EX1 - Color Saturation Experiment

I have always found the color saturation of the EX1 to be a little flat, yet when I have set saturation =+1 I end ip with way too much. Unfortunately samsung is too heavy handed with the settings and the smallest increment is twice as much as I would like, so I have spent months trying to find a way around this and have posted many of my experiments on this forum, most of which have not proven to be long term solutions for one reason or another.

The first problem faced is that most settings are locked out once one setting is modified, this makes it all but impossible to experiment with the camera. But a while back I managed to unlock the menues so more than one adjustment could be performed, see how in this thread. http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/post/50485585

I had tried DEFOG mode, it proved to sometimes create too dark shadow area when an image already had a lot of black.

I tried contrast +1 which was ok on an average day but too strong on a bright sunny day.

I tried saturation +1 and defog, but this was also too strong.

and many other attempts.

So, I figured that I liked the effect of DEFOG, and I needed a bit more color saturation, so to correct the excesses of these settings, I decided to counteract them at them image taking time, and have the camera correct the output using DEFOG which applies a bit of contrast within the camera before the image is shown.

The settings:

contrast=-1

saturation=+1

DEFOG=ON.

The first image in the triple set is normal EX1 default, the second is the setting just described, and the last image is saturation+1 to show that my setting is in between the two in color intensity.

There are a few more advantages to this settings, for example the sky is a beautiful blue instead of the default torquise of the EX1, and the mid tones are better lit, this can be seen by the better green of the trees.

Your probably thinking, why does he go to all this trouble, well the reason is that I would just love to have a camera where the jpg pops out and I can say, that is perfect. Of course some PP can still be done, but when I bring home 1000 images from a trip, I want them ready to print.

Saturation Test

Full size link: http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/5128303546/download/2387371

Brian