Wanted Upgrade on Alphas

[Dusty]

I was thinking of the "INFO" thread, and also Sonolta's issue with with his new monitor, calibration. So I got this bright idea.....

What if Sony included and electronic version of a Macbeth Color Checker in-camera? A protected image in firmware could be used, so that if you were printing to an unknown printer, (such as a friends, or local business') you could print it as a control. If they also included it in RAW format, it could be used in your workflow to see how the effects of your processing effect 'real' colors. e.g., If you use DXO/Bibble/ACR/whatever and apply x,y, and z adjustments, what does that do to the colors compared to the standard.

I know, I know, most of the time you apply adjustments to correct exposure, noise, etc, but it would be interesting to see what it does against the standard.

What do think?

Dusty

PS. Sony reps, you can use this idea without any compensation except for a couple of A900s and complete set of lenses!

[Dr. Harout]

Great idea, Dusty.

[David Kilpatrick]

Actually a very good idea - a calibration image permanently in the camera.

David

[Greg Beetham]

Yes that could be a good idea, having some standard in camera....a lot of the problems come from a hodge podge of colour spaces in various devices, RGB..sRGB..CMYK, David could elaborate on this far more than I could, but you could still test your system with a loop, you could construct a facsimile GretagMacbeth colour checker in a good colour based application, the individual colour patches are numbered and the RGB values are listed, for example #5 blue flower= Red 164 Green 253 Blue 196, and #17 magenta = Red 207 Green 3 Blue 124 etc. (I have the complete list if anyone wants it), you would still not be able to compare against a real GretagMacbeth colour checker when you printed it out, (unless you had one), but if you were to take a photo of the printout and feed it back from the camera through the system to a printout again you should get the same result as the first time...IF you didn't, then you would know that something wasn't right...the next thing would be finding out which/what it is that needs adjusting...
Greg
ps The value of the light (colour temperature) would be critical when taking the photo of the colour checker as well as the WB setting in-camera...

[Dusty]

As a latecomer to digital there's a lot for me to learn, and calibrating monitors and printers properly is a part of that.

In the film world, we all know that different emulsions had different characteristics, and would often pick a certain one for the type of shooting we were doing. We could always check that films bias - and our developing/printing process - by using a MacBeth chart.

With everything digital, I still want that reference, but now my 'proofs' are displayed on a monitor, not picked up at the local pro shop. I know I can still let them print proofs, but besides the fact that I now feel no need to conserve film - I can shoot more on an 8GB card than 10 rolls of film - there's the cost savings of NOT having to have printing done - IF your monitors and printers are in sync.

If the calibration standard is internal to the camera, it doesn't matter which colorspace of workflow software you're using to do your PP. You can always include it (assuming it's in RAW formant) to show where your are to the standard. That still allows for being creative, or color shifting, or any other type of image manipulation you want to do, but then you truly know the results.

Dusty