ABOUT White Balance with the SD14

[DoctorDeathsBay]

Sure thing, I will try again in daylight and post two more here tomorrow.

Thanks for the keen eye of detail.

Richie

Hi Rich,

The AWB (Automatic White Balance) should cope with your light situation and balance towards neutral "paper"-white. What I see here, has a clear yellow-touch.

You should repeat the test with daylight ... but I suspect, your SD does not balance correctly.

This should not be a problem since it is brand new ...

Check all your pics so far! If all of them show this mistake, get your SD serviced!

See you with nice pictures

Klaus

 

[DoctorDeathsBay]

I guess this post has changed from landscape into "Richie Is In Need Of Help" roud:


Okay so today (I will get those AWB white paper photos up soon) I have a pillow (quite awful in colour) with a few colour patterns on it, I decided to get a few photos of it to test the AWB and Custom WB. The AWB is hopeless, possibably because of the lighting in my room but thats anyones guess. The custom WB is spot on. Now I couldn't decided to shoot this in 'in-camera' Adobe colour space or sRGB colour space. I have done both but they turn out to be exactly the same once converted to sRGB Jpg.

I took in this order...

1st Shot: AWB - sRGB Profile
2nd Shot: Custom WB - sRGB Profile
3rd Shot: AWB - Adobe Profile
4th Shot: Custom - Adobe Profile

Both profiles set 'in-camera', then put into Sigma's software and saved as Jpg sRGB.

Sorry I know this is confusing but when I had my Canon EOS-1D the colour profiles varied allot. The Adobe setting was nearly grey looking.

Here we go:

The first batch is all converted to Adobe Jpg using Sigma's save as Adobe Jpg, the second batch is all converted to sRGB Jpg using Sigma's standard sRGB Jpg.

 

[DoctorDeathsBay]

Here is the second batch all converted to sRGB from Sigma's software.


From camera settings...

1st Shot: AWB - sRGB Profile
2nd Shot: Custom WB - sRGB Profile
3rd Shot: AWB - Adobe Profile
4th Shot: Custom - Adobe Profile

Then all converted to sRGB Jpg in Sigma's software.

:z04_975: Confusing I know.... SORRY.

 

[DoctorDeathsBay]

:z04_pc5:


EDIT>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

JUST CHECKED THE IMAGES AND BACK HERE TO SAY:

Now I have just checked the images they do seem to differ on the web but not on my computer software. I guess that's something to do with my computer colour profiles.
Okay so what's best to shoot in and then convert to.

Shoot in sRGB RAW > Convert to > sRGB Jpg
or
Shoot in Adobe RAW > Convert > sRGB Jpg
or
Shoot sRGB RAW > Convert > Adobe Jpg <<<< Umm... I'm not to sure about that idea. <<<<
or
Shoot Adobe RAW > Convert > Adobe Jpg <<<< Probably not too good for web pages, but I'm not seeing a massive difference <<<<



I'm really sorry for all this, I nearly got lost my self in writing all this but it has been bugging me what profile to shoot in and convert to.


Thanks Allot

(If anyone can understand ..... If not, please don't worry)


Richie

 

[Guest .]

Hey ... that looks interesting!

Im going to study your work tomorrow! It's too late now ... have to start up very early in the morning!

See you with nice pictures

Klaus

 

[DoctorDeathsBay]

Okay thanks Klaus, for the mean while I have another bit of info I thought I would log down here.

Firstly its 2.26AM and I still fiddling with my cameras settings...:z04_123:

Second I have taken three photos of a blue towel. I chose blue because I was going to take a few photos of a blue, red and green towels but I only had a blue and red towel.

Okay, I just wanted to log my finding here to see what others think of this.

Camera set to 'P' & to about 30mm focal length (as close as possible to the towel)

The first shot is Custom WB (White piece of paper)
The second is Incandescent WB
The third is AWB..

The best looking is the Custom WB. That is the closest colour to the blue towel. The Incandescent is pretty close for a pre-set but the AWB is way off. Strange maybe but it could be because it is a hard subject to catch with a full frame of blue.

That's all.

Ohh again, these were straight from the camera, converted in Sigma's software to Jpg, then resized for this post.

Next I will take the same shots but with a red towel and you will all see and big big change in realism. The red seems fake to me. I have heard these sensors have something about red. Lets see....

