Issue With G1 Colours

[goldenlight]

Generally I'm very pleased with my G1 but at times I do have doubts about the rendition of certain colours. Look at this for example:-

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It was a JPEG taken late afternoon on a sunny April day using auto WB in standard film mode with contrast and saturation both set to +/- 0. That shouldn't be a problem for the camera but to my eyes it looks a little muddy. The blues in particular seem to have a hint of brown about them and the maroon on the boat certainly seems a little browner than I remember. I don't think it's due to the exposure because although I used -0.7 compensation I bracketed and this gave the best histogram (and looked best on my monitor). I'm certain I would have got a very different result from an Oly JPEG.

Thinking back to film days, as far as I can recall the G1 seem to render colours roughly how I would have expectd an Agfa CT18 slide to have looked (that is going back a long way). Olympus seems to give me a look somewhere between that of Kodachrome 64 and Velvia.

Is this all in my imagination or is there any substance to this impression?

 

[Djarum]

There appears to me a little too much violet going on, especially in the water. The hills and the horizon look fine, though. The boat to me looks ok, but I wasn't there. The water looks unnaturally royal blue..almost to the point of violet/purple.

 

[Djarum]

This is quick and dirty, but it does look better IMHO.

 

[grebeman]

Whilst I shoot in RAW I have my doubts about the auto white balance on the Panasonic G1 and GF1 of which I have experience and often find that the setting selected by the camera to be,IMHO, substantially in error. I have therefore taken to setting a predetermined manual white balance, often using the shady setting which I find usually to give a much more accurate rendition of the scene (although I tend to do a lot of macro work and shady lighting is my sought after condition to reduce harsh shadows). I am thinking of using a predetermined temperature setting when I do more in the way of landscape work for example.
I hope this might give you some ideas for further tests.

Barrie

 

[goldenlight]

Thanks guys. To be honest, having looked at it again I think it is generally a little too dark, especially the water. Djarum, I agree your version looks better and it's prompted me to have another attemt myself. I think this, too, looks a little better, but I'm still not sure about those colours.

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[JoeG]

I tried kicking up the red a bit and adding a touch of contrast to bring up the hills. I shoot most often with the white balance set to cloudy or shade. I go way back, too, and used to prefer the warm results I got from Agfacrome. By now, of course, the scene doesn't resemble what you saw--or does it?--but what the heck. All photographs are made objects.

 

[Djarum]

Thanks guys. To be honest, having looked at it again I think it is generally a little too dark, especially the water. Djarum, I agree your version looks better and it's prompted me to have another attemt myself. I think this, too, looks a little better, but I'm still not sure about those colours.

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There's just way too much magenta for my taste in the picture.

 

[goldenlight]

There's just way too much magenta for my taste in the picture.

You're right. I much prefer your's and Joe's versions so far.

 

[goldenlight]

Well, this is turning more into an issue of my appalling processing abilities than about the G1. I think this version is finally getting a little better but it's still not the full ticket.

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I feel that with my lack of processing skill I haven't exactly covered myself in glory, but neither has the Panasonic; this level of intervention shouldn't be necessarry with a JPEG.

 

[Djarum]

Well, this is turning more into an issue of my appalling processing abilities than about the G1. I think this version is finally getting a little better but it's still not the full ticket.

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I feel that with my lack of processing skill I haven't exactly covered myself in glory, but neither has the Panasonic; this level of intervention shouldn't be necessarry with a JPEG.

Was the one you originally posted jpeg straight out of camera or RAW?

This one looks pretty good.

 

[goldenlight]

Was the one you originally posted jpeg straight out of camera or RAW?

This one looks pretty good.

Thanks, it seems I'm starting to get somewhere. The first one was a JPEG, I'd been using it as a familly snapshot camera all day and should have switched to raw - at least I'd have had a bit more leeway.

Thanks for your help on this one.

 

[Djarum]

With color, its all about personal tastes. My biggest complaint with panasonic colors(I still have my FZ3) is that greens look a little artificial(too much blue). Fleshtones also seem off. Olympus, at least with my PEN, does fleshtones better and greens better, but in my opinion over yellows browns. For example, a tree trunk should have a darker brown appearance but in my pictures I found that the brown usually ends up too much on the yellow side or orange side. Funny thing, sometimes I find myself pushing scenery to a happy medium between the panasonic color and Oly color. I get a good compromise on greens and browns.

 

[Djarum]

Just to give you an example of what I am talking about.

This picture here, I took with the EP1 at mid afternoon. The greens are spot on, but the water and rocks have a tad too much yellow or orange for my taste.

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[goldenlight]

Just to give you an example of what I am talking about.

This picture here, I took with the EP1 at mid afternoon. The greens are spot on, but the water and rocks have a tad too much yellow or orange for my taste.

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I see what you mean, but that's the sort of colour range I aim for and would be more than happy with. As you say, it's all about presonal preference.

That's a lovely picture BTW. :smile:

 

[goldenlight]

This is the sort of result I am used to getting from an E-3 raw file and it's just what I want, although I can appreciate it may be a little too warm for some tastes.

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[Bokeh Diem]

It may be warm, but the sky is still cerulean, not blue-green or tangerine dream. Looks very nice, like the old Agfas from Yerp in the '60s-'70s.

Bokeh Diem

 

[Bokeh Diem]

I have to rebuild/adjust many colour jpeg images out of the G1, depending on the light conditions. I think the AWB filter is having some trouble too like the grebeman says. Gonna have to start paying attention to this. We need a firmware upgrade.

Bokeh D

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[DavidB]

Definitely it's just a WB issue.
I gave up years ago expecting AutoWB to get the "right" colours on any camera. Some do better than others, but really the camera has no idea whether a "green" wall is actually green, or whether the light shining on a white wall is greenish.

RAW is your friend. Using something like a WhiBal for occasional grey reference shots, and then sampling that grey to set the WB (and copying that WB to the relevant photos) in a RAW processor has worked great for me for years, across multiple cameras.

Recently I've been refining this by instead using a ColorChecker instead of a WhiBal and making custom DNG profiles for Lightroom/ACR, but unless you're dealing with weird lighting (e.g. low-pressure sodium lamps) just tweaking the WB in the RAW processor is usually enough.

 

[goldenlight]

Definitely it's just a WB issue.
I gave up years ago expecting AutoWB to get the "right" colours on any camera. Some do better than others, but really the camera has no idea whether a "green" wall is actually green, or whether the light shining on a white wall is greenish.

RAW is your friend. Using something like a WhiBal for occasional grey reference shots, and then sampling that grey to set the WB (and copying that WB to the relevant photos) in a RAW processor has worked great for me for years, across multiple cameras.

Recently I've been refining this by instead using a ColorChecker instead of a WhiBal and making custom DNG profiles for Lightroom/ACR, but unless you're dealing with weird lighting (e.g. low-pressure sodium lamps) just tweaking the WB in the RAW processor is usually enough.

I think that my problem is that I used to manually adjust the WB through the custom setting but found that the AWB of the E-3 is so darn good that eventually it made me lazy. I'm starting to find out that I can't do that with the G1.

 

[Amin]

With the original JPEG, the primary issue seems to be that the camera botched the WB with way too much magenta as a result. The auto WB should have done better.

Here's "auto color" in PS with a hint of warming and added contrast: