UV light and the G1

I own a G1 (plus 420EX, plus tiffen wide angle and tele adapters) for some time now and am fairly happy with it.

After a while you get to know the peculiarities of the camera. One of them which I recently found out is the behaviour when taking lictures in (very) sunny circumstances. Going on holiday to lake Garda in Italy I made a number of nice pictures of the lake with the mountains on the background. Some with full sun and some later in the day. The pictures seem underexposed and colour is not completely realistic. Other pictures are OK. The problem seems to be in the blue colours. I am wondering whether this is due to UV light and the lack of a UV filter on this camera.
If so, what's a good solution for this problem?

Does anybody recognize this problem or know a solution?--Greetings Jan Kooreman

Hi Jan,

Living in the mountains, I can certainly say that a UV filter helps somewhat and a circular polarizer helps a lot at keeping the bluish haze minimized. Our eyes do a great job of compensating for the bluish tinge while looking at distant subject but the camera is far less forgiving. Under 5000 ft. to sea level you'll find that a UV filter is nothing more than clear glass protection for your lens (which is exactly how I use mine). Using a circular polarizer to cut atmospheric haze and diminish glare on vegetation has improved my full-sun photos immensely.

One other thing. If your lens or filter is scratched or dusty-dirty, that will definitely reduce sharpness and color saturation.
--Eric

Jan Kooreman said:

I own a G1 (plus 420EX, plus tiffen wide angle and tele adapters)
for some time now and am fairly happy with it.
After a while you get to know the peculiarities of the camera. One
of them which I recently found out is the behaviour when taking
lictures in (very) sunny circumstances. Going on holiday to lake
Garda in Italy I made a number of nice pictures of the lake with
the mountains on the background. Some with full sun and some later
in the day. The pictures seem underexposed and colour is not
completely realistic. Other pictures are OK. The problem seems to
be in the blue colours. I am wondering whether this is due to UV
light and the lack of a UV filter on this camera.
If so, what's a good solution for this problem?

Does anybody recognize this problem or know a solution?
--
Greetings Jan Kooreman

Click to expand...

Please post your pictures so that we can study them and comment. Without seeing them it would be difficult to speculate on what you are referring to and what possible fixes, if any are applicable.

As a whole, CCD's are less sensative to uv light than IR. In general the G1, seems to have a bit of magenta shift, but again without seeing your pictures it would be impossible to comment.

Jan Kooreman said:

I own a G1 (plus 420EX, plus tiffen wide angle and tele adapters)
for some time now and am fairly happy with it.
After a while you get to know the peculiarities of the camera. One
of them which I recently found out is the behaviour when taking
lictures in (very) sunny circumstances. Going on holiday to lake
Garda in Italy I made a number of nice pictures of the lake with
the mountains on the background. Some with full sun and some later
in the day. The pictures seem underexposed and colour is not
completely realistic. Other pictures are OK. The problem seems to
be in the blue colours. I am wondering whether this is due to UV
light and the lack of a UV filter on this camera.
If so, what's a good solution for this problem?

Does anybody recognize this problem or know a solution?
--
Greetings Jan Kooreman

Click to expand...

Yes, everything I have read to date indicates that CCD's are not nearly as sensitive to UV as color film. I have only seen this Magenta cast when I was shooting in JPEG mode(unfortunately, you must shoot in JPEG when using the Stitch/Panorama Mode, rats!). I have yet to see a Magenta cast when shooting in Raw mode and I believe there is a major thread which addresses this JPEG phonomenom with the G1.

Adam said:

As a whole, CCD's are less sensative to uv light than IR. In
general the G1, seems to have a bit of magenta shift, but again
without seeing your pictures it would be impossible to comment.

