Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/02/07

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Subject: [Leica] 1Ds Mk II at ISO 3200 & 20D SURPRISE SURPRISE! ;-)
From: feli2 at earthlink.net (Feli)
Date: Mon Feb 7 23:33:57 2005
References: <04b301c50d22$2d9907a0$6401a8c0@ccapr.com> <001d01c50d41$49baa050$833b6d18@ted> <b3f2eae57f5e54da4e0af2351465f64a@earthlink.net> <003a01c50d43$387e7a30$833b6d18@ted> <CABDC9F7-793C-11D9-BC33-000A95DD7D76@charter.net> <002b01c50d53$2dce5230$833b6d18@ted> <1BB19F92-7970-11D9-BC33-000A95DD7D76@charter.net> <001501c50d81$0ab12150$833b6d18@ted> <681d1a418ae7ad8d114ca2023ee47f48@earthlink.net> <003201c50da8$6714a440$833b6d18@ted>

Glad to be of assistance, sir. ;-)

Yep, for some reason tungsten lighting is the achilles heal of digital 
Canon cameras.

Daylight, no problem. Mixed light, no problem. Even florescent seem ok.
But tungsten is out, and the lower the wattage (i.e. the lower the 
color temperature (5000k and below))
the worse it gets.

I'm not sure how to color balance a 20D. I'm going to take a wild guess 
and say it involves balancing the camera off of a large 18% gray card 
held under the lights you will be shooting under. At least that's how 
it used to work back in the dark ages of video cameras... Somehow you 
have to lock that reading into the camera, but I am not sure how to do 
this, since I don't have a 20D at hand! 8-)

Here's another angle. In Photoshop look under:

Image -> Adjustments -> Photo Filter

This will pop up a dialog box, which emulates a bunch of filters you 
are probably familiar with from shooting color film:

Warming Filter 85
Warming Filter 81
Cooling Filter 80
Cooling Filter 82

etc.

To be honest this is a band-aid, but in a pinch it may help. Obviously 
the ideal solution is to balance the camera properly.

The reason why your monitor and printer don't look alike has to do with 
the whole color pipeline, that is your
workflow.

Camera -> Photoshop and monitor -> printer

Now, so that the red flower you shot with the 20D comes out on the 
printer looking correct, each component has
to have a profile of the proceeding stage, so that when Photoshop tells 
the printer to draw something light red, the
printer knows WHICH shade of light red to draw, so it matches what you 
saw on your monitor.

How to fix it? Frankly I'm still figuring all of this out myself. At 
work we have a color guy, who does all
the math and makes sure red is red. Unfortunately I am 80% artist, so 
it takes me a while figure these
things out. ;-) This is the part of working with digital that can be 
infuriating, but once you got everything setup,
it's pretty amazing.

There probably is someone on the list who can explain this a lot better 
than me.


Good luck!

Feli



On Feb 7, 2005, at 10:35 PM, Ted Grant wrote:

> Feli offered:
> Subject: Re: [Leica] 1Ds Mk II at ISO 3200 & 20D
>
>
>> That said, Ted be aware that if you are shooting under warm tungsten 
>> lights, the Canon will balance the
>> scene very warm, to the point that it may look like someone stuck a 
>> CTO gel on your front element.<,,
>
> Hi Feli,
> I took your words of wisdom to heart and gave it a try! Shot some 
> frames in our family room, all tungsten bulbs in various lamps. And 
> guess what? ;-) You are right! :-)
>
> I had shot in there before, but never printed one to see how it would 
> actually look as a colour print. It's not bad because the room is a 
> Tudor style with half wooden walls and beams, with the upper half of 
> the walls and ceiling white. So on the camera screen they looked OK.  
> But to print, it's quite different! :-)  Slightly warmer than I 
> expected.
>
> However, now I have to figure out how to use white balance if sometime 
> I need a better colour balanced look. Although I imagine I could also 
> correct it using PhotoShop?
>
> In the high school gymnasiums the auto-white balance seems to keep the 
> colours much closer to normal looking. But in these locations it's a 
> mixture of lights and not all tungsten so I'm sure that makes a major 
> difference for colour balancing.
>
> And with these when you click "auto colour" in PS everything cleans 
> right out to white backgrounds as it should look with excellent skin 
> tones. So obviously under tungsten light it definitely stays on the 
> warm side. Thanks for pointing this out. :-)
>
> See what I mean about this good ol' LUG? Man you always learn 
> something every day! :-)
>
> ted
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>
>
>
>> For some reason Canon cameras blow at white  balancing 5000K light 
>> and it can be a problem if your
>> job demands color accuracy
>>
>> So, if you notice this, that's the reason why it's happening. Until 
>> then have fun shooting.
>> 8-)
>>
>> Feli
>>
>> On Feb 7, 2005, at 5:53 PM, Ted Grant wrote:
>>
>>> Slobodan Dimitrov asked:
>>> Subject: Re: [Leica] 1Ds Mk II at ISO 3200 & 20D
>>>
>>>
>>>> So you don't find the factory setting too red?
>>>> My sampling is 8 other users, who share my experience.<<<
>>>
>>> Hi Slobodan,
>>>
>>> Maybe I got lucky or something, but honestly this camera works like 
>>> a dream as it came out of the box and no one has had their hands on 
>>> it to fiddle anything.
>>>
>>> And I put the instruction book away as it became way beyond me with 
>>> all the words and thingies to push to do what appeared eighty 
>>> thousand settings. ;-)
>>>
>>> So KISS it, all auto everything. ;-)
>>>
>>> ted
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Leica Users Group.
>>> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>>>
>>>
>> ________________________________________________________
>> feli2@earthlink.net      2 + 2 = 4        www.elanphotos.com
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Leica Users Group.
>> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>
>
________________________________________________________
feli2@earthlink.net                     2 + 2 = 4                      
www.elanphotos.com


Replies: Reply from Frank.Dernie at btinternet.com (Frank Dernie) ([Leica] 1Ds Mk II at ISO 3200 & 20D SURPRISE SURPRISE! ;-))
Reply from henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff) ([Leica] 1Ds Mk II at ISO 3200 & 20D SURPRISE SURPRISE! ;-))
In reply to: Message from bdcolen at earthlink.net (B. D. Colen) ([Leica] 1Ds Mk II at ISO 3200)
Message from tedgrant at shaw.ca (Ted Grant) ([Leica] 1Ds Mk II at ISO 3200 & 20D)
Message from feli2 at earthlink.net (Feli) ([Leica] 1Ds Mk II at ISO 3200 & 20D)
Message from tedgrant at shaw.ca (Ted Grant) ([Leica] 1Ds Mk II at ISO 3200 & 20D)
Message from s.dimitrov at charter.net (Slobodan Dimitrov) ([Leica] 1Ds Mk II at ISO 3200 & 20D)
Message from tedgrant at shaw.ca (Ted Grant) ([Leica] 1Ds Mk II at ISO 3200 & 20D)
Message from s.dimitrov at charter.net (Slobodan Dimitrov) ([Leica] 1Ds Mk II at ISO 3200 & 20D)
Message from tedgrant at shaw.ca (Ted Grant) ([Leica] 1Ds Mk II at ISO 3200 & 20D)
Message from feli2 at earthlink.net (Feli) ([Leica] 1Ds Mk II at ISO 3200 & 20D)
Message from tedgrant at shaw.ca (Ted Grant) ([Leica] 1Ds Mk II at ISO 3200 & 20D SURPRISE SURPRISE! ;-))