Fun with NEX-7

[docmoore]

Jono, Vivek, Quentin, Hosermage, and Terry?

Couple of thoughts...freeform here after a long day cleaning bathrooms...do not ask!

Jono -

I remember the WB thread concerning the A850 with Douglas...yes you have it right - really does work if you pay attention to light color and intent. Love your yellow man...would love to spend mornings in your kitchen's light...sidling up to an AGA. Ha! now you know my biases.

The NEX cameras did not inherit the wonderful skin tones nor color palate of the A850/900s...I would love to drop that chip and workflow into a NEX 7.

Magenta and Red is a common problem with adapted lenses from Leica and VC...not so much with Zeiss ZF2's ... and Terry is dead on...the LR 4 local adjustments are very helpful. Otherwise a Color Balance Layer in PS with mask to paint over areas that are way off.

Hosermage...WB has nothing to do with the magenta areas from trees and sky...overblown areas tend to go magenta and if you are not into HDR (personally I detest it!) you need to use a mask to tone down those areas or try the adjustments in LR/PS. The 5N does fabulously with wide angle lenses whereas the NEX 7 has HUGE problems with lens color cast on Leica and VC lenses...here the local gradient in LR or Capture Raw will help...Corner Fix seems to miss a bit of the cast ... compared to C1 or Phocus corrections.

Terry -

I cannot find words to express how good LR4 is - even in Beta. I have moved 6000 files over to LR4 and hope that the final will be an easy transition...if not I have already seen enough difference to make it a priority. Still moving to PS for final edits but what a nice program.

Seems like there is an edge to every interchange recently...maybe my week in Southern California made me a bit more sensitive to things but guys...this is a very congenial site...lets give each other some slack...I know for a fact that NO ONE IS OUT TO EAT YOUR LUNCH. Just saying.....

Bob

 

[jonoslack]

Hi there
Vivek. Sorry to offend your intellect/sensibilities. No further discussion required.

Others, I'll stop being flippant and try to be clear. I think it was RobMac who suggested this to me, but I'm not certain. Anyway, enough to say that it isn't my original theory, but I'm very grateful to whoever it was.

Roberto, thanks for the information on the Olympus, which had an incident WB sensor, I think you can get external ones as well, which take the temperature if the incident light.

Please forget about cameras here. I'm not trying to do a defence of any camera.

Of course, there are lots of situations (especially in the studio) where you want your white balance to be a reflection of the incident light with respect to a grey card (or whatever). Ie a situation where you have controlled lighting and you want accurate colour. (sorry, this is obvious).

Let's think about a sunny day. It was suggested to me that I try this, and I did. You can take an incident reading of the white balance. Then you might try taking a reading in the shadow. Then you might take one in the direct sunlight. They will be totally different (of course). On an overcast day the different readings will be closer (but still very different). Next time it's sunny just try walking about with AWB turned on then look at the varying WB results. The poor camera is doing its best, but it'll change radically depending on the proportion of shade/sunlight.

So, of course, you can take Quentin's approach and use AWB to give you an approximation of the final image. The problem with that approach is that you will have a different WB for every shot-even if the light doesn't change, so you end up with a hotch pitch of different results which need individual attention.

But as Roberto says. We aren't as good as mother nature, and nor is the camera! Generally speaking I want the light in my photos to reflect the light that I saw. I don't want it corrected to grey.

Okay. On the understanding that I'm absolutely not talking about controlled or artificial lighting. The suggestion is that. . . . . .

If you are shooting outside then set the camera to sunny

. That means that your reference is midday on a sunny day. At dawn it will look pinker, at sunset yellower, and on overcast days it'll be bluer. But the point is that you have one fixed point of reference. If you want your cloudy day shots warmer, that's fine, warm them up.

The spin off is that you really learn the colour response of the sensor in different lighting conditions. It's like getting to know a particular film stock really well, understanding both it, and the lighting when you took the shot.

If you continually use AWB the camera has made decisions about the lighting for each shot. When you come to look at it 2 (minutes,hours,days,weeks) later you won't have perfect recall of the lighting. By sticking to one white balance you get to understand what's going on. Added to which it makes it much easier to do batch changes to the white balance.

