Show everyone the latest shots which make you feel dead chuffed with your camera choice
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Alright, one last picture. I really want to invite some criticism here because I'm not sure my monitor is showing me the colors the way everyone else sees them. One person mentioned the green could be more saturated but there was already a lot of shift to the blue in this telephoto shot.
I think you're okay, Kevin. I remember New Mexico scrub brush to be very brown-green-gray, much as you have captured it. It isn't the lush vegetation of less arid climes!
Nice shot, Henry. Where was that? It's got a similar composition to your first picture on this thread. Also, between your great B&W shots and my color calibration frustrations, I might shoot more B&W in the future.
Yes I'd have too agree Kevin, the clouds or haze in the distance above the horizon look a tad blue-ish, but that could be due to slightly wrong WB maybe, often I find a WB setting of cloud +1 is good for hazy conditions with scattered clouds.
Greg
KevinBarrett wrote:Nice shot, Henry. Where was that? It's got a similar composition to your first picture on this thread. Also, between your great B&W shots and my color calibration frustrations, I might shoot more B&W in the future.
Both photos were in New Mexico on Route 66 somewhere (don't remember) made with the Minolta D7i in 2002.
For the last 8-9 months I have been using a 17" notebook and I don't use color calibration. My previous notebook and the desktop I used to use were both calibrated, but when I calibrated my current notebook the reds especially and yellows a bit less were way, way oversaturated and blown out. I calibrated several times and the result was the same. I finally gave up and don't use color management on this notebook (which is my main computer these days since I need something portable) and it does reasonably well. I have decided not to sweat it. When I look at the photos on my website on other computers (this morning I was at an Apple Store) they look pretty good so I guess even without calibration it is not so bad. If I was trying to make almost exact matches for prints then I would sweat it a bit more.
Here is another shot of the same building in color. How do the colors look to you?
To tell the truth, I didn't have a problem until Sonolta's big thread about monitor color calibration (I don't remember what it started as). At worst I thought the colors in my pictures were a little flat when viewed on other monitors. I also noticed that my monitor didn't show all the highlight and shadow room that was left unutilized in my pictures. So I thried being a little bolder with my saturation and contrast, and that's probably when the trouble started. Better to stick with what I had before, maybe?
When I get home I'll maybe give this picture another work-up and just do the contrast without so much saturation.
Oh, and the colors look lovely--I'll look at them at home and compare them to my own.
The colours look ok too me Henry, beauty is in the eye of the beholder anyway, even if they don't agree in every tiny detail with the original that still looks fine to my eye, even Kevin's photo is ok really, it's only if one want's to nitpick about the very slight blue effect in the distance (probably due to haze anyway) that one would find something to complain about.
Greg
Alright, I've re-calibrated and re-converted this image from scratch. I started by increasing the blue in my monitor and turning down the red. This brought Henry's picture to a very good color on my monitor at home...something like what I remembered at work. I tested the new calibration by looking at a pile of pictures by Nate Zeman and things looked great. Then I started with the picture in IDC, set the WB to "Daylight" as a starting point, and adjusted things from there.
Below is the newly re-processed image, click on it to view at 800 x 1200 resolution. As before, I invite and encourage all feedback and criticism.
I'm not sure if you want or need my input Kevin, as you didn't bother to acknowledge my earlier comment, (I got the impression I was talking too myself) but for what it's worth that does look a lot more realistic/natural for sure than the previous version, in fact I like that one heaps better and I didn't think there was really all that much wrong with the first one, just shows how misleading colour can be.
Greg
Greg Beetham wrote:I'm not sure if you want or need my input Kevin, as you didn't bother to acknowledge my earlier comment, (I got the impression I was talking too myself) but for what it's worth that does look a lot more realistic/natural for sure than the previous version, in fact I like that one heaps better and I didn't think there was really all that much wrong with the first one, just shows how misleading colour can be.
Greg
Sorry Greg, I was listening, and your comment was the input I needed to go back and start from the monitor and work my way to the pictures. Thank you! After calibration, I started with the white balance as you suggested, and while the Cloudy setting was great, the Daylight setting gave slightly better results with a little tweaking.
