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Magenta Work-around for Capture One workflow

Jamie Roberts

By Jamie Roberts
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Jamie Roberts

Jamie Roberts

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Please everyone dig at this and comment.

 

Well, since I have an M8 (and--long and short--it sort of kicks my DMR's butt, and that's saying a lot, in so many ways) and we're all waiting for Leica to fix:

 

1) Neutral magenta problem in IR emitting light, especially tungsten.

2) Artifacts like streaking that might be related to IR

 

I thought I'd dig into making a really good workaround available for everyone who wants the camera now.

 

Once you have the thing you can easily see how people let the positives about the camera spill over the problems.

 

But this doesn't let Leica off the hook in the slightest. I've given them my confidence with my $$: I expect them to deliver a best-of-breed solution.

 

Ok. Soapbox off. The test and the rules? Taking my inspiration from Marc:

 

1) RAW process only for proofing. No excessive tweaking or "workflow backflips" just easy stuff a pro would do anyway.

 

2) Something available to C1 users from C1 is best (an included profile)

 

3) No filters on my Leica glass, thanks!

 

4) Something easily tweakable to the same level of colour fidelity and saturation as my Canon 5d.

 

5) GM Color checker plus IR reflective black jacket under Elinchrome studio flash modelling lights. Lots of IR there.

 

6) 5d shots as reference.

 

Got it? Nothing in PS to begin with, but output must have potential to be just as good as 5d (or better, preferably). Here we go...

 

First, the set up shot. The magenta mess we all know and hate.

 

1) M8 with 35 1.4 @ f4. ISO 320. C1 with M8 profile; WB off colour checker gray, film extra shadow profile for a worst-case scenario.

 

Yes, that jacket is black; the milk carton is purple / magenta:

 

L1012156_test_M8_generic.jpg

 

 

This is anything but neutral.

 

So I looked and looked for the best, most neutral existing profile in C1.

 

Turns out, perhaps not coincidentally, that the Phase One P30 Product Tungsten Easy Black profile is the one. It's the best as a workaround.

 

With Film Standard it's nearly completely neutral, but that's cheating a bit because you're closing up the shadows. Still, a useful thing to know.

 

There are some other Imacon profiles that are good, including the DMR default one that got me started doing this. But look at this. No change to anything but the profile itself.

 

2) same shot M8 with 35 1.4 @ f4. ISO 320. C1 with "Phase One P 30 Product Tungsten Easy Black" profile:

 

L1012156_test_Phase-One-P30.jpg

 

Not bad, eh?! And no Photoshop...

 

Ok. Now let's look at the 5D. The 5D has wonderfully saturated but neutral profiles made by ETC and Magne Neilson.

 

3) same shot Canon 5D with 50 Leica Summicron 2.0 @ f4. ISO 200. C1 with "ETC 5d V2 Hi-sat" profile:

 

IMG_4465_5d_summicron_50.jpg

 

Yes--that does looks pretty darned good, doesn't it? Gotta love that old Leica glass!

 

Magne's profiles are fantastic. Look at the yellow and orange saturation! That's not the camera--just compare the standard 5D profile with Magne's and you'll see a huge difference.

 

But--aside from Magne's deft touch with the yellow / orange side of things (which can actually make skin tones on the Canons look a bit off)--the main difference now is just saturation and BP in the profiles.

 

Here's the final M8 state with a C1 levels tweak and saturaion ++:

 

4) same shot M8 with 35 1.4 @ f4. ISO 320. C1 with "Phase One P 30 Product Tungsten Easy Black" profile + increase sat and minor BP / levels tweak:

 

M8_workaround_P1-p30-ps-sat.jpg

 

Ok, it's not perfect, but it's DARN close. The browns here are actually better than the 5d. You're also not missing any magenta saturation.

 

Yes, it's really not perfect. I feel the M8 is capable of a lot more once Leica fixes the underlying problem.

 

But I will use this without filters now. Not only is it good enough to proof, it's good enough to take forward to print.

 

Please let me know what you think of this. I'm really quite relieved this--and the IR cut filters--seem to work.

 

I want Leica to provide a real fix. They should:

 

1) fix the sensor defect, if possible, that causes this to begin with, along with whatever is causing the readout error for the "streaking" that mars high ISO performance.

 

2) hire ETC or someone capable to really create the best C1 profiles for the camera. C1 is a great program, but they just can't seem to get the profiling right the first time.

 

Hope this helps!

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Jamie Roberts

Jamie Roberts

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Try the P25 tungsten than increase saturation by 12 points, not bad

 

Guy--they're nearly the same, you're right. The P30 "easy black" profile just looked a wee bit more neutral on my monitor.

 

But even better, use the most black neutral one, then open up the profile editor and tweak yellow sat and orange sat. It's an easy tweak. I did it to match Magne's charts (since I don't have my own DCC).

 

The results are really quite nice. (I actually sent you a copy of the ICC profile by email, but I don't know if you can use it on the Mac).

 

Anyway, this'll keep me till Leica fixes, and it's just not an odious work-around at all.

