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M9 Color rendition on Nikon Df in LR 6?


Trielmar283550

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18 hours ago, Trielmar283550 said:

Hi,

I went on a safari with an M9 and a Nikon Df. The M9 colors pop, while the Df looks flat. I want to tweak the Df pictures towards M9 colors and sharpness to get a consistent look. Are there any LR presets or camera profiles which allow to emulate M9 colors? I use LR 6.14.

Best

TE

Tweak one representative one to your liking and save as a preset.

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I've worked the LR sliders on the Nikon pictures but could never come close to the overall look of the m9 photos or even worse get completely unrealistic results. 

I'll attach an M9 photo and in the next post a Df at the same situation (however 500mm) to compare.

I hoped someone out there had perhaps created an M9 profile or preset for LR with a color checker. There are some commercial presets but they seem rather artistic interpretatons than true to the M9 sensor's way of seeing the world.

Best

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here is the Df

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Complete misunderstanding of "camera profiles."

Which do not make one camera look like another, but correct a given camera's color (supposedly) to a universal standard - the "known colors" of an X-Rite/Macbeth Color Checker or similar color target.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ColorChecker

You won't get "M9" color by applying the M9 color profile to other cameras. Any more than a French-English dictionary can translate German to English. Starting from different points, a given profile will take you to different places. ;)

___________

Trielmar - There is far more difference between a Nikon Df and a Leica M9 than strictly the sensor (although there is a big difference there also); the color balance and contrast of the lenses (Nikkors look different from Leica lenses even on film), the in-camera processing to create color according to Leica's vs. Nikon's tastes, etc.

(One Leica user I know said of Nikon lenses - "They have plenty of contrast, but it's in all the wrong places.")

As to the sensor - CMOS (Df) vs. CCD (M9); Kodak/Leica's choices for the color Bayer filters on the sensor, vs. Nikon/Sony's; anti-aliasing filter (Nikon) vs no AA filter (Leica).

Kodak and Leica chose really deep saturated filters for the M9 (and M8). Which is why the high-ISO performance is so weak - the filters pass only the purest of colored light. Great color, but needs a lot of light to penetrate to the silicon.

I've tried matching Canon and Nikon cameras/lenses to Leica digitals (and for that matter, the CMOS M10 to the M9). The bottom line was the Nikon (D600) with a 300mm f/4 PF Nikkor was just too "wrong" (red, contrasty-yet-desaturated) to really get close. The Canon (5D2) with Canon lenses was a bit closer, and a Canon 5D2 with adapted Leica R lenses got the closest - needed only a little tweaking of contrast and saturation and default white-balance.

Go to this edition of my magazine, and look at the ice-racing story to see some color examples of using Leica R lenses (400/180/21) on a Canon 5D2. Mixed with M9 pictures. Hard to tell which was which (except for the long teles, obviously).

https://issuu.com/coloradoseen/docs/cs_03_2011

As starting points otherwise (and you can make these into a saved LR pre-set (not a profile) that you can then apply to your Nikon images whenever you want):

- check the overall color balance. Take the same picture with the Df and M9, and compare them using the same LR WB setting (e.g. 5000, tint 0). Does the Nikon "feel" yellower, greener, bluer or pinker?  Try using a cooler, greener WB with the Nikon.

- increase the saturation/vibrance sliders - I've found +20 (or more) on both of those are needed to get CaNikons even close to the M9.

- Try adding some contrast in the curves page (not the overall Contrast slider)

Sharpness is partly a hardware problem - you'd have to get a technician to remove the Df's blurring anti-alias filter to get the same resolution as an M9. Sharpening or "Clarity" settings can help somewhat, but can't really restore detail and edges already blurred by the filter.

https://kolarivision.com/articles/anti-aliasing-filter/

 

Edited by adan
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On my monitor the colours on that first shot are completely off... Far too blue and cyan. Small jpg, so posterized a bit.

