NikonGear'23
Gear Talk => Camera Talk => Topic started by: Frode on November 21, 2017, 23:15:36
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In order to achieve "correct" white balance (the way our eyes sees the colors) in camera, what is your "workflow"?
I've tried WhiteBal card and CBL, but I'm not interested in getting, for example, neutral white when the white do have some yellow in it in tungsten lighting.
Of course, AWB/Tungsten ans so on, do a fairly decent job sometimes, but as I like to get the WB "right" in camera, I'm interested in hearing what you do to achieve this?
I`ve tried to use Liveview and adjusting the WB there, but I find it a bit hard to nail it there also. Especially indoors/dim lighting.
Suggestions?
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With my D800 I use Auto1 WB unless the light source is an ugly, spiky non-continuous artificial light source. In this case I use a custom or preset WB.
For tungsten light I use Auto1 WB and I then adjust the WB to a warm balance in Capture NX-D but not as warm as reality.
Dave Hartman
[Most of the lamps in my house are high CRI 9.5 watt LEDs. I treat them the sane as tungsten. They are quite warm, maybe 3400K.]
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White balance in camera is always one size fits all over the whole frame. Often a lighting situation consits of more than one light source in different parts of the frame. To achieve a "correct" White Balance in these cases only masking and multiple WB settings for different parts of the frame do the trick.
If you have only one light source of constant color you simply measure a white balance preset using an industry target. Note that so called full spectrum lights and converter sources in general do change color over time and you can get two or three different WBs in a burst of six frames with preset WB in camera. In such cases Auto WB can be the better choice, esp on fifth gen cameras with their exceptional WB builtin to the Exspeed 5.
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In order to achieve "correct" white balance (the way our eyes sees the colors) in camera, what is your "workflow"?
But the way our eyes see the colours is based on what our brain thinks the colours are. Skin colour as we see it is constant because we know what colour skin is so we automatically discount the colour of the light however it changes. When we don't know what colour something is what we see is determined by the colour of the light. So in artificial light a white balance that makes skin look the way we saw it may make something else look not the way we saw it.
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Frank provided the complete answer. Nikon AWB provides the correct solution in 95% of the cases. Anyway, as I’m always shooting in RAW, WB is not an immediate concern. When it comes to reproduction, I use a color chart and make a color profile to adjust.
http://www.datacolor.com/photography-design/product-overview/spyder-checkr-family/
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With my D800 I use Auto1 WB unless the light source is an ugly, spiky non-continuous artificial light source. In this case I use a custom or preset WB.
For tungsten light I use Auto1 WB and I then adjust the WB to a warm balance in Capture NX-D but not as warm as reality.
Dave Hartman
[Most of the lamps in my house are high CRI 9.5 watt LEDs. I treat them the sane as tungsten. They are quite warm, maybe 3400K.]
Thank you, David!
Normally I've set my WB to Auto WB 2, but very often, compared to what I see, the colors are a bit on the warm side (especially in tungsten lighting).
I always capture in NEF.
Maybe I should try to adjust the Auto WB 2 in camera in order to decrease the warmth?
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White balance in camera is always one size fits all over the whole frame. Often a lighting situation consits of more than one light source in different parts of the frame. To achieve a "correct" White Balance in these cases only masking and multiple WB settings for different parts of the frame do the trick.
If you have only one light source of constant color you simply measure a white balance preset using an industry target. Note that so called full spectrum lights and converter sources in general do change color over time and you can get two or three different WBs in a burst of six frames with preset WB in camera. In such cases Auto WB can be the better choice, esp on fifth gen cameras with their exceptional WB builtin to the Exspeed 5.
Thank you, Frank!
Unfortunately, I think you are right :-) ! There might not be a "short cut" in this matter. If so, please enlighten me :-) !
I would like it to be one though....because often its the light that makes the picture and I`d like to capture it the way it was, not what it looks in a "neutral" lighting condition.
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But the way our eyes see the colours is based on what our brain thinks the colours are. Skin colour as we see it is constant because we know what colour skin is so we automatically discount the colour of the light however it changes. When we don't know what colour something is what we see is determined by the colour of the light. So in artificial light a white balance that makes skin look the way we saw it may make something else look not the way we saw it.
