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1. Re: Camera Calibration worth it?
Jao vdL Nov 16, 2010 7:28 PM (in response to GeofferyH)The profile you create with this thing is actually very useful for landscape in my opinion. You'll get far more accurate (as well as pleasing) blues in the skies and more saturated reds in sunrise/sunset light. The passport software doesn't necessarily go for correct as it doesn't calibrate for the tone curve response (which indeed generates flat renderings) but for the hue and saturation of the colors. I love the colors from the passport profile a lot better even than the camera landscape profile for my camera. The white balance thing is often not useful though in the crazy lighting you can encounter in landscape photography. You often end up with extremely exaggerated warm colors as I show here and here. You should often do white balance more as a creative decision than try to go for neutral rendering of grey patches. Those grey patches do not look neutral to your eye anyway in those circumstances.
Of course for people photography these things are fantastic giving you great skin tone.
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2. Re: Camera Calibration worth it?
PIRose Nov 17, 2010 8:10 AM (in response to Jao vdL)Jao,
Your white-balance examples were very interesting (even "illuminating" if you'll permit the pun). Especially interesting is the caveat you give about potentially bad color from use of a "gray card".
I wouldn't expect a "bad" card from x-rite, but I do wonder: is it possible that your card contains optical brighteners, which could perhaps account the over-corrected color you've encountered? Outdoor (landscape) lighting will sometimes contain a large amount of UV component which would cause a "brightener-contaminated" card to appear excessively blue. One would hope that a proper gray card would be free of any optical brighteners, but I suppose that stranger things have happened...
Phil
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3. Re: Camera Calibration worth it?
Butch_M Nov 17, 2010 9:36 AM (in response to GeofferyH)I think a custom camera calibration is very useful ... I created one for each of my DSLR's using the free Adobe DNG Profile Editor and a color chart I already owned ... I think it may be counter productive to create a profile for each and every shoot though ... it means having to maintain all those custom profiles as long as you retain the images they are used for. Unless you are in the business of shooting extensively where 100% color accuracy is extremely important such as catalog work, etc. Simply using a custom profile and a WB target has greatly improved both achieving pleasing color and reduced my effort in the PP workflow.
Just creating the dual illuminate profile really improved my files and gave a much better starting point vs. the Adobe profiles included with LR/ACR as far as color and saturation. You can also use the profile editor to match color output across different models, even different brands of cameras ...
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4. Re: Camera Calibration worth it?
John Blaustein Nov 17, 2010 10:46 AM (in response to GeofferyH)Colorvision/Datacolor has a new camera calibration product called SpyderCheckr:
http://spyder.datacolor.com/product-cb-spydercheckr.php
John
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5. Re: Camera Calibration worth it?
Jao vdL Nov 17, 2010 12:18 PM (in response to PIRose)I wouldn't expect a "bad" card from x-rite, but I do wonder: is it possible that your card contains optical brighteners, which couldperhaps account the over-corrected color you've encountered? Outdoor (landscape) lighting will sometimes contain a large amount of UV component which would cause a "brightener-contaminated" card to appear excessively blue. One would hope that a proper gray card would be free of any optical brighteners, but I suppose that stranger things have happened...
My card behaves identical to other colorcheckers (I checked) and also to a whibal card so I doubt there is anything special with it. The patches also don't fluoresce under a blacklight. Nevertheless this is really to be expected. Our eyes (or mind) do not always see neutral colors as neutral. This is easy to prove. Just take your grey card and hold it up in sunrise/sunset light while keeping your eye on the landscape. Does the card look neutral? Highly unlikely indeed. It will look either yellow in the direct sunlight or blue when the sun doesn't directly hit it. I saw an extreme example of this a week ago at sunrise along the white rim in Canyonlands. The light was incident on the ground surface at a very low angle and every little rock was causing long shadows. No real reflected light to speak off just direct sunlight and light backscattered from the blue sky. What happened was that the rocks looked yellow while the shadows looked deep blue. A grey card simply does not get this right at all. It will either make the shadows appear neutral (or the actual color of the rock which was reddish there) if you photograph it in the shadows or the directly illuminated parts appear the right color if you let the light hit it. Your eyes will not always do the extreme corrections to make neutrals completely neutral especially not in more extreme situations such as the bottom of a slot canyon (my Zion shots in the links above clearly show that) or under dense autumn foliage (another situation where I ran into the exact same thing). Another good, easy to test, example is incandescent light. Use a grey card and the light sources and scene will look neutral and whites in people's clothing looks plain white. However your eyes see it as warm (i.e. low black body temperature) light and people's white clothes are yellowish. Do you go for correct according to the whibal or neutral patch, or do you go for an image that more correctly shows the mood of the lighting.
Don't get me wrong. My colorchecker is very useful for many situations especially when there are people in the frame. I do notice however that in many situations that I encounter in landscape (especially sunrise/sunset), the only thing that renders "right" (i.e. as I see it over there) after setting the white balance of the neutral patches is the card itself. The landscape often becomes way too warm and even dull because there is nothing left of the beautiful contrast between warm and cool colors that was there in real life and only warm colors are left. Then I make a creative decision to break from what my gray card tells me.
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6. Re: Camera Calibration worth it?
Selby Shanly Nov 17, 2010 2:58 PM (in response to Jao vdL)I have had a Colorchecker Passport since Feb. I've been pretty pleased with it and the profiles that it produces.
I have noticed recently one issue. Having used a polarizer extensively in autumn, I've found that using a profile generated using the Colorchecker Passpost software (I am using the latest version available) tends to heavily oversaturate autumn foliage and thereby loses detail. For those shots, I've gone back to Adobe Standard and bumped the vibrance and saturation to taste with better results.
On other shots, it will push reds, oranges and foliage (yellow/green) towards yellow. In some of those cases, Adobe Standard works out better as well.
I don't have a profile for every shoot - I do them by season, time of day (e.g., "mid day", "late afternoon", etc.) and the conditions (sun, haze, cloud,...).
I have definitely noticed that skin tones are better.
Selby