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Edited to my memory of Africa, and imperfectly on a small jpg, so YMMV ;) Note that the M9 image has a bit of IR contamination.

 

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The vibrance setting creates an overdose of yellow, making the shot more "sunny" It is not an import parameter. Import as shot, them correct the colour balance, then set the highlight. contrast etc. panel,  Pull up the middle a bit in curves, maybe apply a bit of linear contrast, then set vibrance, saturation presence, dehaze, etc. Only sharpen in the end (in LR technically not a problem to do so earlier, but easier to judge on the finished image) In other words, work through the image systematically, mostly from top to bottom.

Don't go by trial and error, find some good tutorials on Internet or buy the Scott Kelby book that is written for your version of LR.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 8/28/2019 at 8:09 AM, Trielmar283550 said:

I've worked the LR sliders on the Nikon pictures but could never come close to the overall look of the m9 photos or even worse get completely unrealistic results. 

I'll attach an M9 photo and in the next post a Df at the same situation (however 500mm) to compare.

I hoped someone out there had perhaps created an M9 profile or preset for LR with a color checker. There are some commercial presets but they seem rather artistic interpretatons than true to the M9 sensor's way of seeing the world.

Best

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The M9 photo has a terrible green cast for reasons I can not explain.  First easy fix is run a WB on the elephants and see if you can them grey. If not happy,  run levels on each of RGB layers separately.  Capture One will do it in one step. Adobe requires hand work, but this always works.

Kelvin only corrects blue/yellow.  The camera has no MANUAL means to correct magenta/green.  This is the problem with K balance on any camera.

Nikons can manually adjust magenta/green.

Next time use Sun or better yet preset from a Why Bal card

 

Edited by tobey bilek
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  • 1 year later...

and also native tonality, dynamic range, CFA, signal processing, metadata the OEM choses to embed into the RAW file, chosen RAW editor and how it wishes to react to aforementioned metadata, signature of lenses used.

The actual base CCD/CMOS part (capture analogue data) is perhaps the most alike :D 

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Hi - thanks for picking up on this loose thread after a while.  For sure there are differences in what the M9 and the Df feed into LR. All I am looking for is a tool, a preset, a profile or at leas a suggestion of slider settings (or whatever) that I could apply to all Df shots in order to shift their colors more into the territory of the M9. When I do a book with the M9 and Df photos, I'd be happy if the look could be more consistent throughout. Is my understanding correct that a color checker would rather impose its own color scheme on any camera color rendering?

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"Impose its own color scheme" is a bit of an overstatement. In theory all it imposes is "accuracy."

It is like saying "my meter-stick imposes its own scheme of measuring distance."  Or "Newton's Laws impose their own scheme on whether I can fly by flapping my arms."

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The ColorChecker is just a measurement tool, developed by scientists/engineers as a way of measuring color and color reproduction, and the color delta ("∆" = change/error) introduced by any step in reproducing colors - lens, film, sensor, scanner, software, screen outputs, inks, dyes, etc. etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ColorChecker

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_difference

It has become a de facto common standard because it has worked since 1976 - IF one wants the colors in one's pictures to match "real life" as closely as possible. Or even know what "possible" is, using a given imaging chain.

It is just a more sophisticated version of the test chart bolted to the structure of the Mars Viking Lander in 1975 (and Kodak and other color reference charts dating back even to 1894), so that NASA engineers could calibrate images taken under the natural light on Mars.

http://www.donaldedavis.com/PARTS/MARSCLRS.html

"Chromotaxy scale" - Pier Andrea Sccardo. 1894

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_chart

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/714596-REG/Tiffen_EK1527654T_Q_13_Color_Separation_Guide.html/?ap=y&ap=y&smp=y&smp=y&lsft=BI%3A514&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI38zIqKOd8AIVcz6tBh0iEg7fEAQYASABEgK_XPD_BwE

It is, of course, true that humans often chafe under and rebel against all kinds of things "imposed" on us by reality. ;)

Edited by adan
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