mirekti Posted December 30, 2013 Share #81 Posted December 30, 2013 Advertisement (gone after registration) ...and the color checkers. No.2 is done by using X-Rite software, and No.4 by using Adobe's DNG profile editor. 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/218220-m-color/?do=findComment&comment=2498212'>More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted December 30, 2013 Posted December 30, 2013 Hi mirekti, Take a look here M Color. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
jaapv Posted December 30, 2013 Share #82 Posted December 30, 2013 After I bought a color checker, and created a custom profile I must say the colors look better. However, it wasn't as simple as creating a profile only. I also noticed Adobe's DNG Profile Editor created a different profile than the X-Rite's Color checker using the same color checker photo as a reference. I thought Adobe's should be better, but actually it was the X-Rite's one. For example, I have a stroller in a funky orange, and following three photos represent the way camera sometimes renders the color. One part of the stroller is lit by sun, and the other is in it's shade. The photos are cropped, but nothig was changed except: The first one is using Adobe Standard profile. The second one is custom profile created by using a color checker, and X-Rite software. The third one is custom profile using a color checker, and my custom settings of red hue +15, magenta hue +65, and luminance red -5. The last photo is pretty much the way it should look like. I understand that color temperature will change the color's hue, but should it shift it from orange to pink? Is this a problem with the raw engine or the firmware? I mean, the colors should be correct out of the color checker, but what I this is either firmware or raw engine is messing with it a bit. In the second set the stroller was again in the sun and in the shade, but the shift was not so strong. The third set represents a red car in the shade, and this is why I moved magenta's hue so much. Look how the side of the car is red, but the back is magenta. Why it renders it like this, and shifts the hue so much I don't have a clue. I would only expect that it should decrease the luminance, and maybe shift a hue a little bit. The last set represents color checker with the same settings as described above. All in all, my colors look much better now, but... Read up on metamerism Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mirekti Posted June 15, 2014 Share #83 Posted June 15, 2014 After I had been struggling a lot with different profiles, and was mostly unhappy with the M files color I installed Capture One, and voila, the colors are back. I am fine with the colors out of the box whereas in LR I wasn't even after creating custom profiles. The way Capture One renders M240 dng files is miles better than LR imho. I wondered why noone mentioned it before (or if someone did, it wasn't so obvious, at least that's what I had perceived). I wish Leica came with C1 instead of LR. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
lct Posted June 15, 2014 Share #84 Posted June 15, 2014 Did it many times here but there is too much yellow in the default "film" profiles i feel, so i prefer the "linear response" one personally. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbl Posted June 15, 2014 Share #85 Posted June 15, 2014 What is the X-Rite software for creating the profile? Is it just the LR plugin or is there something more? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mirekti Posted June 15, 2014 Share #86 Posted June 15, 2014 It's both, a plugin and stand alone tool. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjh Posted June 15, 2014 Share #87 Posted June 15, 2014 Advertisement (gone after registration) There is the ColorChecker Passport software that is even simpler to use than Adobe’s DNG Profile Editor. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
genefama Posted June 16, 2014 Share #88 Posted June 16, 2014 If you ask me the pictures of the fighters say it all. The M240 puts a warm cast over everything:—orange-yellowish, with narrow dynamic range and micro-contrast in the highlights and skin tones, robbing the image of presence, depth, and believability. It's not a problem of WB as much as color rendition. I find the M240 has a hard time with anything but ideal, softbox-like lighting. It's awful in sunlight. On the street or at a birthday party it can work, but for shoots with lots of images (or things where pleasing color rendition is crucial, like portrait or food photography) I find that the post-processing is too much of a quagmire for professional use. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
genefama Posted June 16, 2014 Share #89 Posted June 16, 2014 By the way, it's way easier to change cameras than it is to stop using Lightroom. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted June 16, 2014 Share #90 Posted June 16, 2014 Dynamic range?? Is 13.3 EV not enough for you? You'll be hard put to find significantly more.... