M11-P advice for achieving the best colour accuracy

[lct]

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4 minutes ago, hdmesa said:

[...] a camera that consistently biased should be addressed [...]

Or not if the bias is pleasing and is easy to adjust in PP.

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[otto.f]

5 minutes ago, lct said:

Or not if the bias is pleasing and is easy to adjust in PP.

For that price where other brands can deliver neutral colors for 5x less of the price

Edited October 21, 2024 by otto.f

[hdmesa]

9 minutes ago, lct said:

Or not if the bias is pleasing and is easy to adjust in PP.

No, that's not an excuse, sorry. There should not be a tint bias that is so far off from neutral. 

At least it doesn't affect the M11-D I have, which is extremely neutral. Only a rare occasion when the WB is way off.

[lct]

I don't think it is a matter of price or accuracy but of tastes in the first place. I've been using a Fuji body a couple years ago and did not like its color rendition while i must prefer that of the M11 over it but also over my M240. The sound of a Steinway piano is not more accurate than a Pleyel's, it is different.

Edited October 21, 2024 by lct

[hdmesa]

1 minute ago, lct said:

I don't think it is a matter of price or accuracy but of tastes in the first place. I've been using a Fuji body a couple years ago and did not like its color rendition while i must prefer that of the M11's over it but also over my M240. The sound of a Steiway piano is not more accurate than a Pleyel's, it is different.

Accurate white balance is not a matter of taste, neither with temperature nor tint. The application of proper color science is not voodoo.

[lct]

23 minutes ago, hdmesa said:

Accurate white balance is not a matter of taste, neither with temperature nor tint. The application of proper color science is not voodoo.

Not far 😄 Why do you think people praise the Leica look or prefer the colors of, say, Foveon sensors? Colors are a subjective matter and as the Romans said, "Coloribus non disputandum" 😎

[hdmesa]

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2 minutes ago, lct said:

Not far 😄 Why do you think people praise the Leica look or prefer the colors of, say, Foveon sensors? Colors are a subjective matter and as the Romans said, "Coloribus non disputandum" 😎

Oh, I agree with "general color" being a preference, and I have major opinions on that as I'm sure most do.

What I'm talking about is when you have a camera with a consistent WB tint bias that is quite far off from neutral (as can be proven by including a white balance card in the photo then using the eyedropper in LRC/C1). Some M11 units (mostly early units) can be very far off from neutral with regard to WB tint. But some M11 units are not far off at all.

https://whibal.com

You mentioned Fujifilm earlier – The original GFX 50S/50R had a massive magenta tint bias. But the Fujifilm cameras also have a WB shift feature, so I would just move the tint bias to be more green, and the problem was solved for me.

[lct]

I respect what you say but we don't see those things the same way. Look below the same crops under different color profiles. I seem to have posted this already but i don't remember where. Which one do you prefer, the M11 profile or the Matrix profile? Personally i don't see any magenta bias in either of them. Just a bit of red oversaturation that i don't like much on the red flower but i prefer it on the yellow one. Easy to correct in PP if needed so, please Mr Leica, don't change anything to that.

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[geotrupede]

9 hours ago, jaapv said:

There are dual-illuminant profiles. 

'The closest are profiles for two different lighting scenarios that interpolate in between.'

 

[hdmesa]

54 minutes ago, lct said:

I respect what you say but we don't see those things the same way. Look below the same crops under different color profiles. I seem to have posted this already but i don't remember where. Which one do you prefer, the M11 profile or the Matrix profile? Personally i don't see any magenta bias in either of them. Just a bit of red oversaturation that i don't like much on the red flower but i prefer it on the yellow one. Easy to correct in PP if needed so, please Mr Leica, don't change anything to that.

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Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

I don’t see magenta bias in those images. What I’m taking about, for example, is sky where the clouds are clearly not white but rose tinted and the blue sky is too purple.

Just asking for a menu option to allow shifting of WB globally. You don’t have to use it. Even outside of magenta bias, such an option is very useful.

[jaapv]

The basic colour out of all Leica camera models ( and Nikon,and Canon, and Sony etc. )  is different. The worst outlier was the M240; it took me a month to get it to my taste. 

[pippy]

6 hours ago, lct said:

I don't think it is a matter of...accuracy but of tastes in the first place...

