Chuck Jones
Subscriber Member
Guy, I know you don't regularly use it, but Lightroom 3 I find the daylight basic color balance with the M9 to be spot on. Surprised me, as the ones for the M8 are total crap still. Artificial light though, it's back to crap in Lightroom.... I've got to get around to making up some of my own night time artificial profiles and see if I can't improve these...Yes the M9 looks to still have that tendency. I got your note BTW so let me bring this up in public for all. In C1 the profile is very nice for the M9 but if anything and you can play with this folks to see if it helps. I know everyone likes saturation but I found compared to the Phase P30 + when I tested which really is the gold standard in regards to WB a scene properly the M9 was a little warm and it was a little saturated. What I did was cool it down a little like 200 or 300 kelvin and backed off on Saturation a few points. Now if you want to go test this out say in bright sun just grab a good color checker card with you and from camera just hold out in front of you take a shot. Than watch the WB in C1 or LR for that matter and use your white balance tool and hit the second grey in from white. Watch the WB change on you as you do that and you should see it get a touch cooler.
Now this is pretty much a Kodak sensor tendency so nothing wrong with your M9 and it's profile and it actually sometimes is preferred to be on the warm side. If you liked Kodachrome there you go. Just some things to get under your belt and understand how these sensors read. If interested go back to my M9 review and i talk a lot about this.
Hope this helps a little.
One thing Cindy mentioned was with fall color she tends to like it a little warm and I completely agree. WB means nothing as long as you are on a calibrated system and you like what you see than the artist takes over on that decision and as it should. Again there are no rules in photography for visual impact, do what you like. I bring these things up more for help in understanding how the process works so folks have this data in there head to work with. The better data you know the less confusion in the field which is not the place to cloud your brain with the junk but concentrate on the shot.
I see this a lot on workshops when folks get wound up on the tech but lose sight of what they are doing with the shot. Totally understandable as we are all learning. But as we get more experience in the process than we have more brain power for the art. That is what you want to get too.