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted June 16, 2014 Share #91 Posted June 16, 2014 Worth repeating at this point.... I'll let everyone in on a little secret: Cameras don't produce color - processing produces color. If you ran a roll of color film through your M2/3/4/5/6/7, and dropped it off at a random lab, and got crummy color in your slides or prints - rationally, would you blame the camera, or would you blame the lab? Digital photography (especially in the case of raw pictures) is no different. All the camera produces is a "latent image" of 1s and 0s on the flash-memory card - just as a film camera produces nothing but a "latent image" on the film. The final result is totally dependent on the processing. Which, for digital/raw, includes creating good color profiles for your camera. Yes, Leica and Adobe "provide" a single profile (either Embedded from Leica, or "Adobe Standard" from Adobe. But if you think you can trust the Leica or Adobe engineers, consider this: They give you a single profile. Here are just a handful of the possible spectra of light sources under which you might take pictures: http://www.lamptech.co.uk/Images/Illustrations/SO%20SPD's.jpg Now - does anyone in their right mind really think any single profile will work across all those spectra? So - at BEST - all they are giving you is a generic starting point for "approximately correct" color under generic (not necessarily "daylight") lighting. If you want really good color (and this has been true with every single camera I've used for raw shooting - Nikon, Canon, Leica, Sony....) - you have to make your OWN profile(s). Adobe (and Leica) make good tools - but I NEVER trust their canned profiles. It is about as safe (and smart) as believing the NSA or Google never read your emails.... YOU have to invest some brain oil and elbow grease (and a little money) to build a good profile (or, ideally, profiles, for different lighting). It isn't any different than film. A good professional-grade C-41 or E6 lab - every morning - runs a "control strip" through their chemicals. A control strip is a piece of film with a pre-exposed image (not unlike a Gretag/Macbeth Color Checker) of gray scales, color patches, and "shirley" (the Kodak/Fuji female models). Once the control strip is processed, it is taken to a color densitometer and all the gray and color patches (and possibly "shirley's" skin tones) are measured in red, green, and blue light. And the measurements are graphed and compared to standard values for those patches. If the test graph is slipping away from the correct values ("out of control") - which could mean color casts in the grays, or problems with the other colors or the skin tones - you know it is time to toss the chemicals and mix fresh. (And then run a new control check of the fresh chemicals before letting them touch anyone's pictures). A certain amount of work - but that is what it takes to run a color line that could be trusted to handle photographs by professionals. And analogous work is required when the color lab is in your computer - IF you want better than "slacker" results. You can't say anything useful about the color output of a given camera until you have done your "control strip" - which amounts to making a custom profile, using a ColorChecker target and your preferred software's calibration tool(s). You set the white balance off the middle gray patch; you check that there is no color "cross-over" (pink whites and green shadows, or vice versa) on the whole range of the gray scale; you measure the green primary color patch and compare the balance of red/green/blue to the "known correct values" - and CORRECT the software's rendering of that patch using the calibration hue and saturation sliders until the green is the "right" green, numerically; you repeat for the blue and red target patches (and yes, every canned Adobe profile I've used - for any camera - usually makes the reds too magenta and too saturated - and the PROFILE is the precise place to fix that, globally, for all your future pictures!!). When you are done, you have a revised profile for your camera, that will give you greens that are the right green, reds that are not too magenta or saturated, and blues/yellows that are likely far less saturated than the canned/standard/embedded profile. It is exactly like running a control strip through color chemicals and graphing the numerical results - except that you don't have to do it every day **, and you have the opportunity to "correct" the results immediately, rather than tossing the chemicals and starting over. BTW - I don't use the "automated" calibration systems like Gretag "Passport" - because they are still dependent on some code engineer's opinion of what the "right" color values should be. My experience is that that is a bad assumption. "Distrust, and verify!" ______ ** I DO re-profile my cameras every six months or so. Who knows whether digital sensors "age" and change output with time - but I assume they might, so I re-profile. I always check my profile measurements ever time something changes in my workflow - new computer, new OS version, new version of Photoshop. I asssume any of those MIGHT change the color output. _________________________ As a side note on magenta skin under yellow lighting: it is a natural outcome of white-balancing a digital image (from ANY camera). Reddish-yellowish subjects actually don't change color much under yellow light - they are already red-yellow, so the wavelengths they reflect (see spectra image linked above) are present in approximately correct amounts - so long as you leave the overall picture yellow. When you hit the eyedropper or "auto" white-balance button, you are adding a whole lot of artificial BLUE value to EVERY pixel (not just the supposedly white and gray ones) - and if you add blue to red; yep, you get magenta. That's basic color theory: http://www.d.umn.edu/~mharvey/colorwheel.jpg A good custom calibration profile for yellow light (tungsten and its replacements) will move the red-hue slider much further towards yellow than a "daylight" profile will. e.g. for my M9 profile(s) in Camera Raw, the red hue calibration slider is set to: +10 (more yellow-ish reds) in my daylight profile +25 (even MORE yellow-ish reds) in my tungsten/yellow light profile Totally as an aside, if you have Photoshop or another program that allows you to see the individual color channels, try this little experiment to see what white-balancing does, and just how much it has to mess with the pixel data for a simple correction of yellow indoor lighting. (And you wonder why the M - or any camera - ends up with skewed reds! Here's a sample (M9). Under yellow light, there was virtually NO blue image recorded. When I white-balance it, I am amplifying "virtually nothing" to make an approximation of equal amounts of blue/red/green. Note how MUCH blue had to be added to the skin tones - they would have been very magenta except for my "correcting" profile for yellow light. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
