32mm f/1.4 --- Blue Mountains - (PICS)

Boss of Sony wrote:

What do you think of the M6? I want to get one.

It's an excellent camera. I highly recommend it.

Your landscape images have a bit of a pkasticky look. Is that because of the noise reduction? I thought canon jpeg processing would be better than that.

It's nothing to do with noise reduction although I may have lifted the shadows slightly in one of the image (Three Sisters Image) due to the effect of the CPL filter on shadowed areas.  I wouldn't have done this to excess though. If you want to see how clean the Canon JPEGs are from the EOS M6, you'll really need to take a look at the untouched image directly below...

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EOS M6 + EF-M 32mm f/1.4 - an example of Canon color and detail from the M6.  This is an unedited JPEG from the camera that has not been resized or edited in any way whatsoever.  It doesn't really get any better than this.

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The Australian outback (bushland but not so much desert scenes) consists of details that don't compress well, especially when certain hues are involved. The colors here include hues that even Sony's color-processing struggled to accurately reproduce (specifically Magenta and Cyan tones) and I think most camera processors struggle to resolve the details captured by the most recent generations of lenses. I'm not taunting you over your forum name, I'm just commenting on observations.  I haven't looked at the latest generation of Sony processors but I remember how their image processors were incapable of accurately reproducing intensely-detailed scenery (leaves on trees and grass) without smearing the details with the automatic noise reduction that was applied ...and whilst I'm sure they've allowed users to modify this behavior, it's important to remember that when larger files with intense detail are reduced, they end up creating an artificial look to any image.  The only thing I would have liked to have done yesterday is to have used a Daylight White Balance.  I might try that next time.  Canon used to use Sony sensors on quite a few of their PowerShots so I'm surprised the issues didn't carry across at the time.  Looking at the tourists and their clothing in my shots from the M6 (in the original post on this thread), you can see that the colors are slightly warmer but are still quite accurate.
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32mm f/1.4 - 'The trees and leaves were an off-green with a lot of green mixed with magenta tones. This was taken under the bright sun just before midday.'.
I generally prefer not to add artificial colors to a shot unless it's absolutely necessary to do so.  I try to frame my shots as needed rather than crop the images later.  The only thing I don't mind doing is turning down the Noise Reduction on the camera and then using it as needed when processing any images after downloading them.
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NOTE: Full Sized image (6000 pixels wide).An untouched image straight from the camera. Check out the viewing platform for the tourists way down at the bottom of the cliff face on the lower right.  The colors almost looks like Autumn hues. Iron Oxide on the cliff walls and magenta leaves on the trees make this image less appealing than the one below...

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Several issues were at play with photographing the landscape scenes at Katoomba and Blackheath yesterday: Using a quality Circular Polarizer (which was essential in daylight with an f/1.4 lens for some wide-open shots) generates more color intensity and increases color saturation and contrast (see my original comments in the Original Post under 'Notes'). As you can see from the image above (which is unedited and straight from the camera without resizing), the colors of the bush here look 'unnatural' because of the ongoing Drought and because of recent Fires that were lit to reduce fire-hazard during our approaching summer. The rocks themselves are yellow sandstone stained with iron oxides ... which give them a pink hue. Red shale is also dominant in the region on the topmost layers, something that Charles Darwin commented on when he visited these sites on the 18th of January, 1836. The camera sensor is correctly interpreting the scene colors based on the wavelengths permitted by the PLC filter and on the White Balance setting used (which was set to 'AUTO' on this occasion). As noted, the native plants and vegetation were exhibiting warm reds instead of cooler greens.
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Canon PowerShot G1X - More pleasing colors - from when the valley was lush and the greens had less magenta. But it has been heavily color-tweaked.  I took this shot after waiting for the weather and sun position to be ideal - Jan 2014. Note that this image has been heavily Photoshopped as it was to be used in a book. As such, I didn't bother to upload it to my gallery until just now. - This image is actually quite soft when viewed at 100% and was taken at f/5 @ 28mm.  The rocks were slightly desaturated here.

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You can see an image above that I took with a Canon G1X that has much more pleasing colors, even though a CPL was used and the angle of light was similar. I even selected a day where there would be random clouds in the sky to impact more with the CPL and to give a better sense of scale. I desaturated some of the pink hues from the sandstone to enhance the appeal of the image. You won't notice it but the trees in the distance were smears because the sensor wasn't capable of resolving the sort of details that the EOS M cameras can with their larger sensors. The G1X camera has a decent sized 1.5 inch sensor that was fantastic for its time. I just used it a couple of hours ago to photograph my M6 camera for the image I used to lead this thread with.
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Processing...
When the camera images are processing inside the camera, the resulting image is accurate, based on the nature of the light striking the sensor. In the instances above, you can see a remarkable amount of detail has been captured by the M6 shot (top). Reducing it to a JPEG results in losing a lot of that fine detail when making the image smaller - in the same way that reducing a portrait eliminates pores and subtle details in the skin. Then we have some additional compression taking place on the DPreview server (which annoyed another 32mm lens owner last week because he said detail was lacking after posting).
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Below are two images taken from the same region during winter time and at sunset. The lens used here was the EF-M 11-22mm f.4-5.6 IS STM lens - which is reputed for its sharpness.
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EOS M6 + EF-M 11-22mm lens - Sunset - no filters. JPEG from camera.

EOS M6 + EF-M 11-22mm lens - Sunrise- this was processed as a HDR image

iPhone 6S - taking the shot above (just before I swapped lenses on the EOSM)

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One of the advantages of shooting with RAW is that contrast, color enhancement, contrast adjustment, noise reduction and sharpening are not added by the camera. Skies are un-banded until you reduce and then compress the image into an 8-Bit JPEG for posting online. Complex backgrounds are squeezed down in size so that details are essentially replaced by color patches.
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With the shots I took of the valley regions yesterday, the in-camera processing was offset by the odd color hues that were present in the scene at the time. In lifting shadows slightly and altering color hues to tone down their abnormal color state due to present conditions in the valley, the resulting images might not register as ideal to the human eye. And yet the natural colors were quite strange as a result of all the magenta. i will be returning to the site again when the week's rain has subsided and will hopefully capture better lighting conditions and more greenery.
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In retrospect, I think the M6 and the 32mm lens performed as expected with yesterday's shoot - although I do with the color differences had not been present. I could have processed the image to match the one of the G1X above... but that really would be cheating.