CP 950 with the Blues

Bob Meynardie · Nov 6, 1999

At the risk of getting in the middle of what appears to be a stimulating debate, I just bought a 950 and love just about everything about it BUT this camera does not accurately capture deep purples or greenish-teal. Both turn differnt shades of blue.

I have played with the white balance and the exposure compensation to no avail. Can someone suggest how I correct this problem without a great intellectual debate.

I understood from Peter Inova's comments that there may be some white balance adjustments that can deal with this.

Peter iNova · Nov 6, 1999

Bob Meynardie said:
At the risk of getting in the middle of what appears to be a stimulating
debate, I just bought a 950 and love just about everything about it BUT
this camera does not accurately capture deep purples or greenish-teal.
Both turn differnt shades of blue.

I have played with the white balance and the exposure compensation to no
avail. Can someone suggest how I correct this problem without a great
intellectual debate.

I understood from Peter Inova's comments that there may be some white
balance adjustments that can deal with this.

It's not a white balance thing at all. It is a vector issue. Think of the color wheel as a circle with vectors that stand for color. Photoshop lets you choose hues this way for generating them and/or for correcting them.

Where white balance plays a part is this: Start with accurate white balance so you know where you stand as you steer colors around.

Most chip cameras and films have a very difficult time with the sector of the color gamut (that funny D-shaped color wheel you may see here and there) where things that strike our eyes as purple don't register. In the movie industry there are filters (the kind you put over lights) that cameramen and grips know won't show up the way they look to our eyes. Surprise, they are both teal and deep violet in color to our eyes. Different chips and film respond differently and this is yet another reason these guys are specialists commanding big bucks.

Some of the chip cameras do a better job of separating these colors than the Nikon. But when choices are made the way Nikon did for their color gamut it is for advantages here over disadvantages there.

The easiest fix is to re-vector the colors you need to keep accurate. In a recent example this was the process:

In the top row two Sony cameras were shown to be closer to teal (upper left tube) than the Nikon (right side strip) in their native state. But both cameras had other issues not especially obvious here. Neither were spot-on but teal/cyan/green is a large segment of the color wheel and the 16 and 14 degree discrepancies are perceived as less obvious than similar degrees would be at other parts of the wheel. In the reds, for instance. The Nikon image is further out, nearly fifty degrees. Yet all the other colors look right.

After whitebalancing the first camera and starting from a level playing field I used Photoshop's Hue and Saturation control to grab the cyan segment of the image associated with the missed hue and steered it back to teal. It is a whole lot easier than it sounds.

I think, and this is conjecture, that Nikon made choices to sacrifice teal (not often found well defined in nature) for low noise night imaging.

Maybe somebody more knowledgeable would like to comment.

-iNova

Robert11970 · Nov 6, 1999

I use both hue and saturation also. In order to "grab" the color that I specifically wish to deal with I sometimes use adjust > selective color. This option allows you to home in on one color that is offensive. Adjustments can be made here (adjust selective color) or once the offensive color is selected, return to hue and saturation. You'll notice after selecting the offensive color in "selective color" it will be the sample color in hue and saturation. Gives a little more preciscion if really critical adjustments need to be made. Don't forget to go back to "selective color" and select true white 256 RGB or your sample in hue and saturation will remain that particular color rather than the full 0 to 256 range. Keep the "show info" window open when doing all of this. The show info window is found under the Window menu. This info box will show the values of RGB from 0 (black as your going to get with a monitor) to 256 (white as your going to get with a monitor. Just move the cursor around in the photo and you can see the values changing. It's a necessary reference point.

Peter iNova said:
Bob Meynardie said:

At the risk of getting in the middle of what appears to be a stimulating
debate, I just bought a 950 and love just about everything about it BUT
this camera does not accurately capture deep purples or greenish-teal.
Both turn differnt shades of blue.

I have played with the white balance and the exposure compensation to no
avail. Can someone suggest how I correct this problem without a great
intellectual debate.

I understood from Peter Inova's comments that there may be some white
balance adjustments that can deal with this.

Click to expand...

It's not a white balance thing at all. It is a vector issue. Think of the
color wheel as a circle with vectors that stand for color. Photoshop
lets you choose hues this way for generating them and/or for correcting
them.

Where white balance plays a part is this: Start with accurate white
balance so you know where you stand as you steer colors around.