Jan Kooreman said:

I own a G1 (plus 420EX, plus tiffen wide angle and tele adapters)
for some time now and am fairly happy with it.
After a while you get to know the peculiarities of the camera. One
of them which I recently found out is the behaviour when taking
lictures in (very) sunny circumstances. Going on holiday to lake
Garda in Italy I made a number of nice pictures of the lake with
the mountains on the background. Some with full sun and some later
in the day. The pictures seem underexposed and colour is not
completely realistic. Other pictures are OK. The problem seems to
be in the blue colours. I am wondering whether this is due to UV
light and the lack of a UV filter on this camera.
If so, what's a good solution for this problem?

Does anybody recognize this problem or know a solution?
--
Greetings Jan Kooreman

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Hi everybody,

I would like to post 2 pictures to show you the problems I have. But I don't know how to do that. Can you help me with advice on how to include an image in a message to post on this forum?

Thanks, Jan

Tariq said:

Adam said:

As a whole, CCD's are less sensative to uv light than IR. In
general the G1, seems to have a bit of magenta shift, but again
without seeing your pictures it would be impossible to comment.

Jan Kooreman said:

I own a G1 (plus 420EX, plus tiffen wide angle and tele adapters)
for some time now and am fairly happy with it.
After a while you get to know the peculiarities of the camera. One
of them which I recently found out is the behaviour when taking
lictures in (very) sunny circumstances. Going on holiday to lake
Garda in Italy I made a number of nice pictures of the lake with
the mountains on the background. Some with full sun and some later
in the day. The pictures seem underexposed and colour is not
completely realistic. Other pictures are OK. The problem seems to
be in the blue colours. I am wondering whether this is due to UV
light and the lack of a UV filter on this camera.
If so, what's a good solution for this problem?

Does anybody recognize this problem or know a solution?
--
Greetings Jan Kooreman

Click to expand...

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Here I am again. In the mean time I got myself a website, made a page and included the pictures I want to show to you for comments and suggestions. You can find them at the following URL:

http://piazza.iae.nl/users/kooreman/

I am ready to receive your comments.....

Greetings, Jan

Jan Kooreman said:

Jan Kooreman said:

Jan Kooreman said:

Jan Kooreman said:

I own a G1 (plus 420EX, plus tiffen wide angle and tele adapters)
for some time now and am fairly happy with it.
After a while you get to know the peculiarities of the camera. One
of them which I recently found out is the behaviour when taking
lictures in (very) sunny circumstances. Going on holiday to lake
Garda in Italy I made a number of nice pictures of the lake with
the mountains on the background. Some with full sun and some later
in the day. The pictures seem underexposed and colour is not
completely realistic. Other pictures are OK. The problem seems to
be in the blue colours. I am wondering whether this is due to UV
light and the lack of a UV filter on this camera.
If so, what's a good solution for this problem?

Does anybody recognize this problem or know a solution?
--
Greetings Jan Kooreman

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

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Greetings,

Congrats on getting your pictures up. Two things I have noticed with my G1 was that 1) to get the best consistant exposures, I set the exposure compensation to -1/2 to -2/3 of a stop and 2) I always shoot in RAW mode instead of jpeg as jpeg seems to add a magenta cast. Shooting in RAW mode, one can then adjust White Balance, contrast, sharpness and saturation later(the shot truly becomes a sort of digital negative and you preserve the image quality by making these adjustments BEFORE you pull it into Photoshop.) Unfortunately, I don't think you can use RAW mode in Program. Just shoot in Shutter Priority and set the SS to something like 1/125 . Also, if you keep the LCD pretty parallel to your eye when viewing the live preview(or just shot image), you should get a pretty good idea as to the correct exposure. You also might try the spot meter. I use it all the time. just place the spot area over some neutral area such as that grey stone walkway you photographed in Italy, press the exp lock button and recompose and shoot. Metering correctly(and knowing what the camera is metering) and shooting in the RAW mode should solve all of your problems. Thus far, I have yet to even need to color correct anything. Good luck and have fun!

Tariq

Jan Kooreman said:

http://piazza.iae.nl/users/kooreman/

I am ready to receive your comments.....