Sorry if I've exchanged flippant for boring, but when this was suggested to me it struck me as a bolt out of the blue. (or was that the slightly magenta cyan)

All the best

 

[jonoslack]

Good post Bob. Although I haven't found it in me to love LR4

Seems like there is an edge to every interchange recently...maybe my week in Southern California made me a bit more sensitive to things but guys...this is a very congenial site...lets give each other some slack...I know for a fact that NO ONE IS OUT TO EAT YOUR LUNCH. Just saying.....

Bob

Which bits of me were you thinking of handing around? oke::ROTFL:

 

[docmoore]

Good post Bob. Although I haven't found it in me to love LR4

Which bits of me were you thinking of handing around? oke::ROTFL:

Maybe the dogs, tractor and wine cellar?

No in reality Jono I feel you were .... unfairly called to task for a fairly balanced and reasonable series of comments. No one likes to walk through a virtual minefield but that seems to be the recent balance of discussion.

Your are an Aperture advocate...and you make it seem to be a viable option.
Just that I have so much invested in Master Suite 5.5 that I could never humble myself to admit it is better...sweeter...prettier...smooooother. Must be a religion thing....Garrison Keillor always said we Lutherans were never comfortable in paradise!

Looking forward to meeting at some point in Cornwall....

Regards,

Bob

 

[Quentin_Bargate]

Hi there
...

So, of course, you can take Quentin's approach and use AWB to give you an approximation of the final image. The problem with that approach is that you will have a different WB for every shot-even if the light doesn't change, so you end up with a hotch pitch of different results which need individual attention.

...
All the best

Not true at all, Jono. You can apply the same colour balance that looks best accross any number of raw images in whatever processor you use (I mainly use Camera Raw, or Phocus for the Hassy). Those random changes in AWB might give you ideas later....

For me, its the end result that matters; like changing filtration in the enlarger, you change digital filtration in post processing - only you have more control because you are not limited by the choices you made when you selected film and whatever filter you used with the film.

Having said that, I have shot as you do from time to time Jono and I can see the advantages in some situations, and if one is shooting raw, it matters little because you have the choice to change later. It is a different story if you shoot jpeg. Then Jono's workflow makes a lot of sense.

Such is the extraordinary flexibility we are afforded nowadays with digital cameras. We are spoilt for choice

Quentin

 

[Terry]

I think the biggest problem came from Nikon and it wasn't just the color temp that was moving all over the place but the tint and it was really hard to correct the shots in in batches.

 

[Terry]

A few from the Carmel Mission late this afternoon

 

[ustein]

Very nice. The NEX-7 is a keeper. Which lenses?

 

[Terry]

Very nice. The NEX-7 is a keeper. Which lenses?

Thanks, yes I'm happy to get back to my A900 resolution in a teeny size. All with 18-200.




.

 

[jonoslack]

Terry. Those are fantastic. Really nice atmosphere and (might I say) excellent colour!
All the best

 

[Paratom]

Wasnt it so easy when we just put a daylight film in the camera and shot?
Yes, I know in theory one would have to use filters for color neutralty, but if you didnt many films would be able to reflect the actual situation.
What I mean I found under many circumstances film delivers an astonishing balaced color even in mixed light situations. (sun/shaddow/cloudy).

Personally I use presets quite a bit when shooting, but find it doesnt really matter because I can adjust later.
Still I try to preset because having the right WB when shooting helps when judging the exposre and the histogramm

What I like to have is at least one image in a light situation which includes some white that I have kind of a reference.
In regards to AWB I find it hard to say, because WB is a matter of taste.
Who wants to shoot an image under candle light and have the colors totally neutral?

 

[Paratom]

A few from the Carmel Mission late this afternoon

I really like those. Did you use a tripod or were they handheld?
Impressive sharpness for such a zoomlens IMO.

So you now use the V1 and the Nex and m4/3 as small camera?

 

[Vivek]

No one likes to walk through a virtual minefield but that seems to be the recent balance of discussion.

That sums it up although in the wrong direction. When the next new firmware update comes from Sony for the NEX-7 watch out for "improved" white balancing.