Most chip cameras and films have a very difficult time with the sector of
the color gamut (that funny D-shaped color wheel you may see here and
there) where things that strike our eyes as purple don't register. In
the movie industry there are filters (the kind you put over lights) that
cameramen and grips know won't show up the way they look to our eyes.
Surprise, they are both teal and deep violet in color to our eyes.
Different chips and film respond differently and this is yet another
reason these guys are specialists commanding big bucks.

Some of the chip cameras do a better job of separating these colors than
the Nikon. But when choices are made the way Nikon did for their color
gamut it is for advantages here over disadvantages there.

The easiest fix is to re-vector the colors you need to keep accurate. In
a recent example this was the process:

In the top row two Sony cameras were shown to be closer to teal (upper
left tube) than the Nikon (right side strip) in their native state. But
both cameras had other issues not especially obvious here. Neither were
spot-on but teal/cyan/green is a large segment of the color wheel and the
16 and 14 degree discrepancies are perceived as less obvious than similar
degrees would be at other parts of the wheel. In the reds, for instance.
The Nikon image is further out, nearly fifty degrees. Yet all the other
colors look right.

After whitebalancing the first camera and starting from a level playing
field I used Photoshop's Hue and Saturation control to grab the cyan
segment of the image associated with the missed hue and steered it back
to teal. It is a whole lot easier than it sounds.

I think, and this is conjecture, that Nikon made choices to sacrifice
teal (not often found well defined in nature) for low noise night imaging.

Maybe somebody more knowledgeable would like to comment.

-iNova

ian · Nov 6, 1999

Member said:
After whitebalancing the first camera and starting from a level playing
field I used Photoshop's Hue and Saturation control to grab the cyan
segment of the image associated with the missed hue and steered it back
to teal. It is a whole lot easier than it sounds.

Perhaps you could describe exactly what you did. I played with
that same image with mixed results.

Member said:
I think, and this is conjecture, that Nikon made choices to sacrifice
teal (not often found well defined in nature) for low noise night imaging.

Perhaps. Given your vector explanation, my question is, what would
have happened if that particular shade of light blue had been
photographed along with the teal? Would it have been shifted as
well, or are they mapping two different colors to the same one?
This goes to when you apply the "fix".

ian

Peter iNova · Nov 6, 1999

ian said:
Member said:

After whitebalancing the first camera and starting from a level playing
field I used Photoshop's Hue and Saturation control to grab the cyan
segment of the image associated with the missed hue and steered it back
to teal. It is a whole lot easier than it sounds.

Click to expand...

Perhaps you could describe exactly what you did. I played with
that same image with mixed results.

In Photoshop's Hue and Saturation window you can adjust any of six basic areas. I chose cyan to start and on a double rainbow bar in the bottom of the window one bar had a limits and fade-off graphic superimposed. Next I "tasted" the teal tube color and this graphic danced around centered on the colors under the cursor. Very quickly you can see the extent of the colors you are targeting and you then slide the limits and minimum/maximum influence area to target the offending color. Now you have exclusive control over that color range alone. You can boost its chroma, steer it to another color or lighten/darken it to taste.

This is a good image to play with this way.

By the bye, the original post mentioned dark violet (was it) as being problematic and the Nikon here showed better retention of the next tube down than the other cameras. But then, there is little deep violet in the natural world, either.

What would be more revealing in a scientific way would be to point all these cameras at a full color spectrum and see how they do with a pure rainbow.

Inks and dyes have strange gaps in their spectra and this can play havoc with trying to capture "right" colors too.

Member said:
Member said:

I think, and this is conjecture, that Nikon made choices to sacrifice
teal (not often found well defined in nature) for low noise night imaging.

Click to expand...

Perhaps. Given your vector explanation, my question is, what would
have happened if that particular shade of light blue had been
photographed along with the teal? Would it have been shifted as
well, or are they mapping two different colors to the same one?
This goes to when you apply the "fix".

ian

I think, by the examples under the tube in question, that a color near to the resulting color would have been steered somewhat off center as well. The Nikon doesn't vector them on top of each other if they weren't that way to start with. You can see examples under the Nikon image that show very good capture of light and medium blues that aren't affected by the original portrayal of the teal and its remedy.

What isn't being seen here is how other cameras drop low intensity and low chroma blues off their horizons while the Nikon keeps them for later manipulation by individual taste.

The Nikon is not a snapshooters camera and I think they could do a bit better with these particular vectors but even fixing the other two shots to be as "perfect" as the Nikon repair was made to be would have taken the exact number of steps, just not as much of a push on this or that control.

-iNova

ian · Nov 6, 1999

Member said:
centered on the colors under the cursor. Very quickly you can see the
extent of the colors you are targeting and you then slide the limits and
minimum/maximum influence area to target the offending color. Now you
have exclusive control over that color range alone. You can boost its
chroma, steer it to another color or lighten/darken it to taste.

