Suddenly unable to capture accurate red reproduction.

Discussion in 'Technical Troubleshooting' started by Tonytee, May 30, 2020.

  1. johnsey

    johnsey Site Moderator Staff Member Site Supporter

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    This is quite a shift , are you using adobe RGB in lightroom? Each manufacture has color preferences but if shot raw you should not be this far off without something else creeping into the workflow here.
     

  2. Tonytee

    Tonytee Well-Known Member Site Supporter

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    I had a chat with Canon last night and they had me send them an image showing my problem. They replied that the settings I used with gray, did not hold and that I should go ahead and use a sheet of white copier paper. To which I did. I will post the result of capturing one of the Maroon, (dried out) flowers and later will post an image of the Day Lily taken with the 80D also. IMG_3049.JPG
    Much more accurate result. :)
     
  3. Tonytee

    Tonytee Well-Known Member Site Supporter

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  4. Tonytee

    Tonytee Well-Known Member Site Supporter

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    Unfortunately, I am not out of the woods quite yet. The following image is of a flower whose real color is a deep,dark red. I will be receiving
    a new gray card this coming Monday and will see how things go from there. Many, many thanks to all of you awesome folks for the many useful and educational hints and suggestions. Cheers. Tony IMG_3051.JPG
     
  5. johnsey

    johnsey Site Moderator Staff Member Site Supporter

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    HI Tony I realized I missed that you are using creative modes. Those modes will dial in their own saturation and color preferences to you files. Which will make it hard for you to correct in a camera processed JPG after the fact. For example Landscape mode will saturate greens and blues and will likely skew reds because of this.
    A grey card will be helpful but I am not sure how smart the creative modes are when using a grey card. A grey card can be very helpful in complex lighting for getting the best color balance. But my best suggestion is to get out of the creative modes, and in addition shoot raw. I shoot auto white balance 95% of the time as you can tweak it in raw on your computer after the fact and it usually does a really good job.
     
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  6. Caladina

    Caladina Well-Known Member

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    think i figured out what the problem is, from your flower smudges in photo forum i see you been taking alot of colourful pictures of flowers like reds blues yellows purples etc,
    Looking at this info i don't think your camera sensor has been getting enough 'Greens'..............................................Taxi !!!!!!
    :p
     
  7. Tonytee

    Tonytee Well-Known Member Site Supporter

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    Hi Johnsey, I did get out of the Creative Modes finally. Actually, I wasn't sure how to get out of them so I left it in Neutral and that did not seem to help matters. Then I tried leaving it in Auto and that helped quite a bit. I do not have Photoshop or Lightroom. I use primarily FastStonesimageviewer and Olympusviewer, V.3. For the past two days now I have been struggling again trying to capture accurate wine and burgundy flower colors, with no luck. I used the Gray Card and the White sheet of copier paper, and honestly, I am at my wits end.

    The wine colors turn out reddish orange and sometimes are blown out as though they are oversaturated. I made drastic adjustments in the 80d's presets, which helped to a minor degree, but again, close but no cigar. The only way I can currently get close to the actual wine colors on the subjects is if I seriously underexpose. At that juncture, I mean what is the point? I need to convince Canon that this gear I have of theirs needs a serious physical examination and then hopefully they will accept my request to have it warranty repaired. If you wish, I can post samples. Thanks. Tony
     
  8. johnsey

    johnsey Site Moderator Staff Member Site Supporter

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    I really am not sure it is the gear and there are so many factors to consider. Neutral picture style is probably your best bet for editing.

    What I have observed in this thread is the use of creative modes, they intend to process a specific look on a file in the output jpg. And with apply editing over top of other settings. Jpg is also a terrible file for editing, it is a compressed format so you are recompressing every time you edit and it does take a toll on the file. Also jpg doesn't hold onto any history of changes so its really hard to reverse your edits.

    I would reset all the stuff you dialed into presets, and shoot raw format. You do not need any presets in raw. It is designed to shoot what you asked it to, without any bias. Using this combined with something between P and M on the dial should take away any camera profiling issues.

    Suggestion:
    If you shoot raw you will want the canon photo professional at least if you don't use anything professional such as adobe, this will allow you to open the raw file and process basic exposure, saturation, color balance all before exporting a user friendly file like TIFF or JPG. I would use tiff for the working file it is not compressed, once you are ready for upload you can make a sized appropriate jpg for web usage,

    I have no experience with the freeware out there like fast tone or Olympus viewers so I recommended the canon photo program to edit the raw file if you go that route, since I do not know how well the freeware does with raw.
     

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  9. johnsey

    johnsey Site Moderator Staff Member Site Supporter

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    I do want to note that my response may come of as a bit of a repeat of what I already said earlier and I am sorry for the re-iteration.

    It is impossible to know what is dialed into the file without the exif data to accompany that.

    The lanscape / portrait / night, etc are hindering your customizing by processing their changes to the image, if you like to edit, you do not want to use these, in fact they are not on the upper level cameras as they would not be used by the people buying higher level camera bodies.

    Also it is impossible to know what you see on your screen and what edits you make, especially if you use a destructive editor like Fastone, Gimp or Photoshop. Hence my suggestion to start using raw and maybe consider a non-destructive editing workflow.