Greetings, Jan

Jan Kooreman said:

Jan Kooreman said:

Jan Kooreman said:

Jan Kooreman said:

I own a G1 (plus 420EX, plus tiffen wide angle and tele adapters)
for some time now and am fairly happy with it.
After a while you get to know the peculiarities of the camera. One
of them which I recently found out is the behaviour when taking
lictures in (very) sunny circumstances. Going on holiday to lake
Garda in Italy I made a number of nice pictures of the lake with
the mountains on the background. Some with full sun and some later
in the day. The pictures seem underexposed and colour is not
completely realistic. Other pictures are OK. The problem seems to
be in the blue colours. I am wondering whether this is due to UV
light and the lack of a UV filter on this camera.
If so, what's a good solution for this problem?

Does anybody recognize this problem or know a solution?
--
Greetings Jan Kooreman

Click to expand...

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Jan,

Thanks for posting the photos, but if possible, please post the EXIF information as well. It would help a lot to see how the camera metered those situations. One positive note here; It looks as though your G1 purposefully underexposed the bright scenes. This is advantageous in that it is more easily recovered from than had it blown out the highlights. The underexposure you described is common to virtually all reflective camera meters (not just the G1) since they are callibrated to 18% gray. I suspect that this is similar to the old sand/snow rule for exposure (remember the blue snow? You need to compensate by 1 1/2 - 2 stops). Spot metering on a subject which approximates 18% gray (caucasian faces, the road in your photograph) will help determine the proper exposure or use the above rule.

A word about expectations. Had you shot these with your SLR, I doubt that you in camera meter captured these scenes perfectly. One thing many people don't realize is that when you send film off to commercial developers for prints, they use either manual or computer generated corrections for each and every shot (essentially they do the labor for you). The same is/was true when making prints in the darkroom. Ansel Adams used to spend countless hours in the darkroom tweaking negatives/media to achieve the look he wanted. Good luck.

Jan Kooreman said:

http://piazza.iae.nl/users/kooreman/

I am ready to receive your comments.....

Greetings, Jan

Jan Kooreman said:

Jan Kooreman said:

Jan Kooreman said:

Jan Kooreman said:

I own a G1 (plus 420EX, plus tiffen wide angle and tele adapters)
for some time now and am fairly happy with it.
After a while you get to know the peculiarities of the camera. One
of them which I recently found out is the behaviour when taking
lictures in (very) sunny circumstances. Going on holiday to lake
Garda in Italy I made a number of nice pictures of the lake with
the mountains on the background. Some with full sun and some later
in the day. The pictures seem underexposed and colour is not
completely realistic. Other pictures are OK. The problem seems to
be in the blue colours. I am wondering whether this is due to UV
light and the lack of a UV filter on this camera.
If so, what's a good solution for this problem?

Does anybody recognize this problem or know a solution?
--
Greetings Jan Kooreman

Click to expand...

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Each the photos would have been improved by using a polarizing filter.

See Nahua's post on grad ND filters. He ridiculed me for suggesting a photo site that has a section on filters, so I'll not include it here (search for cliffshade), but you'll find a lot of helpful hints and some answers to your questions.

ms

Jan Kooreman said:

http://piazza.iae.nl/users/kooreman/

I am ready to receive your comments.....

Greetings, Jan

Jan Kooreman said:

Jan Kooreman said:

Jan Kooreman said:

Jan Kooreman said:

I own a G1 (plus 420EX, plus tiffen wide angle and tele adapters)
for some time now and am fairly happy with it.
After a while you get to know the peculiarities of the camera. One
of them which I recently found out is the behaviour when taking
lictures in (very) sunny circumstances. Going on holiday to lake
Garda in Italy I made a number of nice pictures of the lake with
the mountains on the background. Some with full sun and some later
in the day. The pictures seem underexposed and colour is not
completely realistic. Other pictures are OK. The problem seems to
be in the blue colours. I am wondering whether this is due to UV
light and the lack of a UV filter on this camera.
If so, what's a good solution for this problem?

Does anybody recognize this problem or know a solution?
--
Greetings Jan Kooreman

Click to expand...

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