I started playing. You're right. It's a whole lot easier than it sounds.

I found that playing with the + and - color pickers gave very fine control
over the range of hues affected. Basically I did what you did, but
I did ALT-left-click to use the "-" picker which zeroed in on a specific
color. Then I used Shift-left-click several times while moving around the
blue areas of the tube to make it expand the color range out again.

Then I applied the shift. Done.

I went ahead and played with the red tube in that image because the
CP950 portrayed it a bit orange. That was an easy fix. The cyan
is a bit harder to nail. It was easier to make it match the 356 color
strip than it was to try to match the colors of the other cameras.

Fun stuff. A very powerful tool. I even took a run at dealing
with the color fringing in that car photo of mine. If the fringing
splashes into very dark areas or out into the white areas, it's quite easy
to deal with by messing with the saturation and brightness instead of the hue.

Example

Before:

Then I darkened the purple and desaturated the green using the
color picker in the Hue/Saturation tool to zero in on the offending
colors.

Not perfect, but a lot better.

Member said:
By the bye, the original post mentioned dark violet (was it) as being
problematic and the Nikon here showed better retention of the next tube
down than the other cameras. But then, there is little deep violet in
the natural world, either.

Actually, I think if you go back to the original images you'll find that
there was a problem with a purple or violet on the right side of
the box. I'll have to go back to see for sure.

Member said:
What would be more revealing in a scientific way would be to point all
these cameras at a full color spectrum and see how they do with a pure
rainbow.

But of course.

Member said:
I think, by the examples under the tube in question, that a color near to
the resulting color would have been steered somewhat off center as well.
The Nikon doesn't vector them on top of each other if they weren't that
way to start with. You can see examples under the Nikon image that show
very good capture of light and medium blues that aren't affected by the
original portrayal of the teal and its remedy.

The problem is that while it's a "simple" fix, it requires that you know
something about the way it's supposed to look. There's not a fix that can
be applied to every image to shift stray hues back into line.

Member said:
The Nikon is not a snapshooters camera and I think they could do a bit
better with these particular vectors but even fixing the other two shots
to be as "perfect" as the Nikon repair was made to be would have taken
the exact number of steps, just not as much of a push on this or that
control.

The "not a snapshooters camera" really hit home when I read Brian Biggers
flash tests last night and he noted that the Flash white balance setting
is not chosen when the flash is active, even in A-REC mode. That basically
means A-REC is worthless for indoor shots where the flash is the primary
light source. Ouch.

Member said:
-iNova

ian

Francis C.F.P. · Nov 7, 1999

Bob Meynardie said:
At the risk of getting in the middle of what appears to be a stimulating
debate, I just bought a 950 and love just about everything about it BUT
this camera does not accurately capture deep purples or greenish-teal.
Both turn differnt shades of blue.

I have played with the white balance and the exposure compensation to no
avail. Can someone suggest how I correct this problem without a great
intellectual debate.

I understood from Peter Inova's comments that there may be some white
balance adjustments that can deal with this.

As a long reader of this forum and the owner of 950, I'm tired of the "blue" debate. Peter is a knowledgeable man in digital camera, he gives a lot of hard theory which I could understand part of them, though I'm an experienced armateur photographer. Anyway, the problem isn't solved after the long debate in this forum.

My 950 is back to my hands two days ago from Nikon Service for fixing the "blue" cast issue, the service receipt stated that "colour matrix checked and adjusted", no service charge under guarrantee. I do shoot a series of picture to check the result, the blue cast issue is reduced but not eliminated completely, but manipulating in Photoshop becomes much more easier to bring out original colour than before.

I don't know what they had done in the adjustment, but there should be some way to do it right. I'll call Nikon Service later to investigate what can be done further to eliminate the problem, though it is acceptable at present state.

Is there any hints that the issue can be solved? The firmware update v1.2 doesn't correct the colour issue. I think colour should be right at the moment of capture instead of correcting it by post capture editing, the colour depth is only 8 bits (256 colours) and there could be not much room for correction without unnatural look in some cases. Hoping to listen comments from you.

Peter iNova · Nov 7, 1999

Francis C.F.P. said:
Bob Meynardie said:

At the risk of getting in the middle of what appears to be a stimulating
debate, I just bought a 950 and love just about everything about it BUT
this camera does not accurately capture deep purples or greenish-teal.
Both turn differnt shades of blue.

