5D II red channel clipping and nasty AWB in incandescent light

My 5D II arrived a few weeks ago and I've been figuring it out. One worrying experience was taking photos at a party with auto white balance, and having the colours come out badly wrong, with the reds in the faces half clipped off. Some experimentation this evening seems to indicate that half the time the reds are clipped off in incandescant light.

Highlight priority doesn't seem to help. under exposing by half a stop seems to though (a full stop is too much)

Tungsten WB is too red, AWB with WB adjustment +10B+4G seems almost right, and 3200K seems almost right. custom WB to a white sheet is too blue

Saw this where the colour compared to the 5D is clearly inferior:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1032&message=30414224

It's unfortunately a very red flower, but half the reds in the flower have been clipped off.

I hope I don't have a damaged colour sensor or something like that, but I suspect not. My 20D is poor too, and a quick test says that it chooses an exposure that leaves quite a bit of space at the top of the red where the 5DII is so bright that it clips the reds by half a stop.

A forum search finds a few threads about poor AWB, but not much about red clipping.

What is your experience in this redard with your 5D II?

How do you shoot in incandescant light?

Are you shooting raw or jpg?

I don't think I have ever used a digital camera which could get incandescent light correct, out of the camera.

That said.....

I know that the MKII is a very popular camera but my personal experience with it has led me to conclude that is trails behind the 5D in several very important areas.

• I have written in this forum before about flash exposures. The camera underexposes flash shots in those cases where flash is the dominent light source. For outdoor fill flash, I have not quite figured that out yet, but it is very different from the 5D. I don't have enough experience with it to say if it is better or worse

• The blacks in it's images are too "heavy." A black tux can look like black paint. The raw image files have too much contrast in them, right out of the camera, and this leads to the images being less life-like than the 5D. You can lighten the blacks but then that leads to other adjustments that need to be made, and I don't think it should be that complicated with a camera of this supposed stature.

• AWB is not as good at the 5D. It is about equal outdoors but indoors or wherever there is mixed light, it can give very strong and strange results. More difficult to correct in raw processing than with the 5D. Again, this leads to images being less life-like, IMO.

To me, the problems with WB and the heavy blacks are the biggest concerns.

I shot a wedding this past weekend, with bridal couple shots indoors and outdoors. I used both a 5D and 5DMKII. The shots with the most appealing skin tone, the shots that looked "real" were all taken with the 5D.

You might conclude that I don't particularly like the 5DMKII. That's pretty much the case. You get a bigger file size and better high ISO performance but the rest of the changes, IMO, are mostly negative.

about the red channell being overexposed
my 40d used to do it a lot
i think is a general problem with canons cameras
anyone has a different experience?

i do not see any difference in colors on the link you provided

except that 5d2 files are more exposed than 5d ones, with consequent red channell more exposed... pretty simple

UncleMikey said:

Are you shooting raw or jpg?

Click to expand...

Jpg. I will sometimes shoot raw if I can't afford to screw up, but mostly I shoot for fun and I try to learn to get it right enough the firt time to not need extensive fiddling.

UncleMikey said:

I don't think I have ever used a digital camera which could get
incandescent light correct, out of the camera.

Click to expand...

I have the D-Lux 3 and it is beautiful. Is the only digicam I've used that gets it right

UncleMikey said:

That said.....

Click to expand...

...

UncleMikey said:

• The blacks in it's images are too "heavy." A black tux can look

like black paint. The raw image files have too much contrast in
them, right out of the camera, and this leads to the images being
less life-like than the 5D.

Click to expand...

You might be running afoul of the new "Picture Styles" nonsense. Choosing "Neutral" or "Faithful" instead of "Standard" might be better for you and setting a lower contrast, might help. My top fear, getting the camera was that it would get things subtly wrong in ways I would not be able to correct.

UncleMikey said:

• AWB is not as good at the 5D. It is about equal outdoors but

indoors or wherever there is mixed light, it can give very strong and
strange results. More difficult to correct in raw processing than
with the 5D. Again, this leads to images being less life-like, IMO.

Click to expand...

I suspect you're seeing the red channel clipping. I find the further
you have to correct things the less lifelike the result. I have enough
skill to do some correction, but I can never reach the 'magical' quality
of a perfect exposure to start with.

UncleMikey said:

To me, the problems with WB and the heavy blacks are the biggest
concerns.

I shot a wedding this past weekend, with bridal couple shots indoors
and outdoors. I used both a 5D and 5DMKII. The shots with the most
appealing skin tone, the shots that looked "real" were all taken
with the 5D.

Click to expand...