genefama Posted June 16, 2014 Share #92 Posted June 16, 2014 Dynamic range might measure as good, but, in my experience, not in the highlights. They go hot and become unrecoverable much more easily than they do with my Mark 3 or other cameras (I notice Ken Rockwell reports the same thing, for what it's worth). It seems to happen differently in different color channels. As far as cameras and profiles and all that, this is the quagmire I'm talking about. It takes me a lot of effort to get decent-looking color out of the M240. And when I do, it's with a mildly stylized look. I could care less whether this is because of profiles, software, or hardware. I just want it to work and be able to trust it—and right now I can't. A lot of big jobs require OOC files with not much, if any, opportunity for processing. When I absolutely need to get great IQ, I reach for a different body. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
bocaburger Posted June 16, 2014 Share #93 Posted June 16, 2014 Worth repeating at this point.... Agreed, cameras don't produce color, processing does. But digital cameras can also do processing, therefore it's really a pointless bit of semantics. In the days of film, I had a good lab I could trust, which left me free to concentrate on taking pictures, which is all I enjoy about photography. I like going places, seeing things, meeting people, and taking photographs. I despised wet darkroom work and I despise digital postprocessing. Not just find it annoying or tedious. Despise it. So while I understand that no digital camera is going to process every shot exactly to my taste, I do appreciate a camera whose in-camera processing algorithms, white balance, etc. leave as little post work for me as possible. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
lct Posted June 16, 2014 Share #94 Posted June 16, 2014 I do appreciate a camera whose in-camera processing algorithms, white balance, etc. leave as little post work for me as possible. You're not alone but in my view at least, the M240 is not the best camera for that. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted June 16, 2014 Share #95 Posted June 16, 2014 Agreed, cameras don't produce color, processing does. But digital cameras can also do processing, therefore it's really a pointless bit of semantics. In the days of film, I had a good lab I could trust, which left me free to concentrate on taking pictures, which is all I enjoy about photography. I like going places, seeing things, meeting people, and taking photographs. I despised wet darkroom work and I despise digital postprocessing. Not just find it annoying or tedious. Despise it. So while I understand that no digital camera is going to process every shot exactly to my taste, I do appreciate a camera whose in-camera processing algorithms, white balance, etc. leave as little post work for me as possible. It is not that I don't rcognise the colour problem with yellow/orange under tungsten or harsh sunlight,(believe me, I've seen plenty of that), but I have a remedy. The greycard colour balance on the M works excellently. It neuralizes the shot completely. Normally I find the colour too cool, so I boost the temperature by 200 in a batch process, and all shots are near-spot on. Burnt highlights are just a matter of getting the in camera colour balance right and exposing for the highlights. Lift up the shadows, in an action or a droplet and you can do each shot in seconds without relying on out of camera jpgs which, albeit better than M8 and M9, are still not industry-leading by quite a margin. This camera appears not to be designed for a jpg workflow. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mirekti Posted June 17, 2014 Share #96 Posted June 17, 2014 I don't care much about jpegs, but I'm still surprised to see so much difference in LR vs C1. This is the same file, nothing was changed except the crop, and white balanced on second square. LR, and C1 both, linear curve (even though I like the punch C1 gives with it's film standard curve). I tried with the LR profiles, it comes close, but not happy at the end (this is I guess subjective), it just doesn't render the files to my taste. I bet Leica technicians used C1 when they tested the colors 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/218220-m-color/?do=findComment&comment=2612212'>More sharing options...
woorob Posted June 17, 2014 Share #97 Posted June 17, 2014 Which set is which? FWIW, the exposures look a bit different between the two sets. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mirekti Posted June 17, 2014 Share #98 Posted June 17, 2014 Which set is which? FWIW, the exposures look a bit different between the two sets. The left one is C1. I noticed the exposure difference. It is the same file, and not sure whether LR overexposed it for a bit, or C1 underexposed it. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
genefama Posted June 17, 2014 Share #99 Posted June 17, 2014 Thanks Jaap, I'm going to try to do a greycard and shoot to the left of the histogram on your advice. Gene Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Black Posted June 17, 2014 Share #100 Posted June 17, 2014 The left one is C1. I noticed the exposure difference. It is the same file, and not sure whether LR overexposed it for a bit, or C1 underexposed it. C1's standard S curve is pretty aggressive and jacks up the highlights quite a bit. In turn the highlight recovery seems so useful, but it's just un-jacking the highlights the S curve boosted in the first place. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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