Color accuracy. Does it really matter?

Like most foods, salt and sugar goes a long ways and things taste better with them. Too much though can spoil it. So goes the Canon and pushing things too much in post... Great results SOOC, but go light on the post, but it could use a little. Other brands that are more true to life, require much more post for pleasing results.

The trick is to be true to color but add some spice; Canon in my opinion does this well and its one of the reasons I still shoot Canon and am sad Canon’s reign of sensors may be coming to a close this next generation, potentially.

That’s quite a thoughtful and intriguing response. Not to be taken with a pinch of salt! ;-)

One of the most natural of colours came from my Nikon D5500, but since then, I was on the lookout for something physically smaller, on account of my great age. Cameras and kit was starting to give me round shoulders. With the current M6 and some valuable menu settings courtesy of Marco, I’m feeling somewhat smug about things at the moment.

My previous cameras happened to be the Samsung NX500. It was a beauty, kitted with the 16-50. But oh my, those saturated colours! The sky in my part of the U.K, tends to be a rather soft powdery blue on a fine sunny day. Maybe I should have worked with the menu as far as those neon colours were concerned.





But in the end, I was hankering for a lens somewhat akin to the one I had with the Nikon, and came close with my M6 kitted out with the 18-150.

Warmest regards

Keith

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For product shoots, it is important to get color accuracy.

But personaly, i don't realy care. I aways make my color warmer and little bit muted. So, i always shoot with either Cloudy WB, Shade WB or 5600K color temperature and make my own Picture Style. I only use DPP btw.

Yeah, it matters a lot.

And sure, it also depends on taste. I prefer Canon, of course. From what I've seen, Nikon generally looks pretty good also. A lot of people seem to like Fuji. And then there's the rest.

As a starting point, I liked the 6D a little better, color-wise. I feel like the 5D4 can sometimes take me a little more to get to where I want, but it's not a huge difference.

One area where I feel Canon has made huge improvements is with their color at high ISO. I remember shooting something with a 70D and a 50D and at ISO1600, the 50D was almost impossible to work with. Then you have something like the 1Dx2 where the colors hold up really, really well at higher ISO. The 5D4 is much better than the 6D, color-wise, when using high ISO.

I'm sure I could probably end up with similar end-results with whatever body, but it makes it a little easier to start off with something that I already like.

filibuster said:

That’s quite a thoughtful and intriguing response. Not to be taken with a pinch of salt! ;-)

One of the most natural of colours came from my Nikon D5500, but since then, I was on the lookout for something physically smaller, on account of my great age. Cameras and kit was starting to give me round shoulders. With the current M6 and some valuable menu settings courtesy of Marco, I’m feeling somewhat smug about things at the moment.

Click to expand...

Some food for thought... I'm not a big post-processor person, however, I've abandoned Marco's +1 Saturation and Tone in favor of picture style defaults, and then "special" images I'll apply (to the RAWs I archive, I'll dig out of archives, or change before import) Landscape, Fine Detail, Autumn Hues, Snapshot Portrait or leave as Standard, to taste. I usually don't mess with their defaults (landscape etc) afterwards. I don't do this with all images, just ones I do something with other than let sit on Photos (Mac App) like say share on the web, print, give to someone else (with limits of course, I just shot a bday party and handed over 176 images, out of like 700-800 I shot, I just handed over SOOC JPEGs but the recipient is a photographer herself so she knows she can ask me for the RAWs if she wishes to reprocess them).

It became apparent after using Marco's preset in video, it was too much salt/sugar, however, I know just like Lattes or Pretzels, some folks prefer more salt, or prefer to frankly to not taste their coffee but rather the Milk and Sugar (that's most people)... I prefer to taste my coffee/bread dough, but I also like the salt or milk and sugar too.

If you're coming from Nikon though, you'll be pretty happy with Marco's suggestion. Btw, there is a "Nikon" picture style out there that saturates photos heavily and adds the Nikon trademark orange, which I find to be very not-true-to-life, but, you may feel at home with it.

filibuster said:

My previous cameras happened to be the Samsung NX500. It was a beauty, kitted with the 16-50. But oh my, those saturated colours! The sky in my part of the U.K, tends to be a rather soft powdery blue on a fine sunny day. Maybe I should have worked with the menu as far as those neon colours were concerned.



But in the end, I was hankering for a lens somewhat akin to the one I had with the Nikon, and came close with my M6 kitted out with the 18-150.

Warmest regards

Keith

Click to expand...

I look at the picture I have just taken on the LCD and then the actual scene - do they look the same? If so, then I know the camera has done the best it can.

However - not all monitors (including the LCD) produce accurate colour reproduction unless they are calibrated - and how many of us actuall do that? [I'll get a chorus of replies to that question :-D ]. I have two monitors and they give different results.

Then there's the printing. Are your printers calibrated? If you send the file away to be processed, do they come back as you remember?

So yes, while producing SOOC images which look OK straight away are nice, there are so many places where "adjustments" happen....

My conclusion is that colour accuracy SOOC doesn't matter in itself - it's the whole chain that matters.

Alan