You're used to the 5D. I raved about my Olympus E-10, and I have lots of pictures out of it I still like today. I picked it up a few years later and the pictures indoors were awful I had clearly learnt how to get the best from my camera and had forgotten how.

UncleMikey said:

You might conclude that I don't particularly like the 5DMKII. That's
pretty much the case. You get a bigger file size and better high ISO
performance but the rest of the changes, IMO, are mostly negative.

Click to expand...

Going up from a 20D for me is clearly an improvement, but thats a bigger jump. I already have better shots because of the new camera, and I'm going to have to learn my way around the flaws.

I really have not paid any attention to picture styles because I shoot raw and I assumed that PS have no effect on the raw file. But I can try that

Please see below - there were no orange or pink colors in the real scene.
Does anyone know an easy way to correct this?

Do a levels adjustment on the pink part of the light source near the guitar...

levels adjustment layer:

find white

find black

then adjust opacity back down to around 76%

that should get you out of trouble

regards

Shane

What lens did you use? Also what RAW converter?

I have just offloaded a bunch of car shots i did for a magazine editorial. A few of the shots during the day were shot alongside a vivid field of yellow **** seed. We had a clear blue sky and I used a polarizer to deepen the sky and reduce some reflections on the car.

The problem is that I have what looks like what i think people call banding in the sky. Its curved bands of varying shades of sky colour. I had a look at the different channels and did notice the red channel had the worst "noise" or banding effect. Forgive my terminology here, I may be sending people up the wrong tree.

Has anyone else had anything similar with their 5d2?. The camera was set to raw, I set the exposure manually and used 100 iso.

you should shoot raw, and after that you have so much control and can change tweak everything you want

shooting jpg with 5d2, especially indoor where white balance is an issue, does not make much sense to me

i never shoot jpg, and i do all my post in lightroom, not sure if it works also with jpg

Teosax said:

you should shoot raw, and after that you have so much control and can
change tweak everything you want
shooting jpg with 5d2, especially indoor where white balance is an
issue, does not make much sense to me
i never shoot jpg, and i do all my post in lightroom, not sure if it
works also with jpg

Click to expand...

Raw is overrated and doesn't change anything about color clipping. I don't know of any raw converter that can correct this. And it doesn't matter if it's corrected with a jpg or in raw. Actually most tweaking, including corrections like this, can be done in 8 bits just fine, including WB correction and pushing by up to 2 stops.
Anyway, it was converted from raw with dpp, so how will dpp let me fix it? =)

Thanks, I will try this.

I was thinking about selectively lowering the other two channels with a layer mask, but it might not be that easy.

It would be possible to correct this at least semi-automatically, I can think of ways to program it (I find program logic much easier to understand than the layer stuff anyway, maybe because I grew up with the former). It's surprising that no autocorrection seems to be offered anywhere for this often appearing artefact.

bionet said:

Teosax said:

you should shoot raw, and after that you have so much control and can
change tweak everything you want
shooting jpg with 5d2, especially indoor where white balance is an
issue, does not make much sense to me
i never shoot jpg, and i do all my post in lightroom, not sure if it
works also with jpg

Click to expand...

Raw is overrated and doesn't change anything about color clipping. I
don't know of any raw converter that can correct this. And it doesn't
matter if it's corrected with a jpg or in raw. Actually most
tweaking, including corrections like this, can be done in 8 bits just
fine, including WB correction and pushing by up to 2 stops.
Anyway, it was converted from raw with dpp, so how will dpp let me
fix it? =)

Click to expand...

1. you can use DPP's WB color eyedropper and point on something that was either white or neutral gray. Do you have any item like that? Try several items.

Of course you should notice that the result might be too much 'true' that it's not corresponding to the true light situation. I mean that you truely didnt have the light equal to bright sunshine, but everything already had some red or similar tint already.

2. try to play with Kelvin color temperature (most probable less effective in this situation)

with your reply you show that clearly do not know much about the power of raw files

otherwise do you think that thousand of pros are stupid shooting raws instead of jpegs? for what reason would they have a bigger file and also having to spend time post processing if raw did not give them much more control?
i have a lot of pictures that i saved with lightroom about clipping
plus the control you have over the whit balance is pretty amazing
i do not know about dpp, since inever use it

vari001 said:

1. you can use DPP's WB color eyedropper and point on something that
was either white or neutral gray. Do you have any item like that? Try
several items.

Click to expand...

The WB is okay. I need color clipping correction, not a WB fix..

vari001 said:

2. try to play with Kelvin color temperature (most probable less
effective in this situation)

Click to expand...

Won't help either. Again, I need color clipping correction :=).

It's not about this specific image, that was more like a test. I constantly have clipping of single channels when shooting concerts, because of the spotlights. This is a real problem. I would use film if it wasn't so hard and expensive to shoot bursts with it.

