Should I revisit NEX with NEX6? Skin tone jpegs were not good for me with 5N

I was not happy with skin tones with the 5N and the 16mm or the kit zoom or the 1.8 Zeiss a year ago.  I am interested in the NEX again for its compactness, but is the NEX 6 producing similar jpeg skin tones or did Sony change something.  People looked yellow/orange to me.

I am happy with the Sony RX100.  I thought I'd ask.

What, specifically, did you object to in the skin tone rendering? What camera settings did you try out? Were you shooting Raw or jpeg? A little added information may help others give you better advice.

Good Luck.

--
Phil
www.PhilCorlis.com
www.FindingBritain.com

My friend, that's because you were never able to get a correct white balance (a difficult thing to do with the NEX and indoor lighting).

I don't think you'll have better luck with the NEX 6.

Indoor jpegs and I did not adjust white balance.  I was happy with Nikon, Fuji, Olympus skin tones but not with Sony NEX 5N or with Canon G11.

Granted, I am a camera collector and not a good photographer.  I put the camera on P and use only jpegs.

The Sony RX100 somehow looks good to me.

Eassy thkng...get an Olympus..

It's all in the colour perception of the individual. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.Is it not?

I never liked olympus colours. In the old days I used only fuji. Today fuji,nikon and the nex c3/5n colours are excellent to my eyes. Canon G1X (for example): I could not get that WB to produce the colours I liked except when sunny skys.

It's a bit like tasting wine. Your mouth is the only reference you have. Same with colour and the eye.

I also shoot only jpeg and consider myself not, I repeat not, a pro. Far from it.

I really believe that your only problem with the NEX camera that you had was that you used auto white balance for your indoor shots. Auto white balance is terrible for indoor pictures and only gets it right about 30% of the time.

I agree with you 100% that if you don't set a proper white balance pictures turn out too yellow and portraits/skin tones look unnatural.

You weren't the only person with the problem and if you look through the pictures in this forum you'll see that many, many people have an improper white balance set.

Some people even like the yellow cast (everyone is different) and prefer it to a natural looking photo.

I'm like you and don't like it. The only way to ensure good indoor shots with an NEX camera is to manually set the white balance.

Olympus and Fuji both do a much better job with this than Sony. I personally think Olympus has the best overall JEPG engine in the camera world and if they had an APS size sensor Olympus would be my small camera of choice.

Sony makes a great sensor and has some innovative ideas but they lag behind with their JEPG processing.

The NEX 6 is a very good camera but if you're not willing to manually adjust your white balance and occasionally adjust your exposure you would probably be happier sticking with Olympus or Fuji.

Canon and Nikon are a little better than Sony but not as good as Olympus or Fuji.

Don't know anything about Leica but you've owned them so you're the best judge of how they reproduce skin tones.

Nex 6 Auto WB is much better than that of Nex 5. No more orange tint indoors.  Now I just leave it on AWB all the time. I think it's better than the one in Nex 7 as well.

You forgeot to mention: IMO.

Colour perception is very individual.  Fi I find the sony awb indoors quite acceptable.

Custom WB is a wonderful thing.  In a perfect world every camera would always take perfect pictures, but this isn't a perfect world.  Doing a custom WB goes a long way towards making your personal world perfect though and this is how you do it with a NEX-6.  Just don't forget to change the WB settings when you migrate to a different lighting situation.

A word of wisdom:  Custom WB is done by shooting at a WHITE subject.  Custom exposure is accomplished by shooting at a grey card.  Grey is different than white.

Buy this and be happy forever:

WhiBal G7 White Balance Pocket Card WB7-PC B&H Photo Video

--
Buy books, not gear.
Tacoma, Washington, USA

Did you try changing the white balance?

Did you try asking the lady to not put on so much yellow foundation?

I'd get an NEX-6. It's cheaper than a new wife...

(I jest, I jest. I'm not married).

--
http://www.martinirwinphotography.com

Wow!

Like I said, everyone is different.

Then the NEX 6 may be the perfect camera for the OP.

The lady was my wife, she does not change foundations

I am fine with the NEX-6 skin tones -- they look accurate to me (certainly not yellow/orange).

Now don't get upset with me because I think you did a good job with this picture but there is a slight yellow over tone.

It's not bad but it is there. Here is a color corrected copy of your shot.



Only a slight difference but there is a difference.

Just the same, the yellow in your photo isn't too bad.

Well, I generally only get upset with things like the senseless slaughter of the few remaining elephants, so no worries.

FWIW, I didn't do anything to that photo: it is a JPEG out of the camera (I thought that was the point of the post, to illustrate the SONY color engine, not mine).

And, on my brand new MBP Retina screen, the skin tones in my photo look more representative of my daughter than your "corrected" ones. My kid just isn't that ... pink.

Cheers!

She's very cute and as long as you're happy with the color, that's all that counts.

That's the ticket right there -- you have a fine camera you're happy with.  It doesn't have a clanking shutter like the NEX cameras, and its lens (presuming you'll use it wide open) is likely to be MUCH faster than whatever you would use with a NEX camera, so you can use much lower ISO settings and get better results.

Don't worry, be happy.

Tom Hoots
http://www.pbase.com/thoots
http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/4330317199/albums

I suggest you have a good look at his previous posts both here and on other forums. You will probably come to the conclusion that you are completely wasting your time. In particular, see if you can track previous well meaning souls efforts to try to help him understand WB. But you will find other gems as well.

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Mike Fewster
Adelaide Australia