With the greatest of respects, lct, this is precisely where the point raised by the OP is, latterly, being completely ignored.

What the OP requires more than anything else IS colour-accuracy and not just as a matter "of tastes". They are trying to display their artworks as accurately as possible. Colour-accuracy - for potential buyers - is absolutely of paramount importance.

Philip.

[lct]

16 hours ago, hdmesa said:

I don’t see magenta bias in those images. What I’m taking about, for example, is sky where the clouds are clearly not white but rose tinted and the blue sky is too purple.

Just asking for a menu option to allow shifting of WB globally. You don’t have to use it. Even outside of magenta bias, such an option is very useful.

I would not mind too much although the more simple a menu the more i like it but learning how to set WB could serve in the first place. We've been discussing this so often that i wonder how the horse can still breathe. Recently:  

 

[hdmesa]

1 hour ago, lct said:

I would not mind too much although the more simple a menu the more i like it but learning how to set WB could serve in the first place. We've been discussing this so often that i wonder how the horse can still breathe. Recently:  

 

We only have control over the full WB in post. We don’t have the option to manually set WB tint in camera do we? Exactly what learning do you think we all need? I’ve already mentioned how we all know how to do this in post. I feel like I’m arguing with a fence post!

[lct]

39 minutes ago, hdmesa said:

We only have control over the full WB in post. We don’t have the option to manually set WB tint in camera do we? Exactly what learning do you think we all need? I’ve already mentioned how we all know how to do this in post. I feel like I’m arguing with a fence post!

I don't know what "we" need as almost all my WBs have been set in post for 20+ years so i don't need anything personally. For those doing otherwise they may follow this advice by @Jamie Roberts below:

 

Edited October 22, 2024 by lct

[LBJ2]

21 hours ago, hdmesa said:

Pretty much everyone complaining about the magenta bias knows how to correct it, but a camera that consistently biased should be addressed. But Leica can't address it globally, because as was demonstrated previously, each M11 gets its own WB bias numbers from the factory written into the DNG. So the only "solution" if there is one would be to add a menu option allow global WB temperature and tint offset like Fujifilm does. 

Interesting. Seems the longer this issue remains uncorrected the more info people find out about what's behind it. Just curious who demonstrated and where what you wrote "Leica can't address it globally, because as was demonstrated previously, each M11 gets its own WB bias numbers from the factory written into the DNG." ? *I must have missed this discussion. 

Also, I see a few white balance references with values assigned in the EXIF e.g. "White Level" and "WB RGB Levels" do you know which value represents the unique WB Bias value for the camera? 

[hdmesa]

23 minutes ago, LBJ2 said:

Interesting. Seems the longer this issue remains uncorrected the more info people find out about what's behind it. Just curious who demonstrated and where what you wrote "Leica can't address it globally, because as was demonstrated previously, each M11 gets its own WB bias numbers from the factory written into the DNG." ? *I must have missed this discussion. 

Also, I see a few white balance references with values assigned in the EXIF e.g. "White Level" and "WB RGB Levels" do you know which value represents the unique WB Bias value for the camera? 

I had missed seeing the post about this, too, until recently:

 

[Panchenlama]

On 10/19/2024 at 4:15 PM, pippy said:

Thanks for the colour-checker shot. Your colour-balance is miles out and because the RGB all have different values we are in that 'Tertiary' area which is why there is a brownish tinge.

I took the liberty of downloading your Colour-checker picture. Here are the results when it was opened / adjusted in Ps.

As shot. Note RGB readings (from grey box third from left) are 190 / 179 / 185;

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In the version of Ps which I normally use there is a simple 'Remove Colour Cast' tool (NCT is the 'key' short-cut) which involves using the Dropper Tool. Here is the above pic after dropper was used on same grey box. Readings are now 181 / 181 / 181;

 

The image, as can be seen, is very flat (hence the 'muddy-looking' white behind the checker) so the next stage is to adjust contrast-levels.We are looking for a neutral near-white somewhere (RGB in the 240's) and a neutral mid-tone (blacks should be well down too).

In the 'Levels' dialogue box the brighter end of the scale (to the right) has been taken to 241; mid-point left as-is and dark end raised to 9. Here are two grabshots of the reworked image. Top shows readings from the white square and second from the 3rd from left as usual.

