Help! Olympus E-PM2 skin tones versus Nikon D7000

VladimirCZ wrote:

Hi Alex,

on my calibrated monitor Nikon's picture has strong green and yellow tints.

Best regards,

Vlad

Same on my calibrated monitor.  I'd not want to set the Oly to match the pic on the right.  But, I do find Oly's skin tones too warm.  I did a white balance adjustment on my Oly and I turn down saturation to minus 1, then I'm satisfied with the skin tones.

I read all the raves about Oly's amazing colors before buying one, and discovered that "amazing" means highly saturated, overly warm and high contrast.  That also means inaccurate, but often pleasing colors.

Daniel Lauring wrote:

Alex Notpro wrote:

The skin tones on the E-PM2 come out very different from the Nikon D7000 by default. See comparison below. Some reviewers seem to find the warmer/redder Olympus tones more lively, but it must be a matter of preference, as I find them a bit unflattering (giving some subjects a gritty/angry look... probably great for street photography, not so much for family photos).

IMHO, the Nikon is HORRIBLE...zombie looking. The Olympus might pop more than you are used to but it looks much nicer.

I'm eating crow a little bit. I just was trying some portrait shots comparing a bunch of cameras and under incandescent light and I could not get the Oly to not turn my face pink. I tried natural colors...muted colors...setting the white balance manually to incandescent. Actually, setting the white balance manually to incandescent and using muted colors was worse than just letting Oly do AWB. I need to play with the individual color channels next I guess. It surprises me because generally I really like the Oly white balance but it wasn't handling the small room set up with three bright incandescent bulbs well.

This was with an Olympus PM2, btw, coupled with the Pansonic 45mm F2.8 macro.

Daniel Lauring wrote:

Daniel Lauring wrote:

Alex Notpro wrote:

The skin tones on the E-PM2 come out very different from the Nikon D7000 by default. See comparison below. Some reviewers seem to find the warmer/redder Olympus tones more lively, but it must be a matter of preference, as I find them a bit unflattering (giving some subjects a gritty/angry look... probably great for street photography, not so much for family photos).

IMHO, the Nikon is HORRIBLE...zombie looking. The Olympus might pop more than you are used to but it looks much nicer.

I'm eating crow a little bit. I just was trying some portrait shots comparing a bunch of cameras and under incandescent light and I could not get the Oly to not turn my face pink. I tried natural colors...muted colors...setting the white balance manually to incandescent. Actually, setting the white balance manually to incandescent and using muted colors was worse than just letting Oly do AWB. I need to play with the individual color channels next I guess. It surprises me because generally I really like the Oly white balance but it wasn't handling the small room set up with three bright incandescent bulbs well.

This was with an Olympus PM2, btw, coupled with the Pansonic 45mm F2.8 macro.

I don't think it's an AWB problem.

I got satisfactory results by just setting Saturation and Sharpness both to -2.

I did a bit of research into the Nikon "Portrait" picture mode and found that's essentially the same thing it does.

Not an "exact" match to the Nikon settings but close enough. I would need saturation about "-1.5" which is not an available setting on the camera.

PStu wrote:

I don't know whether it was the light or what, but the baby looks jaundiced in the Nikon photo.

Nikon photos have a greenish-yellowish cast to them, and that's one of the reasons why I ended up buying an E-PM2 instead of a Nikon DSLR. I'm not saying the Olympus has better color reproduction...

You can manually correct the colors it in the Nikon camera menu.

I would suggest to the original poster to shoot RAW and set up his own workflow if he's that picky about colors.

Just shoot RAW, man!

You don't need to manually correct every photo afterwards... you just set up a profile that give you a result that you like, and apply it to all your raw photos.

PS: I have to say that my own tip doesn't really work that well.

I am shooting raw and tried a bunch of RAW processor software in addition to the Olympus bundled software. Even with color profiling, the skin tones still manage to look either too pink or too green.

Should've gotten a Canon, maybe

PStu wrote:

I don't know whether it was the light or what, but the baby looks jaundiced in the Nikon photo.

I would say a bit cyanotic!

Harvo, MD

In your example the boy looks very very sick in the Nikon shot.

Maybe your monitor is tuned way too magenta and on your monitor the Nikon looks better. But then your monitor is basically tuned wrong AND your prints will look very different from your monitor.

Bas

Alex Notpro wrote:

The skin tones on the E-PM2 come out very different from the Nikon D7000 by default. See comparison below. Some reviewers seem to find the warmer/redder Olympus tones more lively, but it must be a matter of preference, as I find them a bit unflattering (giving some subjects a gritty/angry look... probably great for street photography, not so much for family photos). I'm able to correct the tones on the computer but does anybody know some quick settings to have them come out the same as the D7000 straight out of camera? The D7K tones are more natural, when compared to the subject next to the computer monitor.

Here's one representative sample comparison. Trust me, I did several, but I'm not going to post them all:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/atramos/8247423184/in/photostream/lightbox/

Ulfric M Douglas wrote:

Alex Notpro wrote:

... I'm able to correct the tones on the computer but does anybody know some quick settings to have them come out the same as the D7000 straight out of camera? The D7K tones are more natural, when compared to the subject next to the computer monitor.

Here's one representative sample comparison. Trust me, I did several, but I'm not going to post them all:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/atramos/8247423184/in/photostream/lightbox/

The one on the right is hideous.

The one on the left may be slightly too pink but in any case it is pleasant.

Go with the camera that took the photo on the left.

The camera for the right photo needs some serious tweaking! Maybe some serious tweakers have a jpeg profile to advise?

I have a friend who uses his Nikon D7000 in Auto for family photos : every single comparison shows my Olympuses making nicer out-of-camera Jpegs, despite me using the oldest Pens.

…immediately -- might be suffering from anemia!

In my view, Oly does warm up stuff just a touch more than I like. Can you pull the red and yellow down just a tiny bit in camera? Or maybe pull saturation down just a little. I can't remember, as I am now shooting with a Panny G6 which does offer this facility (but its "Standard" balance is just a touch cool and I have moved red up just a little -- you might find it perfect).