I sometimes struggle to get reds to look "right" out of my 6D and 5D MkIII. Attached is a recent picture of some bright red tulips taken with my 6D and 135L lens. I tried different profiles in Lightroom and played with red and green hue, saturation and luminescence, but the red color doesn't match the color I remember seeing. I ended up using the neutral profile, which comes closest to my recollection. I have not tried setting up my own profiles yet.

Anybody else experiencing these problems? Any suggestions on how to correct?

Thanks
 

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I have a red/green color deficiency so relying on my eyes and memory for correct color is not an option. But as a portrait shooter, getting correct color balance is crucial so my subjects don't come out looking like Smurfs or Devils. While the camera presets can get you close for non-critical photos, if you want to really nail the colors you need to be employing a color managed workflow that begins in the camera.

Some might take the easy route and use the Color Picker in Lightroom to click on a supposedly white patch in the image to set a neutral white balance but I've found this very unreliable.

Instead, I use a Lastolite EzyBalance to do a custom in-camra white balance.

http://www.amazon.com/Lastolite-LL-LR1250-12-Inch-Ezybalance/dp/B0009QZDL6

I like the 12" model because it's large enough to fill up the view finder when I'm taking my shot for balance, and small enough to fold up nice and neat and slip in to my back pocket. I reset the custom in-camera white balance ever time me and my subject move in to different lighting. When shooting in the golden hour I'll rebalance very few minutes even if we aren't moving to accommodate the rapidly changing ambient light.

Using this approach I get spot on, perfectly neutral colors on every frame. That gives a good baseline them from which to edit for the effect I want, which usually means just adding a bit of warmth with the Lightroom Temp slider.
 
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d

Mar 8, 2015
417
1
As another has suggested, a Colorchecker Passport will go a long towards improving colour accuracy from your camera. A grey card won't fix it - while it will give you a neutral starting point, different camera models vary in their colour response. Profiling with something like the CC Passport will correct much of an uneven or inaccurate colour response. I work in a photography studio, and recently used the CCP to profile a 5D MkIII, and was very surprised at how far of some colours were SOOC.

Cheers,
d.
 
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Marsu42

Canon Pride.
Feb 7, 2012
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bholliman said:
I sometimes struggle to get reds to look "right" out of my 6D and 5D MkIII.

I suspect a user error, the 6d gives spot-on, vivid and beautiful colors if used properly.

For further analysis post the raw file as talking about some cooked jpeg is nearly useless.

d said:
As another has suggested, a Colorchecker Passport will go a long towards improving colour accuracy from your camera. [...] I work in a photography studio, and recently used the CCP to profile a 5D MkIII, and was very surprised at how far of some colours were SOOC.

I have it and it's great - in *constant* lighting. Outdoors, it's nearly useless if you don't re-shoot the card every other minute as the lighting is so quick to change (sun moving, clouds and moisture changing the wb).
 
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d

Mar 8, 2015
417
1
Marsu42 said:
bholliman said:
I sometimes struggle to get reds to look "right" out of my 6D and 5D MkIII.

I suspect a user error, the 6d gives spot-on, vivid and beautiful colors if used properly.

For further analysis post the raw file as talking about some cooked jpeg is nearly useless.

d said:
As another has suggested, a Colorchecker Passport will go a long towards improving colour accuracy from your camera. [...] I work in a photography studio, and recently used the CCP to profile a 5D MkIII, and was very surprised at how far of some colours were SOOC.

I have it and it's great - in *constant* lighting. Outdoors, it's nearly useless if you don't re-shoot the card every other minute as the lighting is so quick to change (sun moving, clouds and moisture changing the wb).

Its design lends itself towards being easy to reshoot regularly in changing conditions when outdoors and on location - that's the main reason why I purchased it. You may as well complain about cameras being "nearly useless" if you don't constantly update its exposure settings when shooting in fast changing conditions!