 

UPDATE:

 

I played with the C1 profile and the CC for another 5 minutes.

 

Now the neutrals all are neutral; I tweaked oranges, yellows and greens till neutral gray now reads 128/128/128 in my RGB output space.

 

Most importantly, the magenta jacket is completely gone too.

 

So this means NO MORE TWEAKING!!

 

Here is my final with

 

Film standard. No extra exposure, contrast or levels.

 

This is the M8 with C1. WB--and nothing else.

 

L1012155_tweaked_final.jpg

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Jamie I found that profile I did not have it checked than did +12 . Looks pretty natural. need to find some other files to try also. The thing is this is also a Kodak sensor with no AA or IR filter on it. Need to check the IR part to be sure but Chuck said this to me the MF guys fight this alot

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Jamie Roberts

Jamie Roberts

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Jamie

are the large lego colors in the 5D correct?

 

If so, they really lose life in the M8. Even the first one looks off (as a grandfather, I get to keep my hand in on this stuff! :-)

 

Victor

 

Victor--it's not life they lose, it's just saturation and gamma tweaks ;) I'm not Magne Neilson, but check out the update and see if you like this better.

 

New--I just sent you a link, Victor. Try it out yourself!

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Jamie Roberts

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Jamie I found that profile I did not have it checked than did +12 . Looks pretty natural. need to find some other files to try also. The thing is this is also a Kodak sensor with no AA or IR filter on it. Need to check the IR part to be sure but Chuck said this to me the MF guys fight this alot

 

Yeah--the nice thing about it too is that you get a great, non-yellow saturated natural green out of it too.

 

I'm liking this more and more; just updated the thing in C1 to bring the neutrals into line and add a touch more zip to the primaries.

 

But magenta is gone gone gone!

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jonoslack

jonoslack

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Wonderful piece of work - it looks good and it's simple . . . . . until Leica fix it.

 

It reminds me of the early days of the Kodak 14n - except that in that case there were a number of really tricky problems (the dreaded Italian Flag for one) which varied from lens to lens.

 

It seems to me that if this can be treated like this, then it ought to be possible to produce a firmware fix which would (at least) make the problem insignificant for most purposes.

 

Have you tried it on a shot with banding?

 

kind regards

jono slack

jonathan slack - photographs

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hestoft

hestoft

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Thanks for the work on this! It looks like a somewhat simple C1 profile tweak may improve things a lot. In that vein, I tried to download version 3.7.6 several times over the last couple of days and it does not seem to be available on the Phase One site. Perhaps they are working on a fix as we speak.

 

Also, has anyone tried to make a custom profile for their camera with Color Eyes 20/20 or similar profiling software? I will give it a try on Monday and I have a feeling that it might do some good. I will try making a profile with both flash and tungsten just to see if that makes any difference in the results (I usually just use flash and have had good results with my Leaf Aptus and R-D1)

 

Ralf-Finn Hestoft

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canlogic

canlogic

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[quote name=

 

UPDATE:

 

I played with the C1 profile and the CC for another 5 minutes.

 

Now the neutrals all are neutral; I tweaked oranges' date=' yellows and greens till neutral gray now reads 128/128/128 in my RGB output space.

 

Most importantly, the magenta jacket is completely gone too.

 

So this means NO MORE TWEAKING!!

 

Here is my final with

 

Film standard. No extra exposure, contrast or levels.

QUOTE]

 

Excellent work, looks really good! Any chance you would like to share that profile?

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Jamie Roberts

Jamie Roberts

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Bruce--

 

Looks like C1 LE doesn't include all the profiles that C1 Pro does (I've used Pro for a long time).

 

Tim, I'm just having a couple of people look at the tweaks I made to the profile to see if it works for them, but I'll send you a copy to play with, too.

 

If they think it's good, then I'll post the workaround for people to get (or get it hosted somewhere) if that's possible, and for "testing purposes" it probably is.

 

Sound good?

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Jamie Roberts

Jamie Roberts

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Wonderful piece of work - it looks good and it's simple . . . . . until Leica fix it.

 

It reminds me of the early days of the Kodak 14n - except that in that case there were a number of really tricky problems (the dreaded Italian Flag for one) which varied from lens to lens.

 

It seems to me that if this can be treated like this, then it ought to be possible to produce a firmware fix which would (at least) make the problem insignificant for most purposes.

 

Have you tried it on a shot with banding?

 

kind regards

jono slack

 

jonathan slack - photographs

 

Jonathan,

 

Yes, I've tried it on the banding, but it doesn't help there. Exposing for the lights and pushing in the RAW converter helps the streaking though, which looks like it's keeping to a certain type of light.

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Jamie Roberts

Jamie Roberts

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Just a PS

Would it be worth putting an idiots guide to using this in a new thread - and then getting our lovely moderators to make it sticky?

 

kind regards

jono slack

 

Jono--

 

I'd be happy to put together an idiots guide. Not sure if they'd make it a sticky, but it's worth a try. Maybe I'll install C1 LE and see what I need to do ;)

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