Thank you, Les!
I've never thought of it that way, makes sense though. Interesting, Ill look into it!
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Frank provided the complete answer. Nikon AWB provides the correct solution in 95% of the cases. Anyway, as I’m always shooting in RAW, WB is not an immediate concern. When it comes to reproduction, I use a color chart and make a color profile to adjust.
http://www.datacolor.com/photography-design/product-overview/spyder-checkr-family/
Thank you, MFloyd!
Agree regards to no concern due to shooting in RAW. Though, isn't it so that wrong WB in camera might affect our exposure? I always try to follow the ETTR- method, so then a "wrong" WB might not get me the "optimal" exposure if it makes the highlights burn out "to early"? Especially in situations with dim light and use of high iso values?
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Any one tried the Color Checker? Does this work in the same way as an ordinary WB card? In other words; it won't help in this regard?
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Thank you, MFloyd!
Agree regards to no concern due to shooting in RAW. Though, isn't it so that wrong WB in camera might affect our exposure? I always try to follow the ETTR- method, so then a "wrong" WB might not get me the "optimal" exposure if it makes the highlights burn out "to early"? Especially in situations with dim light and use of high iso values?
Good question. My belief is that, if it affects the exposure, it will be minimal and within the control boundaries. BTW, I am not an ETTR follower, but that’s another question ;)
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If one relies on the displayed histogram to fine-tune the optimum exposure, having a relevant w/b is crucial. Otherwise you might end up using an exposure setting that later indicates severe over- or underexposure. People working with ultraviolet (UV) are acutely aware of this often neglected fact.
If in doubt, set the camera to monochrome w/b. That at least gives a good starting point in the subsequent processing of a RAW file.
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Good question. My belief is that, if it affects the exposure, it will be minimal and within the control boundaries. BTW, I am not an ETTR follower, but that’s another question ;)
I`m all ears, MFloyd regarding ETTR or not :-). Its just the way I've learned it, but I'm always willing to learn :-).
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Any one tried the Color Checker? Does this work in the same way as an ordinary WB card? In other words; it won't help in this regard?
Sometimes it saves my *ss and sometimes I don't like the result. If shooting product and I need to produce the correct colors and WB - I use the Color Checker. (purple for instance can be a real bastard)
Unless I shoot stuff like art or product or fashion etc, I adjust WB to my liking. I am of the opinion that WB can be very subjective (unless you shoot product etc)
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Sometimes it saves my *ss and sometimes I don't like the result. If shooting product and I need to produce the correct colors and WB - I use the Color Checker. (purple for instance can be a real bastard)
Unless I shoot stuff like art or product or fashion etc, I adjust WB to my liking. I am of the opinion that WB can be very subjective (unless you shoot product etc)
Thank you, Elsa!
Yes, indeed, WB can be very subjective.
I'm thinking of going from Nikon Capture NX- D to Bridge/PS CC, and the idea is to create better starting point (color/WB) than what the original profiles in PS CC gives me (as far as I know, Nikon doesn't share their "numbers")...
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I`m all ears, MFloyd regarding ETTR or not :-). Its just the way I've learned it, but I'm always willing to learn :-).
I’m afraid that I don’t have much to teach about an alternative method. I’m just relying, most of the time, in the way my camera sets the exposure. As my main photography domain is sport/action, little opportunity is given to do more sophisticated adjustments. In some extreme situations I’m adjusting, generally not exceeding 2/3 stop.
In some situations (e.g. reproduction) I'im using a 48 patch target which is then imported in Lr, ACR or Phocus (Hasselblad) and to which you apply a two step process: (1) adjusting the WB and setting the right levels for white, grey and black; (2) using a dedicated software from the card provider (DataColor) which will adjust hue, saturation and brightness for each of the 48 patches.
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I was told of a technique for setting white balance last week, at a talk at the Nikon School in London by Tom Mason http://www.tommasonphoto.co/
He sets WB by maximising saturation, then adjusting the blue/yellow wb slider by eye to a neutral position, then the same for the magenta/green wb slider. Then reduce saturation back to the default position.
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Interesting, Ill look into it!
