In-camera JPEG cyan/magenta issues (*not* just the normal Italian Flag staining)

[wdahab]

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First of all, I know the first responses to this will be "don't use JPEG use RAW" and yes, I use RAW too. That said, this issue also shows up when use the play button for the camera to display the raw file in the camera, so it makes it difficult to assess my own picture quality in body. Also, I do enjoy the option of shooting in jpeg and this basically removes that as a viable option. 

The issue is that the in-body JPEG rendering causes massive cyan/magenta staining over the entire picture. Now I know there is often very faint cyan/magenta staining very lightly over most photos in RAW, due to the lens itself and the sensor, but this isn't that. Below I've attached a very specific example that makes it clear what's going on. The below is a DNG+RAW shot. One star is the camera jpeg, the other is raw converted in Apple Photos (with no adjustments). You can see that the camera jpg has very obvious magenta/cyan issues that carries into the navy area around it and rest assured it's in the entire image. This is in all jpgs the M11 takes, it makes jpg skintones so awful. It makes people look splotchy and sickly. It's also not subtle or only visible when you zoom in. It gives the whole JPG a bad cast. Basically makes the in-camera jpg setting broken. It's also not (or at least I can't see how it could be) a camera or lens specific issue because the RAWs look fine.

I chose the high-noise (ISO 1600), plain color example because it makes it easier to show a viewer what's going on. It's in all images down to about 800 ISO. So it's probably due to how the in-body jpeg engine handles noisy situations, but it's not inherent to how jpg's handle noise, inherently. The noise in the in-camera jpg, itself, gets rendered poorly, losing all the fine grain and going to splotchy. Again, makes me think it's the jpg engine.

Can anyone else confirm they see the same in-camera jpg rendering issues on their M11 and on their screen playback? And do previous M cameras (M10/M10R) do the same thing? Wondering if it is, indeed, just a bug, or something inherent in the Maestro chips. Or, forbid, somehow a bug just in my unit and everyone else is having no issue at all.

JPEG:

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Raw:

Edited January 30, 2022 by wdahab

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[Photoworks]

To me this looks like color noise, and the difference on what you are showing in not surprising. Processing the DNG can result in different results when setting NR and sharpening in software, in fact you can get different results in different applications.

Leica is usually conservative on noise reduction in camera, and not you can even set it to off.

What is you camera set to? in JPG setting. -1 - 0 or +1

I don't see a big problem if you need to zoom in to image 400% or more to see this noise, I am only seeing in my images at 1600 ISO and above

[wdahab]

So, it's definitely not color noise (at least not sensor color noise, obviously it's post-processed noise in the jpeg artifacting). If it were, you'd see it in the raws and in the noise itself. But these splotches are much larger than individual pixels, pretty clearly jpeg artifacts from the way that the jpeg algorithm batches sections together for compression. And yes, they are definitely in how the DNG is being processed, as the raws have absolutely no issues with it. My concern is that the M11 in-body DNG processing is doing it extremely poorly. And not just "we aren't prioritizing JPEGs" poorly, but making an error inherent to their processing choices. It occurs with JPG at -1, 0 and +1, already did that experiment.

Also, it doesn't only show up at 400% zoom, that zoom is just to make it easy to see on this forum. Literally the jpegs are, edge to edge, tone shifted everywhere. Skin tones especially are ruined in sooc jpeg. AT 100% viewing, skin tones look green and red, like they have a disease of some sort. 

[Daedalus2000]

6 hours ago, wdahab said:

So, it's definitely not color noise (at least not sensor color noise, obviously it's post-processed noise in the jpeg artifacting). If it were, you'd see it in the raws and in the noise itself. But these splotches are much larger than individual pixels, pretty clearly jpeg artifacts from the way that the jpeg algorithm batches sections together for compression. And yes, they are definitely in how the DNG is being processed, as the raws have absolutely no issues with it. My concern is that the M11 in-body DNG processing is doing it extremely poorly. And not just "we aren't prioritizing JPEGs" poorly, but making an error inherent to their processing choices. It occurs with JPG at -1, 0 and +1, already did that experiment.