Remember it doesn't just allow you to correct white balance - it's also adjusting the native colour response for a given camera across a range of colours, which among other things is determined by CFA characteristics and camera processing, and are effectively constant within the camera. If the OP is concerned about colour accuracy outdoors, making a couple of CCP profiles for their 6D under different conditions (bright sunlight, overcast, sunset etc) should go most of the way towards addressing the 6D's particular colour biases. WB is only one part of the equation.

d.
 
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bholliman said:
I sometimes struggle to get reds to look "right" out of my 6D and 5D MkIII. Attached is a recent picture of some bright red tulips taken with my 6D and 135L lens. I tried different profiles in Lightroom and played with red and green hue, saturation and luminescence, but the red color doesn't match the color I remember seeing. I ended up using the neutral profile, which comes closest to my recollection. I have not tried setting up my own profiles yet.

Anybody else experiencing these problems? Any suggestions on how to correct?

Thanks

You may want to try a custom white balance. I have used Clear White once in a while, and I should use it more often: http://www.digitalphotographykits.com/

I think the green in the foreground of your picture is messing up auto white balance.

If nothing else, I have had to really watch the RGB histogram for clipping in any channel, red and blue for sure and dial it back as necessary. Sometimes, there are 2 spikes and you will miss the second one if you don't look for it. I have found that DPP "Auto Tone" will work wonders by itself for these somewhat underexposed images.

I have a Canon 4.2mp 1D and that one does well with reds- possibly due to the CCD sensor, but it is only 4.2 mp, so no latitude for cropping. Nor does it have AFMA, which also sucks.

The 1D bodies seem to be much better with auto white balance.
 
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d said:
Marsu42 said:
I have it and it's great - in *constant* lighting. Outdoors, it's nearly useless if you don't re-shoot the card every other minute as the lighting is so quick to change (sun moving, clouds and moisture changing the wb).
Its design lends itself towards being easy to reshoot regularly in changing conditions when outdoors and on location - that's the main reason why I purchased it. You may as well complain about cameras being "nearly useless" if you don't constantly update its exposure settings when shooting in fast changing conditions!

Fair enough, in that case let's just say I underestimated how fast and decisive lighting changes outdoors, not only by ambient lighting over time but simply with the direction you point your camera to. So anyone who wants to do color calibration outside with this method should be ready to generate lotsa dng profiles.

That doesn't change my opinion 'bout the op's "red" shot though, with proper handling of the 6d it shouldn't be necessary to use a color checker to avoid the nuclear holocaust look of those flowers.
 
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Marsu42 said:
That doesn't change my opinion 'bout the op's "red" shot though, with proper handling of the 6d it shouldn't be necessary to use a color checker to avoid the nuclear holocaust look of those flowers.

Looks like harsh lighting- could have used a shade.

I would bet that the image as a whole is overexposed. For sure, the red channel is all the way right. I would guess that the exposure compensation should have been at least -1 if not -1.5.

A circular polarizer would have helped a great deal.

The image as-is might look decent in B&W. I have a few that look bad in color but great in monochrome.
 
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d

Mar 8, 2015
417
1
Marsu42 said:
d said:
Marsu42 said:
I have it and it's great - in *constant* lighting. Outdoors, it's nearly useless if you don't re-shoot the card every other minute as the lighting is so quick to change (sun moving, clouds and moisture changing the wb).
Its design lends itself towards being easy to reshoot regularly in changing conditions when outdoors and on location - that's the main reason why I purchased it. You may as well complain about cameras being "nearly useless" if you don't constantly update its exposure settings when shooting in fast changing conditions!

Fair enough, in that case let's just say I underestimated how fast and decisive lighting changes outdoors, not only by ambient lighting over time but simply with the direction you point your camera to. So anyone who wants to do color calibration outside with this method should be ready to generate lotsa dng profiles.