The WB problem, what works for an M8 and the like won't work for the others. It is not just the exposure but the whole demosaicing that goes on affects the color make up. However, when there isn't a proper understanding of what a daylight setting entails and how it would differ from overcast lighting conditions such discussions look unreasonable and frankly moot. Have fun folks. :ROTFL:

I think the biggest problem came from Nikon and it wasn't just the color temp that was moving all over the place but the tint and it was really hard to correct the shots in in batches.

Yup!

 

[Quentin_Bargate]

Nice work Terry, the first one especially. Very atmospheric.

 

[Michiel Schierbeek]

Let me first say, Jono, I don’t feel offended.

But this discussion got a little hyped up through the night I see, and people are trying to choose sides and who is right and who’s not. Can be soggy and not very intersting.

Usually I never dive into this kind of discussions because I never find them very fruitful in the sense of interesting photography, but since Jono dragged me into this with my greens,I feel I have to react.
And we might learn something here.

It is a good tip to work very consiously with WB settings with this camera if you want to stay close to reality. Although I agree with Quentin here; everything is reversable in PP. That is why I try to do PP as soon as possible after shooting for best rememberence.

I also think that Vivek is probably right about working with legacy lenses, regarding WB with the NEX-7, is not very easy, although I can’t compare because I don’t have any Sony lenses yet. ( the only lens I am tempted to is th 18-200 for versatility)

I never needed to be so consious about WB settings in dayly circumstances with my Panasonics and my Ricoh. So to me it is a fact that this camera’s White Balance metering is not top notch. But there are a lot of other things to like for example; high ISO compared to Panasonic is a revalation for me. But that is not the issue here.

As I said for the rest it is all a matter of taste and preferences. And these are important to me because that’s where creativity is playing the game. I am interested in the intrepetation of the individual and that is never exact. That’s why I don’t bother so much if the colours are exactly right compared to reality because in the final stage you are working on a product. And in that stage I don' t want to be hindered by purist standards I have to fill in.
Without any problems I was cloning out some lensflare out of that last picture in my post. I don’t even think about it. These tricks has been applyd since men for the first time walked into the darkroom.

I don’t want to be a purist, to dogmatic for me. I could say Jono uses to much garlic lately in his pictures. And me I do go to the harbour to much lately. But so what?

If we look at the following picture – the first example which popped up to my mind – of Ed van der Elsken, shot in 1959 in Durban South Africa.
(Could not find a larger example on the net)

Probably cropped and completely manipulated under the enlarger with his hands and other objects in the finishing. The walking men’s head; completely impossible. For a lot of photographers, also on this forum, this would be compleet blasphemy. But does it work? Yes it does for me because I can still remember this picture since I was about 12 years old.

I like technics and the latest and the greatest but it is all subordinate to the results to me.

Kind regards,
Michiel

 

[jonoslack]

Michiel, Vivek, Quentin (and anyone else who contributed).
Peace is a good thing, and I'm sorry for my part in disturbing the equilibrium!
The argument could go on - but I think probably it's reached it's useful conclusion, so I'd like to make two points:

1. I didn't mean to offend anyone in any way
2. if I was incompetent enough to do it by mistake then please accept my apologies.

I think there are many valid ways to deal with WB - I'm not critical about it with the NEX7, because, like Quentin, I'm not relying on it to get it right!

Michiel - I'll try to go a little more lightly on the garlic!

all the best

 

[Michiel Schierbeek]

No problem, Jono.
( For a moment I thought I am going to be ignored here, so much silence )

I just wanted to point out how I like to deal with photography and that also has to do with my colourhandling.
I know a lot about the character of different old lenses and a little about post processing but for the rest I try to stay out of the very technical camera discussions because my knowledge is limited.
And that is why I like to hang around here; to learn.

And a little teasing doesn't hurt.

BTW Garlic seems to be very healthy for your blood but don't start kissing all the ladys at a reception afterwards.

Kind regards, Michiel

 

[Paratom]

A little girl attacking my Nex7

by the way thats her expression when trying to reach for the S2

So what can I conclude from her reaction?

 

[Terry]

Thomas,
Second shot is awesome.

 

[Michiel Schierbeek]

Thomas,
Second shot is awesome.

+1 Wonderful

Michiel