Study of Red

— Posted inUncategorized — 2 min read

I've been experimenting with my new camera for some time. I'm getting used to using some controls and loving the camera's large optical zoom, while hating its insistence on not letting me take full control even using the "Manual" mode.

Another thing that's been bugging me is the colours. To me, the camera does not deliver correct colours. Too much blue, too much pink, not enough yellow, not enough … whatever! I initially thought it must be something to do with NZ's strong Sun, full of cancer causing ultraviolet light. But I get those colour incorrectness even in indoor photos.

So I've been experimenting with camera's colour setting, in quest of what delivers most true colours in certain conditions. I share one of those colour experiments in this post, my study of how to get most true colour of the bright red bottlebrush flowers just outside the lounge window. …

So this is the summary of what I did with this study. (Note: White balance had been adjusted against white wall) Please click on the thumbnail to go to the linked album page then and look at the full size picture from there.

Although the jpeg quality of this collage is quite low and the image is quite grainy, the colours are still OK compared to the originals because I disabled colour sub-sampling at saving. Better quality pictures are also uploaded: top row and bottom row if you want to have a closer look.

To my eyes the red in the top middle (Vivid) seems most accurate, but a little bit on a loud (too much) side. The top left (Enhanced Red) delivers best green but the red seems too pink. In terms of balance, the bottom right (Positive Film Effects) looks best, though the red is still a touch pinky and there's a tiny bit too much blue in the leaves in shade.

It'll depend a lot on the subject but, if taking red flowers under a sun to part cloudy condition, "Vivid" seems the best colour option, while "Positive Film" seems OK for other things.

I was going to upload the pictures of "other things" as well, but that'll have to wait, at least another day.

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  2. it is all so 'technical' to me… I start to haze over in these discussions so I'm not any help. I have found colour to be quite dependent on the lens- but I cannot be certain. I find richer saturation in my photos pre-edited whilst using a low ISO needing oftentimes a tripod. if that makes any sense…I often just increase contrast and saturation if need be to gain the deep colour that is true to my eye.best wishes as you discover the proper settings for what you are looking for.

  3. Hi Jill. Thank you for your suggestion about contrast and saturation. I'll try the on the next sunny day. :)Check out those other pictures from the links in my comment above. 😉

  4. I agree, vivid looks best to keep as a default. I also use vivid on my Olympus E450.

  6. Originally posted by studio41:

    it is all so 'technical' to me

    Same for me, I never trim the colors, I just have the general adjustment "sunny", "night", "cloudy", ….But I like "Vivid" where a green is a green, a red is a red, giving trimming possibilities with a software. "Neutral color" seems too neutral.PS: If the problem persists try N&B 😉 !

  7. "Vivid" wins :up:Originally posted by arduinna:

    If the problem persists try N&B

    😆 Seems defy the purpose of taking flower pictures. :rolleyes:

  8. I don't know what the real objects looked like. But seems the deep reds in the flowers appear a little pinky. It may be the white balance setting (default "Auto" in Canon cameras) that was affecting the colour quality than use of "Vivid"

  9. Well, I'm off to bed now (12:30 AM here). Hope the wind calms down soon. G'nite!

  10. Originally posted by debplatt:

    On vivid, there seems to be some loss of definition, even though the color seems quite true.

    I noticed that, too. That's why I use "Positive film like colour enhancement" setting, even the colours are not quite correct. I think you choose those settings case by case according to the conditions, nature of the object and surrounding, and what you want to capture, colours or details. This experiment and other simialr ones (yes, there have been several studies of blue, green and white ;)) I've been doing have helped me chose better settings in some circumstances. But in other occasions I completely forgot about setting changes and repeated the same mistakes. :irked:

  11. Here's a study in red that I did with my Canon camera on the "vivid" setting (don't feel that you have to look at them all):

    http://my.opera.com/debplatt/albums/showpic.dml?album=2039511&picture=27796421http://my.opera.com/debplatt/albums/showpic.dml?album=885227&picture=12261021http://my.opera.com/debplatt/albums/showpic.dml?album=885227&picture=12260724http://my.opera.com/debplatt/albums/showpic.dml?album=885227&picture=12261129#bigimg
    http://my.opera.com/debplatt/albums/showpic.dml?album=885227&picture=12261131

    What do you think? Maybe too red?

  12. Here's the thing I wonder about. Remember coloring books and "staying within the lines"? On vivid, the red seems to not stay within the lines. For instance the fine, thin petals in the "Enhanced red" image above are still quite distinct. But the petals in the "Vivid" image above seem to almost bleed into one another. That's been one of my concerns. On vivid, there seems to be some loss of definition, even though the color seems quite true.

  13. I often repeat the same mistakes, perhaps to explore their folly more fully. 😉

  14. Study of Red
    Study of Red
    Study of Red

    Study of Red
    Study of Red
    Study of Red

    Study of Red
    Study of Red
    Study of Red

    :whistle:

  17. 😆 You'd have to do better than that, Olivier. None of those is actually red IMO. The left column is shades of scarlet, middle is shades of crimson and right is shades of burgundy 😉

  18. When I look at this page in Firefox, Olivier's studies of red are all black. When I looked at it using my phone's browser, the top group was all red, and below that it seemed there was a group in cyan and another in green. :confused:

  19. Hmmm. I can confirm Deb's problem. All black in SeaMonkey, cyan and green in IE8.This is what I see in Opera 11 :confused:

  20. What we wrote here is supposed to be written in BBCode, but I use HTML ( I have to remove the "<" and ">" so that the code may appear ) for instance :table tr td font size="2" color="tomato1" B (study of red)/B /font /td /tr /tableThere are two possible problems : HTML code is not interpreted (for instance in the cell bgcolor="tomato1" doesn't work with Opera 10.63) or the name of the color which I took from the Tcl/Tk language. Normally it's something like #EE5566 or this kind of numbers.

  22. No it's alright, but it's not a surprise : it works for Opera 10.63 and you have v 11 , (ascending compatibility !) a bit "enhanced green" maybe 😉 !

  23. Originally posted by arduinna:

    No it's alright, but it's not a surprise : it works for Opera 10.63 and you have v 11 , (ascending compatibility !)

    Opera is the best! :yes:Originally posted by arduinna:

    a bit "enhanced green" maybe

    😆

  25. Originally posted by debplatt:

    When I look at this page in Firefox, Olivier's studies of red are all black.

    :yikes: That is the reason why I try to use #nnnnnn color codes only. All browsers still does not support all color names.What comes to original topic of what setting is best for images, then that also depends partially on what media is used. Vivid is maybe not best for print media. Moreover, people have thousands of different displays and thus everyone sees the colors differently. So, best we can do is hope to find some compromise 😆

  29. … and by chance only one species of animal using browsers …. :p

  30. Originally posted by serola:

    I missed that one

    Same for me ! Thanks MMs !! to bookmarks, done ! :up:

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