That doesn't change my opinion 'bout the op's "red" shot though, with proper handling of the 6d it shouldn't be necessary to use a color checker to avoid the nuclear holocaust look of those flowers.

The image in question is obviously shot around the middle of the day, given the harshness of the light and direction of the shadows. It's not rapidly changing light, unless an odd cloud or two is passing by the sun from time to time. Assume the OP is wanting a nice shot of the tulips with accurate colours - meter off the CCP's grey panel to get a correct exposure (even set a custom WB in camera if you feel like it), snap a shot of the colour chips for making a profile later on, then shoot away. Might take all of 30 seconds at a casual pace. *If* it becomes overcast, you might repeat the process just in case and to get a new WB reference from the grey chip, but apart from that there's no need to be making more CCP profile shots each time you change shooting angles/position.

It's really not rocket science, doesn't take much time at all, and removes pretty much all the guesswork regarding exposure and colour response.

d.
 
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d said:
Might take all of 30 seconds at a casual pace.

I really do like the ccp, but I'm mostly shooting animals (live animals, that is) because I wanted to get the gray-ish fur right. But after 30 seconds waiting time while holding a color checker in front of their noses, well ... it's all nice and accurate colors for sure, but for the motive - not so much :->

Unfortunately as written, some general dng profile doesn't suffice, it has to be of the very lighting and camera angle. But for inanimate objects like the red flowers, esp. if it's an important or tricky shot, a ccp surely will work just fine and you don't even need photography experience to use it.
 
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DFM

Adobe Community Professional
May 7, 2013
61
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Marsu42 said:
Outdoors, it's nearly useless if you don't re-shoot the card every other minute as the lighting is so quick to change (sun moving, clouds and moisture changing the wb).

The spectrum of sunlight is absolutely constant - by definition it is a black body radiator with CRI 100. Clouds are effectively color neutral except in major pollution zones, and the scatter from the sky serves to alter the color temperature of 'daylight' by increasing the blue bias, but it doesn't change - even at night, the sky is the same color of blue, as you can see if you take long-exposure photos under a full moon. The CRI is always 100, even at sunset.

The CCP/Macbeth chart is all about profiling the sensor's relative luma/chroma offsets, it is sensitive to low-CRI spectra such as an LED with a chunk of yellow missing, but the response is effectively immune to color temperature over the range of values you'll get under what we call 'daylight'. You can build one CCP profile for each camera in daytime conditions - sunny, cloudy, foggy, makes no difference - and for any other photo you simply need to fix the WB with a gray reference or one of the standard values. There is no need to wave a CCP in front of every scene. There's a reason your cameras have a WB control and a picture profile called "Neutral", but not one called "Sunny Neutral". You're adjusting entirely different things.
 
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bholliman said:
I sometimes struggle to get reds to look "right" out of my 6D and 5D MkIII. Attached is a recent picture of some bright red tulips taken with my 6D and 135L lens. I tried different profiles in Lightroom and played with red and green hue, saturation and luminescence, but the red color doesn't match the color I remember seeing. I ended up using the neutral profile, which comes closest to my recollection. I have not tried setting up my own profiles yet.

Anybody else experiencing these problems? Any suggestions on how to correct?

Thanks

In photography, the compliment color to red is Cyan, not green. So if you want to tone down reds you need to adjust the cyan slider for reds in LR.
 
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DFM said:
You can build one CCP profile for each camera in daytime conditions - sunny, cloudy, foggy, makes no difference - and for any other photo you simply need to fix the WB with a gray reference or one of the standard values. There is no need to wave a CCP in front of every scene.

Nice theory from an armchair approach, but doesn't work for me (if it would be correct, I could go 'round shooting the ccp and always get the same profile, but I don't).

The scatter effect of clouds is so strong the the wb is way off in my experience - this might not affect a neutral gray patch so much, but I find it to be significant for the color card. And of course there's the radiance effect of any objects nearby like green leaves or brown trees that has a significant effect on local colors.
 
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