Thanks


Richie

 

[DoctorDeathsBay]

Okay now for the red section....

Camera set to 'P' & to about 30mm focal length (as close as possible to the towel)

The first shot is Custom WB (White piece of paper)
The second is Incandescent WB
The third is AWB..


The files look fine when Sigma's software first opens the files but once the software has fully loaded the file settings it looks all ugly... just like the three photos you see.

Again the Custom looks closest in colour but there are a few slight yellow sections on the tips of the fabric. That is probably over saturation. So then I guess the Incandescent is the closest for perfection.

Now I think these looked washed out but with too much colour. They seem.... well the only word I can use is 'blended'. As though the fabric colour is all blended as one. Its hard to tell where one piece of fabric meets the other piece, unlike the blue, where the different shades or different depths of fabric pieces can been seen quite easy.

I'm not saying there is anything wrong with the sensor but it certainly seems strange, especially if I wanted to capture this towel as a photo or at least capture the both towels in one shot (the red still looks the same when the blue towel joins in on the photo side by side).

Talk about putting a camera to the test. :z04_yes:


Any thoughts....:z04_975: another brain buster ....


I'm not off to my bed now (2.56AM) .... Good Night :z04_123: & Good Morning :z04_morning: ....


Richie

 

[Guest .]

Hi Richie,

Wow ... I am slightly overwhelmed with such a lot of test pictures, thinking and questions.

Another problem is, that I am unfortunately NO expert in colour spaces ...well ... we will have to wait for REDFOX, who knows much more in this field.
If someone else feels more firm with colour spaces ... tehey are invited to answer!

Well, as a first aid, I will dare an answer .... but well ... as I indicated above ...

You might know this for general information?!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_space

The most common and best supported colour space is sRGB. Our monitors, printers, internet browsers and most image-processing software cope with it best.

Therefore, I always save my work on sRGB. It might be sensible to go for other colour spaces to have more "image material" for image processing.

However .... not my ground!

White Balancing:

Again: The overall target of any white-balancing activities is, that any "paperwhite" objects in the scene really are recorded white without any shifts (tints) in colours.

The issue is endless ... there are quite a number of scenes, in which NO white balance really works ... I will show you an example below.

AWB, for instance, often works well. As long as the the total sum of all colours in a scene equals some neutral grey, it will work perfectly.

If your scene is unbalanced (in terms of colour distribution) it will certainly fail.

As a word of comfort .....

SIGMA X3F-RAWs always contain the complete colour information no matter whether the camera gets it wrong.
If you know "your" colours, you can always fix it on your computer.

I think, this is a good link on the issue.

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/white-balance.htm

Well .... some pictures do not allow any white balance. In this case, the scene itself is not illuminated ... it shines directly ... so no grey card can help. Just do it they way you like it!

View attachment 418

See you with nice pictures

Klaus

 

[DoctorDeathsBay]

Awesome thank Klaus... I will also check out those websites....

:z04_carrot: << <<< << I have no idea what this thing is for, but it looks funny so I had to add it here...:lol:


Okay.... Off I go.... (Those daylight 'white paper' AWB photos (as mentioned above) will be uploaded soon)

Richie

 

[DoctorDeathsBay]

I know this goes off a little bit of this subject but I had to document this.

I was given the Canon EOS-1D (Pro Journalist Camera), before I got my Sigma SD14 and always thought the colour was weak and the focusing was not so precise.....my theory is better than correct.

I guess this is why I went for the SD14....It's a BEAST!!!

Check out the photos...You can guess what one was taken with the Canon.

They were both set on a tripod
Both were set to Manual mode
Both set to AWB
Both were positioned at the same angle and distance (where closest possible).
Both are 4mb
Both at 50mm
Both Aperture set to f/5.6
Both set to ISO-100
Both set to sRGB
Both set to pattern metering mode
No flash on both
Both set 'in-camera' to store as Jpg for the same results. (No RAW conversion)


The Sigma had to be moved back from the pillow a little bit (1.7x difference) and the Sigma also had to be set to 0.8 seconds where as the Canon was set to 1/2 seconds because the canon has a faster 50mm prime lens attached.

Thank You

Richie


Sigma Rules...! ! ! !