I have played with the white balance and the exposure compensation to no
avail. Can someone suggest how I correct this problem without a great
intellectual debate.

I understood from Peter Inova's comments that there may be some white
balance adjustments that can deal with this.

Click to expand...

As a long reader of this forum and the owner of 950, I'm tired of the
"blue" debate. Peter is a knowledgeable man in digital camera, he gives a
lot of hard theory which I could understand part of them, though I'm an
experienced armateur photographer. Anyway, the problem isn't solved after
the long debate in this forum.

My 950 is back to my hands two days ago from Nikon Service for fixing the
"blue" cast issue, the service receipt stated that "colour matrix checked
and adjusted", no service charge under guarrantee. I do shoot a series of
picture to check the result, the blue cast issue is reduced but not
eliminated completely, but manipulating in Photoshop becomes much more
easier to bring out original colour than before.

In Photoshop open Color Balance (Command or Alt B) and enter 30,0,-30. If that doesn't fix it (my worst in-shadow shots fix this way and/or with lesser numbers) then post some miniatures somehow so we can see. Calibrated, gamma corrected monitor? Same effect on print-outs?

Member said:
I don't know what they had done in the adjustment, but there should be
some way to do it right. I'll call Nikon Service later to investigate
what can be done further to eliminate the problem, though it is
acceptable at present state.

Is there any hints that the issue can be solved? The firmware update v1.2
doesn't correct the colour issue. I think colour should be right at the
moment of capture instead of correcting it by post capture editing, the
colour depth is only 8 bits (256 colours) and there could be not much
room for correction without unnatural look in some cases. Hoping to
listen comments from you.

The color depth would be a lot less of an issue if the Coolpix cameras weren't so "cool" in their color choice. I agree that the color revectoring (see posts below) to steer certain colors back is too unkind for out of the camera results. For the most part, this camera's images need only about the same amount of manipulation I need to perform on my Kodak camera's images to get them right in a print. In the case of the Kodak, I'm dropping chroma and cooling the image to make it right.

-iNova

Bob Meynardie · Nov 7, 1999

Thanks Peter. That makes sense. And I love everything else about this camera. Since night photography is not one of my main goals I wonder if the Fuji or Olympus 2+ meg cameras might have made better trade-off choices for my needs.

Peter iNova said:
Bob Meynardie said:

At the risk of getting in the middle of what appears to be a stimulating
debate, I just bought a 950 and love just about everything about it BUT
this camera does not accurately capture deep purples or greenish-teal.
Both turn differnt shades of blue.

I have played with the white balance and the exposure compensation to no
avail. Can someone suggest how I correct this problem without a great
intellectual debate.

I understood from Peter Inova's comments that there may be some white
balance adjustments that can deal with this.

Click to expand...

It's not a white balance thing at all. It is a vector issue. Think of the
color wheel as a circle with vectors that stand for color. Photoshop
lets you choose hues this way for generating them and/or for correcting
them.

Where white balance plays a part is this: Start with accurate white
balance so you know where you stand as you steer colors around.

Most chip cameras and films have a very difficult time with the sector of
the color gamut (that funny D-shaped color wheel you may see here and
there) where things that strike our eyes as purple don't register. In
the movie industry there are filters (the kind you put over lights) that
cameramen and grips know won't show up the way they look to our eyes.
Surprise, they are both teal and deep violet in color to our eyes.
Different chips and film respond differently and this is yet another
reason these guys are specialists commanding big bucks.

Some of the chip cameras do a better job of separating these colors than
the Nikon. But when choices are made the way Nikon did for their color
gamut it is for advantages here over disadvantages there.

The easiest fix is to re-vector the colors you need to keep accurate. In
a recent example this was the process:

In the top row two Sony cameras were shown to be closer to teal (upper
left tube) than the Nikon (right side strip) in their native state. But
both cameras had other issues not especially obvious here. Neither were
spot-on but teal/cyan/green is a large segment of the color wheel and the
16 and 14 degree discrepancies are perceived as less obvious than similar
degrees would be at other parts of the wheel. In the reds, for instance.
The Nikon image is further out, nearly fifty degrees. Yet all the other
colors look right.

After whitebalancing the first camera and starting from a level playing
field I used Photoshop's Hue and Saturation control to grab the cyan
segment of the image associated with the missed hue and steered it back
to teal. It is a whole lot easier than it sounds.

I think, and this is conjecture, that Nikon made choices to sacrifice
teal (not often found well defined in nature) for low noise night imaging.

Maybe somebody more knowledgeable would like to comment.

-iNova

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