Maybe due to the C1 profile needing to be tweaked. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wlaidlaw Posted November 19, 2009 Author Share #13 Posted November 19, 2009 That is true, Chris, but still, I have hundreds of photo's from Africa from the M8 and now a bunch from the M9, all in the same sh****y light, and the M8 ones are easier to correct I find. The M9 ones have more trouble with colour shift when dodging or doing shadows-highlight. Maybe due to the C1 profile needing to be tweaked. I agree. I think it is a combination of the camera WB and profiles in the developers. With C1 V. 4.8.3, you could be extraordinarily lazy with M8 files and just change the profile to M8 + UV/IR on the first photo and copy to all the others and then batch convert to TIFFS (I use 16 bit and Prophoto colour space as my default). Apart from levels and maybe a bit of a tweak on shadows and highlights, 95%+ of the photos are good. The M9 files need a lot more handling at the developer stage to get good consistent results. I have not yet done some manual WB using my Expodisc but the manual WB's I tried in evening light on grey surfaces during the week-end on Capri came out very blue and were much worse than AWB. I think I am right in saying that when we took the M8 firmware updates apart, we found that the AWB controlled more than just the colour temperature but also tints. I would assume that the M9 is the same. Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
holgerf Posted November 20, 2009 Share #14 Posted November 20, 2009 As I said, Holger, the M9 renders colours differently from the M8. The AWB,seems to be quite decent, certainly not bad. For me, however, it is of very minor interest as I use RAW anyway, and as I find colour very important I will be tweaking it to my taste in any shot I process anyway. And take a look at Bill's last iamges in this thread: http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/leica-m9-forum/106551-m9-vs-m8-pix-redux.html#post1126019 After post-processing it is very hard to tell the colour difference between M8 and M9. I agree totally with you and yes it it easy do tweak color in pp. However I really appreciate a situation in which I CAN tweak instead of MUST tweak. I remember well the awful AWB of the M8 in the first year before Leice rewrote the whole AWB software: it was a nightmare because we HAD to tweak too many images. Now in my workflow with Aperture and the M8’s profile I very seldom have to adjust color. I hope that this situation can be reached by upcoming firmware updates. Best Holger Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris_tribble Posted November 20, 2009 Share #15 Posted November 20, 2009 Gentlemen - I've just picked up on Jaap's comment and it's made me look back at the JPEGs I posted and at the originals. My worry now is that the "blocking" is nothing to do with the images I'm getting on screen but all to do with JPEG rendering. I've hit a real problem with a batch of 300 images I'm currently preparing for a client. VERY low light - shooting at 2500 on the 5D2 and 1250 on the M9. In LR at 100% the images are good. When I process as full resolution JPEGS all the images seem to have overly clipped blacks. QUESTION - are any of you able to advise on how best to deal with this? Really grateful for any advice as I need to get these off via ftp as soon as possible. I give an example below. It looks good on screen and when I print - terrible when converted to JPEG. Thanks! 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/104219-m9-auto-white-balance-work-in-progress/?do=findComment&comment=1123665'>More sharing options...
wlaidlaw Posted November 20, 2009 Author Share #16 Posted November 20, 2009 Chris, Would your client accept JPEG2000 16 bit files, which have a wider dynamic range? I am guessing that the linear compression of the 8 bit JPEG file is at the core of the problem. Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted November 20, 2009 Share #17 Posted November 20, 2009 I agree totally with you and yes it it easy do tweak color in pp. However I really appreciate a situation in which I CAN tweak instead of MUST tweak. I remember well the awful AWB of the M8 in the first year before Leice rewrote the whole AWB software: it was a nightmare because we HAD to tweak too many images. Now in my workflow with Aperture and the M8’s profile I very seldom have to adjust color. I hope that this situation can be reached by upcoming firmware updates. Best Holger Well, I hope Sean will forgive me for saying this, but he rates M9 white balance on the same level as the M8. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wlaidlaw Posted November 20, 2009 Author Share #18 Posted November 20, 2009 Chris, Update - JPEG2000 has obviously died the death as a format. It is no longer offered as a save option on CS4 (as it was on older versions of PS CS) for 16 bit files, so this is not an option. Have you tried to see if the progressive option on save of 8 bit JPEG's improves matters. Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted November 20, 2009 Share #19 Posted November 20, 2009 I doubt that it is the Jpg conversion - I think it has to do with the new Bayer conversion of the reds. Black skin colour masks the intensity of the component colours - one of the problems with RGB is that it attempts to render colours by adjusting the luminance - which means that adjusting the brightness in RGB can shift the colour. I found that by doing the contrast adjusting, including dodging and burning, in the luminance channel without touching the colour channels in LAB I got better results. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mauribix Posted November 20, 2009 Share #20 Posted November 20, 2009 Chris, in my experience i tried to output the files with Adobe RGB instead of the usual SRGB (especially for black skin tones). It's up to the net then to reproduce a smaller gamma (compress it to srgb), and that's more gentle with black skin tones than our usual workflow including SRGB conversion for the web. My friend William Palank noted a slight green cast then which I couldn't see at first. Maybe that's the thing to adjust spending a bit of time if you adopt my explanation. Let me know, maurizio Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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