Also, it doesn't only show up at 400% zoom, that zoom is just to make it easy to see on this forum. Literally the jpegs are, edge to edge, tone shifted everywhere. Skin tones especially are ruined in sooc jpeg. AT 100% viewing, skin tones look green and red, like they have a disease of some sort. 

I had a look and I also think it is color noise. The color noise is in the raw file as well but it is removed by the color noise setting in your raw processor, so maybe this is why you dont see it.

I tried the noise reduction for jpegs at 0 and +1 and although +1 seems to improve it, it is not as good as LR. So I think you are right, the jpegs don't seem to have very good color noise adjustment.

 

 

Edited January 30, 2022 by Daedalus2000

[wdahab]

Huh. It's certainly possible that's a form of color noise and I'm just misunderstanding some things. In my mind color noise is higher-frequency (individual pixels having noise, like the black speckles I see except in random colors). Regardless, it still seems like the JPEG processing in the Leica body should be handling it much better than that. I mean, I'm using Apple's raw engine (with Raw Power) which doesn't even formally support the M11 explicitly, and it's processing the raws like a champ. Even the untouched preview renders look spectacular.

[Daedalus2000]

15 hours ago, wdahab said:

Huh. It's certainly possible that's a form of color noise and I'm just misunderstanding some things. In my mind color noise is higher-frequency (individual pixels having noise, like the black speckles I see except in random colors). Regardless, it still seems like the JPEG processing in the Leica body should be handling it much better than that. I mean, I'm using Apple's raw engine (with Raw Power) which doesn't even formally support the M11 explicitly, and it's processing the raws like a champ. Even the untouched preview renders look spectacular.

Yes agreed. Have you tried removing color noise in the raw processing to see what is left and if it looks similar?

In any case the jpeg noise reduction needs some improvement for sure.

[wdahab]

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The more I look at it, the more I'm convinced it's not a "color noise" issue, or at least not the way it's being thought of above. It's 100% the in-body jpg engine messing up and introducing it's own color noise from either a flawed algorithm or from the JPG quality-standard being set to too low a threshold.

If you look at the raw star above it looks great without any noise reduction or post processing. That's just opened in Photos and saved as a JPG on my computer. If you squint really hard you can see a little underlying variation in it, maybe but honestly it needs no noise reduction. If the in-body JPGs came out looking like that raw image I'd be thrilled. The jpg star, which was processed in-body is amplifying the color noise on its own 1000x. I'm 100% sure this isn't the JPG failing to reduce present color noise and 100% sure this is the JPG engine creating it's own noise from a bad process. The compression algorithm is noticing the very, very slight color variations (smaller than I can even see really unless I'm really trying to spot them) and boosting the red and green tonality significantly on its own.

So there's no need to remove color noise in the raw processing because it's not there to remove. It only exists in the in-body rendered JPGs. The raws already look great without any processing on my computer.

On a tangent, I really can't express enough joy at how good the Apple Photos raw engine is with these raws. Raws taken outside in the snow do need a little work, of course, because of the massive dynamic range. But otherwise the initial previews it creates look almost exactly like I want my final products to look.

[Photoworks]

1 hour ago, wdahab said:

On a tangent, I really can't express enough joy at how good the Apple Photos raw engine is with these raws. Raws taken outside in the snow do need a little work, of course, because of the massive dynamic range. But otherwise the initial previews it creates look almost exactly like I want my final products to look.

Maybe you should know that all editing programs have preset instruction of noise reduction that varies on the ISO info in the DNG.

If you open the same DNG in different applications it will look different, Just because Apple Photos has an aggressive noise reduction does not mean that is not there.
If you just think about it the DNG is what the camera sees in the eyes of leica and the JPG is a derivate of it.