The white readings - 245 / 251 / 249 - are a bit off but it's quite usual for the whiter squares to discolour either through age or else just getting slightly dirty. Grey levels are neutral at 190 / 190 / 190;

 

It goes without saying that although this process only takes a minute or so it's far better to zero-in colour-wise before you start to shoot. There's a phenomenon called Crossed-Curves where by adjusting the colour-balance to correct one cast the result is that all the other colours will also be altered which is Not a Good Thing...

As said previously I'm not familiar with the more recent versions of Lr / C1 but surely there is a way to dial-in the correct balance as discussed in post #22?

Philip.

Hi Philip,

Thanks again for all your input on this matter it's really been incredibly helpful and also enlightening. I've been away in China and unable to respond until now. 

I've been experimenting with my new C1 and so far I like it much more than LR. Using the colour balance tool (rather than the WB sliders) I've managed to salvage these brown tinged photos, which is great because the paintings have now left the studio so I can't reshoot them. The colour balance tool in C1 seems much better for solving this particular problem than the WB sliders and using your guidance I aimed for a result where the back wall behind the painting reads as 240 240 240 in RGB values. I then boosted the contrast as you suggested and the results, while I wouldn't say they are absolutely perfect, are now very good and perfectly usable. Strangely, if I go through the same process using the white square on the colour checker as my guide (rather than the back wall), then the results are slightly off, also if I use the colour checker to create an ICC profile and apply that as detailed above, the results are off as well. I don't understand why. The colour checker is brand new and has no dirt, fingerprints or anything else on it. 

I agree with you that this isn't great however and that ideally I want photos straight out of camera that as far as possible have the correct colour balance. I looked again at my photos from last year and the results straight out of camera using the Fuji x100f were great, nearly perfect, I just imported them, made a dedicated profile using the colour checker, applied it and bang, no further adjustments required and the changes made by the colour checker profile were absolutely minimal. The only thing that changed between that session and this one was the camera (Fuji x100f - Leica M11), everything else, including all the settings, was exactly the same, and yet the results were so different, I don't get it...

Please let me know if you have any suggestions for how to try to solve this next time I shoot, I will use a tether next time so I hopefully I can adjust settings in camera until I get something that looks decent. The M11 unfortunately doesn't allow you to adjust the green/magenta shift in camera like you can, so I'm not sure how it's going to work. You can adjust the green/magenta shift with the fuji (which I still have), but I didn't need to last time, the results were fine with it set to zero. Maybe I'll shoot with the Fuji as well next time to have two sets of results.

Do you think need to buy a different camera for shooting paintings? For the record I've taken 1000's of 'normal' photos out and about with the M11 and the results have been fantastic, exceptional, no brown tinge or low contrast and I also haven't noticed any particular magenta bias that everyone keeps banging on about. I feel like maybe I did something wrong on this shoot, I just don't know what.

Can I also ask you a quick question about using an incident meter? If I take a reading of the painting on the wall and I get iso 64, f5.6, 30, for example, do those settings stay the same if the camera is positioned 1 metre away from the painting and then also 3-4 metres away from it? 

Thank you!

Frederic

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[pippy]

14 minutes ago, Panchenlama said:

...Can I also ask you a quick question about using an incident meter? If I take a reading of the painting on the wall and I get iso 64, f5.6, 30, for example, do those settings stay the same if the camera is positioned 1 metre away from the painting and then also 3-4 metres away from it?...

Hello, Frederic, and I trust you had a wonderful time in China!?

I'm quite literally just about to head out the door so will try to respond to some points you raise some time tomorrow but as far as this last question goes; the exposure settings will be the same regardless of where the camera is positioned.

Philip.

[geotrupede]

On 11/10/2024 at 6:32 PM, Panchenlama said:

Can I also ask you a quick question about using an incident meter? If I take a reading of the painting on the wall and I get iso 64, f5.6, 30, for example, do those settings stay the same if the camera is positioned 1 metre away from the painting and then also 3-4 metres away from it? 

The incident meter reads the amount of light that lands on its sensor. So if you measure with the meter flat on a painting, you get the amount of light landing on the painting. And that amount of light is not affected by the camera position so you can keep the same settings as indicated at any distance knowing that those settings will expose correctly.

The above assumes that lighting is not mounted on top of the camera and that the camera and you do not block the light.

g.

PS silly question, are you shooting raw or jpg?