    And to add to all this if your screen is not calibrated the same as mine we will see different shades of colors as well.
     
    Last edited: Sep 29, 2021
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  10. Tonytee

    Tonytee Well-Known Member Site Supporter

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    Hi Johnsey, many thank for your efforts to be of assistance. And you are. I have received an email from Canon stating that they believe they need to have the gear so they can conduct a thorough examination on it and hopefully find and correct the problem. You may very well be correct as I can see that you are well grounded in this field. If as you say, the Creative Modes cause these and other problems, wouldn't that be true with other colors as well? I have no problem with getting accurate color reproduction on true reds, blues and yes, even purples, greens and pinks. The only issue appears to be with wine and burgundy colors. I will go ahead and shoot in raw and get the Canon software you suggested, see how that goes before sending off my gear to Canon. Once again friend, your assistance has proven invaluable.

    Kind regards, Tony :))
     
  11. Caladina

    Caladina Well-Known Member

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    on the original post heading you say this happened suddenly, with all thats gone on since then if it was something that altered in the camera automatically or by you setting something, did you try resetting the camera back to factory settings?
     
  12. Tonytee

    Tonytee Well-Known Member Site Supporter

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    Okay, here is an image that has the color that I have been chasing. Or, better yet, kicking a dead horse. I went ahead and followed your instructions, i,e, got out of Creative Mode and left it in Neutral. Then I checked White Balance by shooting other colors and they turned out fine. Only difference was that I started shooting with White Balance in Daylight mode and that really helped a lot. Next, I made the switch from JPEG to RAW and Man o' Man am I glad you recommended that change. Next I closed the built-in flash and started to manipulate the camera's settings i,e., TV 125, AP F/11 and left ISO Auto right there and it did use the highest setting available at 6400. Again, this image is the result of the changes and I am a happy camper so I will not have to send the gear to Canon Service Center. Let me know what your opinion, please. Again, many thanks for your time and efforts. :)) IMG_0079.JPG Resizing is the only adjustment I made in Photo Editing Software. Cheers, TT
     
  13. johnsey

    johnsey Site Moderator Staff Member Site Supporter

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    Glad to hear some process changes helped fix the issues you were encountering.
    On a side note that pop up flash was probably also adding to washing out the color a bit as well.
     
  14. Tonytee

    Tonytee Well-Known Member Site Supporter

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  15. Tonytee

    Tonytee Well-Known Member Site Supporter

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    This is the actual color of the subject. After trying everything I could think of and failing, (The subject consistently turned out a bright red) I then got into the Creative Mode and tried one feature I had not used and that was: "Faithful." I also tried this feature on other flowers and the colors came through as very true and accurate. This was taken with my Canon EOS 7D Mk II with Canon EF-S 55~250mm, IS, STM lens. Unfortunately, the Gray Card does not seem to work very well with my gear. Thanks again for all of your help. Tony :)
     
  16. Caladina

    Caladina Well-Known Member

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    so you using jpeg to get the correct colours?
    Next time you in a place where they sell house paint, see if you can get a red colour spectrum card that has many shades the same on it, the closer they are in colour to each other the better, might want to get some of the other colours as well.
    then do a jpeg vs raw test to see if your camera is able to separate the closely matched shades, DPP4 has a raw viewer.
    also see if another lens does the same, some lenses can have a poorer colour render
     
    Last edited: Sep 30, 2021
  17. Craig Sherriff

    Craig Sherriff Well-Known Member Site Supporter

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    Interesting idea, Caladina, worth a try and something to let my students play around
    with.
     
  18. johnsey

    johnsey Site Moderator Staff Member Site Supporter

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    We discussed this a bit already if your using JPG and/or picture styles the camera is going to process the image with certain settings for contrast, sharpness, saturation and color tone in mind which may very well produce results your not expecting. Lighting is the key to photography, did you expose this in a lower light situation it seems like you have some soft dusk lighting based on the image and the blue hue. .. maybe it was just in dense shade. The camera meters as though the whole scene is in an average daylight situation so if the image is in heavy shade it will over expose what you see in reality when you are that close to the object. Treating it as daylight color balance when the lighting looks like it is shade or blue hour based on what you provided will also pull the blue out and give you more vibrant red.

    You shoot a lot of flowers so if your moving between direct sun and shade your going to notice all these things about the camera metering.
    I would shoot raw, you can change exposure and white balance easily in post. The camera will not get it correct in complex lighting on its own.
    You may want to try under or over exposing a stop or two depending on the lighting... the heavy shade description above is just an example when dialing the exposure manually down probably would get you closer to what your trying to replicate and give you the bluish red you were expecting. So if your shooting in an auto mode your going to be fighting against the camera.
     
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  19. Tonytee

    Tonytee Well-Known Member Site Supporter

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    Hey Johnsey, many thanks for a very detailed and comprehensive explanation. I will continue working on this. Cheers, Tonytee. :))
     
  20. Caladina

    Caladina Well-Known Member

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    something else that might aid you in correcting colours is to use a white balance / colour checker so you can a, set you white balance with the computer soft ware you use and b, use it as a reference to manually change the colours.

    when i photo graph red roses i'm always thinking of you because of your red capture problems
    as i'm a jpeg only shooter i just use the w/b settings to alter if needed
     

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