The technical term to search is "color constancy". There is a very elegant example at http://persci.mit.edu/gallery/checkershadow
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Like Elsa I use the colorchecker if color precision is needed
which in my case it rarely is ;)
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I shoot RAW and set white balance later, but I find that auto WB gets close most of the time. The cameras I've used (D200, D7000, D810) seem to be clever at recognizing my intent, neutralizing colour casts in daylight or similar broad-spectrum lighting, but keeping the orange of a sunset or the neon green or purple wash of a street scene. One exception is scenes that contain bright snow and ice, which auto WB often renders too blue for my taste. I correct these by adjusting WB until the top edge of the "colors" histogram shows neutral grey (neither blue nor yellow). This sets the brightest snow to a crisp neutral white.
+ 1 for Anthony's advice - when processing RAW images turn the saturation slider up to 100%, adjust the WB sliders to neutralize greys and whites, then turn saturation back down to a reasonable level. I find this method useful for setting green-magenta balance, which I often can't see well at normal saturation.
Cheers - John
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I’m afraid that I don’t have much to teach about an alternative method. I’m just relying, most of the time, in the way my camera sets the exposure. As my main photography domain is sport/action, little opportunity is given to do more sophisticated adjustments. In some extreme situations I’m adjusting, generally not exceeding 2/3 stop.
In some situations (e.g. reproduction) I'im using a 48 patch target which is then imported in Lr, ACR or Phocus (Hasselblad) and to which you apply a two step process: (1) adjusting the WB and setting the right levels for white, grey and black; (2) using a dedicated software from the card provider (DataColor) which will adjust hue, saturation and brightness for each of the 48 patches.
Have I got it right; Nikon doesn't share their "codes" regarding color etc. with other software but their own (Capture NX- D)? So if one want Nikons "own" colors, one have to use their software... If so, then I take it for granted that software like PS CC / ACR / Lightroom make their own Nikon profiles by testing/"guessing". By using color checker like for instance X- Rites: one is making profiles by X- rite definition of color, and not Nikons?
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The technical term to search is "color constancy". There is a very elegant example at http://persci.mit.edu/gallery/checkershadow
Thank you, Les :) !
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I was told of a technique for setting white balance last week, at a talk at the Nikon School in London by Tom Mason http://www.tommasonphoto.co/
He sets WB by maximising saturation, then adjusting the blue/yellow wb slider by eye to a neutral position, then the same for the magenta/green wb slider. Then reduce saturation back to the default position.
Thank you, Anthony!
Interesting, that Ill look into.
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Like Elsa I use the colorchecker if color precision is needed
which in my case it rarely is ;)
Thank you, Armando!
Hehe, I hopefully end up like you, Armando :). It`s just that I`d like to get as good files (starting point) as possible - since I've spent such amount on my gear I´d like to take "advantage" of it :)
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I shoot RAW and set white balance later, but I find that auto WB gets close most of the time. The cameras I've used (D200, D7000, D810) seem to be clever at recognizing my intent, neutralizing colour casts in daylight or similar broad-spectrum lighting, but keeping the orange of a sunset or the neon green or purple wash of a street scene. One exception is scenes that contain bright snow and ice, which auto WB often renders too blue for my taste. I correct these by adjusting WB until the top edge of the "colors" histogram shows neutral grey (neither blue nor yellow). This sets the brightest snow to a crisp neutral white.
+ 1 for Anthony's advice - when processing RAW images turn the saturation slider up to 100%, adjust the WB sliders to neutralize greys and whites, then turn saturation back down to a reasonable level. I find this method useful for setting green-magenta balance, which I often can't see well at normal saturation.
Cheers - John
Thank you, John!
I agree that Auto WB (especially nr 2) gets the job done, most of the time. Maybe there's no settings/software that gives us a "perfect" starting point.... :) ?
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Maybe I should try to adjust the Auto WB 2 in camera in order to decrease the warmth?
Give it a shot. I tried warming up Auto1 but had more problems over saturating the red channel alone so I gave that up.
Dave
I need to be careful of this phone. It sometimes tries to slip naughty words into my writing.