Teosax said:

with your reply you show that clearly do not know much about the
power of raw files
otherwise do you think that thousand of pros are stupid shooting raws
instead of jpegs? for what reason would they have a bigger file and
also having to spend time post processing if raw did not give them
much more control?
i have a lot of pictures that i saved with lightroom about clipping
plus the control you have over the whit balance is pretty amazing
i do not know about dpp, since inever use it

Click to expand...

I know exactly what raws offer, among other things I've hacked around in raw conversion software code.

On the contrary, you don't seem to know what can be done in 8 bits. Even heavy WB correction can usually be done fine.

Also, this discussion is not raw vs. jpeg but about color clipping. The channels are already clipped beyond anything that can be saved in the raw data in cases such as this, so as I said, it's completely meaningless how it was shot.

I use raw to avoid Digic 4's ugly noise reduction but that's all it does for me.

Graham_02 said:

My 5D II arrived a few weeks ago and I've been figuring it out. One
worrying experience was taking photos at a party with auto white
balance, and having the colours come out badly wrong, with the reds
in the faces half clipped off. Some experimentation this evening
seems to indicate that half the time the reds are clipped off in
incandescant light.

Click to expand...

Use manual WB and crank down your color temp and your exposure. You may have to experiment to find the best settings. Incandescent has a lot of red in it and it also tricks light meters because they are tuned to work best with more balanced light.

Graham_02 said:

Highlight priority doesn't seem to help. under exposing by half a
stop seems to though (a full stop is too much)

Tungsten WB is too red, AWB with WB adjustment +10B+4G seems almost
right, and 3200K seems almost right. custom WB to a white sheet
is too blue

Click to expand...

If your red is clipping, then why are you adding blue & green instead of subtracting red? I would think you'd leave your blue & green alone and turn down the red.

Graham_02 said:

Saw this where the colour compared to the 5D is clearly inferior:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1032&message=30414224
It's unfortunately a very red flower, but half the reds in the
flower have been clipped off.

I hope I don't have a damaged colour sensor or something like that,
but I suspect not. My 20D is poor too, and a quick test says that it
chooses an exposure that leaves quite a bit of space at the top of
the red where the 5DII is so bright that it clips the reds by half a
stop.

Click to expand...

You didn't damage the sensor.

Graham_02 said:

A forum search finds a few threads about poor AWB, but not much about
red clipping.

What is your experience in this redard with your 5D II?

How do you shoot in incandescant light?

Click to expand...

... if you make sure that you've shot a true neutral card, and you make sure the WB is set to CWB AND you've selected the correct reference frame. Two parts.

It works, I use it every day. If your shots come out blue you are doing something wrong.
KP
--



http://www.ahomls.com/photo.htm
http://www.phillipsphotographer.com

'The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it.', H. L. Mencken

bionet said:

Teosax said:

with your reply you show that clearly do not know much about the
power of raw files
otherwise do you think that thousand of pros are stupid shooting raws
instead of jpegs? for what reason would they have a bigger file and
also having to spend time post processing if raw did not give them
much more control?
i have a lot of pictures that i saved with lightroom about clipping
plus the control you have over the whit balance is pretty amazing
i do not know about dpp, since inever use it

Click to expand...

I know exactly what raws offer, among other things I've hacked around
in raw conversion software code.
On the contrary, you don't seem to know what can be done in 8 bits.
Even heavy WB correction can usually be done fine.

Also, this discussion is not raw vs. jpeg but about color clipping.
The channels are already clipped beyond anything that can be saved in
the raw data in cases such as this, so as I said, it's completely
meaningless how it was shot.

I use raw to avoid Digic 4's ugly noise reduction but that's all it
does for me.

Click to expand...

--

i am not sure you know what raw offer if you keep thinking that between raw and jpg there is no difference, but it does not matter to me...
you are right i do not know much what can be done in 8 bits. i do not care.

i have many pix of red tulips where the red was way overexposed, and in raw i can use highlights and underexposed and bring back most of it.
post your raw file of the pix, i am sure i can correct it with LR

AND - make sure your white/gray card is neutral. What looks 'white' to your eye may not be - especially 'bright white' paper that with UV brighteners / fluorescent whitening agents.

I use a small 'whibal' card.

Ken Phillips said:

... if you make sure that you've shot a true neutral card, and you
make sure the WB is set to CWB AND you've selected the correct
reference frame. Two parts.
It works, I use it every day. If your shots come out blue you are
doing something wrong.
KP
--



http://www.ahomls.com/photo.htm
http://www.phillipsphotographer.com
'The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to
rule it.', H. L. Mencken

Click to expand...