Canon EOS R6 colors vs older Canon cameras

Hello,

I had the R6 for a short amount of time and tested it on a sunny day near the golden hour.

The colours I have to deal with in post processing have nothing in common with all my previous cameras like R, RP, 6D Mark II, 250D, 5D Mark II... As well as the SOOC JPEG.

I tried the editing in Lightroom Classic CC and Canon DPP at the same time.

The Lightroom version looked exactly the same when a color profile (Picture Style) was applied.

Adobe hat the matching color profiles (you can search for a link to an Adobe Help document).

Now to my test.

I shot at nearly golden hour time in January 2023 with wonderful warm sun light and little snow here ant there. It looked gorgeous to my naked eyes!

So I was glad to have a Canon camera with me which potentially can capture all the colours and make the scene in the Canon way look a little better

Now I will show you with what I have to deal with:

Camera Landscape profile in Lightroom Classic CC

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I tried to edit it in the way like I always did with my Canon cameras.

This is the JPEG SOOC with Fine Detail picture style applied in camera

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Strange JPEG. It doesn't represent the scene I looked at.

I tried and fiddled around... And in the end I wasn't able to achieve a good result at all. So did not the Canons own in-camera software for JPEG. I assume it would have been easy with any other older Canon camera like the R, which I had and the RP which I still own.

Picture Style Camera Landscape applied in Lightroom

View: original size

This is not nearly what I saw in person. Should I fiddle around with the color temperature sliders? Or go in the HSL? Never needed this things on any other Canon camera I owned for such an easy landscape scene.

I don't have words to explain what happened. Do I have a mixture of Sony and Nikon Color Science in my R6? Seems to me like that.

I was in January 2022 with my old trusty Canon EOS 6D Mark II at the same place maybe a little later in the day.

6D Mark II exactly same settings applied as above with the wonderful Canon Landscape Picture style, at least the one for the 6D Mark II. Oh yes!

View: original size

So I think this is a matter of taste.

Do I want to spend half an hour fiddling around on the R6 image to get it look to what I like? As an amateur maybe not.

I have the EOS RP. It is as easy to edit the files like it was on the 6D Mark II. A few basic sliders and the wonderful Camera Landscape profile applied and boom there it is!

I'm not saying that the R6 colours are bad but they behave unusual compared to all my previous Canon cameras. For my editing experience they are too difficult to edit the way I perceived the colours of all my other Canon cameras.

One more thing which has to do with colours as well:

Very strong Moire on the roofs. Edited in Lightroom to taste.

View: original size

A crop from the image above edited in Lightroom to taste

View: original size

I haven't seen this amount of Moire on any other camera I owned including Sony A6000, A6300 ( I had maybe one photo of roofs where I was not sure if this is Moire or not), A7, A7R, A7R II and Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II, M1 and M1 Mark II cameras.

This amount of Moire makes me think the camera must have been defective.

Yes I know there is a Moire brush in Lightroom I never had to use so far. But I have to brush every time I'm photographing something with pattern.

I had the R7 before the R6, and the only problem I've experienced with either camera was when the RAW profile for the new R7 hadn't been updated by Microsoft (for my Windows PC) or Skylum (for the Luminar editing software I use). Before that update the photos looked horrible and were impossible to edit properly. I could have used Canon DPP 4, which did have the proper profile, but I really don't like that software. After the update, photos from the R7 have looked great no matter what software I use. The R6 is older, so I didn't have the same problem with it, and I doubt that's the problem being described here. Long story short, I love the R6, have experienced no problems with the colors, and I wish I was able to help but I have no idea what's going on here...

Steven Aunan wrote:

I had the R7 before the R6, and the only problem I've experienced with either camera was when the RAW profile for the new R7 hadn't been updated by Microsoft (for my Windows PC) or Skylum (for the Luminar editing software I use). Before that update the photos looked horrible and were impossible to edit properly.

This I do not get. Microsofts RAW extension shouldn't have anything to do with the demosaicing of files in standalone RAW developers? Isn't that only for Microsofts own viewers/explorer and apps?

Canon has been experimenting a lot with its "Signature colors" and quite frankly the "Canon colors" do no longer exist. It's a thing of the past and has been for quite some time. If you used to define Canon colors as "realistic but very vivid" that is.

I've been shooting Canon and pretty much all models starting with the original 5D and I have seen colors loose their "vibe and soul" over the years. I think it started when they fell behind in sensor tech and went hunting for noise. Noone mentioned color rendition in reviews back then - only high ISO performance and low ISO DR and Canon was seriosuly bashed for their crappy DR. So they did something with the sensor filters and opened Pandoras colorbox if you ask me. And the crushed blacks are very common these days. They are really keeping the doors to those shadows closed.

Then you have the lenses. I have been a 100% canon system shooter and never bothered with any other lenses. Until I tried both Tamron and Sigma a couple of years ago and noticed something I haven't seen in a long time. The warmer rendering from those lenses really did improve the colors. Especially when adding a subtle warming filter on top of that, like a Skylight 1B. Brings back some of those warm reddish hues Canon used to have. It's subtle but noticeable if you are anal about colors :-).

It's sad really. Canon used to be number one in the color department 10-15 years ago but now I would take any other brand instead of Canon for color alone. Well, maybe not any other but I would rank Olympus as the king of warm almost nostalgic rich color rendition followed by Pentax, Panasonic, Fujifilm. I still think Canon looks better than Sony but then again...even Sony looks more "alive" out of camera.

The old saying "it's just RAW, it is supposed to be flat" is extremely dated. Everyone needs to save time and why should I spend time steering colors to their correct starting position when they should look right in the first place from a modern sensor and RAW algorithms.

Yes, you can make your Canon R6 files look downright awesome but it still requires more work compared to for example Olympus. For me the solution is other lenses (and sometimes warming filters) since I want the right hues on the sensor directly and not alter everything in post. YMMV

boldcolors wrote:

Steven Aunan wrote:

I had the R7 before the R6, and the only problem I've experienced with either camera was when the RAW profile for the new R7 hadn't been updated by Microsoft (for my Windows PC) or Skylum (for the Luminar editing software I use). Before that update the photos looked horrible and were impossible to edit properly.

This I do not get. Microsofts RAW extension shouldn't have anything to do with the demosaicing of files in standalone RAW developers? Isn't that only for Microsofts own viewers/explorer and apps?

The OP asked me about my experience in another thread, so I commented. Last year I was brand new to shooting RAW. When I moved from the 7DII to the R7, all my images were suddenly out of whack in Luminar and when viewed in Windows Explorer, but not in Canon DPP 4. I didn't understand back then what was going on, but I do now. It's obviously not the same thing, but it is related to image colors so I shared ...

I am shooting RAW only and use ACR as a RAW converter. Majority of my pictures are based on my own color profiles created using my camera and the x-Rite ColorChecker. I do not use embedded or Adobe profiles at all.

I went from 5D mk III to R6 and honestly did not notice any negative color change. Only very notable and only positive increase of the dynamic range. Especially the shadow latitude is really a night and day now.

But color wise I am same satisfied with the R6 as I was with my 5D mk III.

rvdzee wrote:

boldcolors wrote:

I've been shooting Canon and pretty much all models starting with the original 5D and I have seen colors loose their "vibe and soul" over the years. I think it started when they fell behind in sensor tech and went hunting for noise. Noone mentioned color rendition in reviews back then - only high ISO performance and low ISO DR and Canon was seriosuly bashed for their crappy DR. So they did something with the sensor filters and opened Pandoras colorbox if you ask me. And the crushed blacks are very common these days. They are really keeping the doors to those shadows closed.

Completely agree. Going from R to R6 (for movie capabilities) the blacks are indeed crushed, there's very little in the shadows. Going further back in time Canon DSLRs had very nice, smooth tonality and I dearly miss it. I want that straight out of camera and am still experimenting how to get that. It's a general trend, too, the Sony RX100VI I had was also way too contrasty.

One thing you can do is to put a diffusion filter on your lens. I have the Tiffen Digital Diffussion FX/1 and it really opens up the shadows, lowers the overall contrast a tad and renders the scene a bit more filmic without looking "filter". I sometimes combine this with a didymium filter if I want those old school Canon reds back.