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look at this ... the original color of this house is a greyish yellow, but the leaves are "correct WB". This has to do with the fact that shadow areas tend to have the complementary color of the sunny parts. That is why professionals use strobes and huge reflectors and huge pieces of black cloth at model shoots (edit: outdoors). Deep shadows can be a nice design element, but deep shadows in complementary colors can ruin the result:
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look at this ... the original color of this house is a greyish yellow, but the leaves are "correct WB". This has to do with the fact that shadow areas tend to have the complementary color of the sunny parts. That is why professionals use strobes and huge reflectors and huge pieces of black cloth at model shoots. Deep shadows can be a nice design element, but deep shadows in complementary colors can ruin the result:
Thanks Frank!
A great illustration of something that, I for one, haven`t paid to much attention to before.
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Frode, as someone living in a winter country, you should be familiar with snow appearing blue instead of white in shadows ... The camera simply tells the truth and we believe our erratic eyes.
Sometimes one simply has to make a choice. Or selectively edit the unwanted colour cast pre- or post-production.
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Frode, as someone living in a winter country, you should be familiar with snow appearing blue instead of white in shadows ... The camera simply tells the truth and we believe our erratic eyes.
Sometimes one simply has to make a choice. Or selectively edit the unwanted colour cast pre- or post-production.
Yes, you’re right, Bjørn. It looks like I’ve got to accept that there is no short cut in this regard. I’ve become more aware of the «problem» now.
Snow appearing blue? Never seen that, to few Sunny days in my part of Norway 😄!
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Have I got it right; Nikon doesn't share their "codes" regarding color etc. with other software but their own (Capture NX- D)? So if one want Nikons "own" colors, one have to use their software... If so, then I take it for granted that software like PS CC / ACR / Lightroom make their own Nikon profiles by testing/"guessing". By using color checker like for instance X- Rites: one is making profiles by X- rite definition of color, and not Nikons?
It is not that Nikon's definition of "red" is different from X-rite's. Colour is defined, for the purposes of printing and so on, by the tri-stimulus model - hue, brightness and chroma or saturation. Each of those three values can be specified as a number and the resulting colour is precisely and unequivocally described. Hue, in turn, is the RGB values. Hue, chroma etc do not exist in the real world: the photons have wavelengths and there are more or less of them and that is it. The sensor just captures photons, and values for hue, brightness and chroma have to be created by the image processing engine to create the recipe for the colours on a screen or on paper. What the image processing engine does varies, and that is what creates Nikon colours vs Adobe colours.
The value of a profile based on a colour card is that the card has specified RGB values for each square and standardised brightness and chroma. A colorimeter can measure the RGB values for each patch on your screen, then software works out how to adjust the display so the output has the same RGB values as the colour card. Then your printer can use the same RGB values and get the same colour as the card.
The catch is that the tri-stimulus model assumes that hue, brightness and chroma do not interact, and in the human visual system they do, so accurately reproducing the colours on the card with standardised brightness and chroma does not guarantee that colours with different brightness and chroma will be "accurately" - ie, as we see it - reproduced.
This is also why ETTR is sometimes a bad idea. When you reduce brightness (misleadingly called "exposure" in Lightroom) in software the program does not change all the values equally: mid-tones are changed most and the extremes least. That causes shifts in perceived colour. There is an example at http://nikongear.net/revival/index.php/topic,5905.msg95734.html#msg95734
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The technical term to search is "color constancy". There is a very elegant example at http://persci.mit.edu/gallery/checkershadow
Let's be here serious. What Les Olson said here and in the Pixel Shift thread is correct. However, I would not call it "color constancy" but Color Balance or Color Harmony in the sense of achieving the totality of an image stimulus.
Without going into a full fledged tech discussion on colour, the white balance part of it used by in camera software or digital software plays with the Brightness side of color v Hue and Saturation. In other words, it does not matter as the final judge is your own eyes. Perception is key and in camera alone cannot achieve it and white balance is the poor man solution.
When it comes to White Balance, I would not give a monkey at shooting stage unless I am shooting technical where things get tricky and we have been doing our colour correction using calibrated Sony Gamma monitors and VectorScope. Today if you are serious about colour, Photoshop levels and cureves and whatnot simply do not cut it. I appreciate entirely that the cost of a gamma monitor and vectorscope is beyond the needs and the means of run of the mill photography. We use it strictly for commercial shoots where colour harmony is critical. I also use it for standard shoots in case I am sitting in front of the station.
To summarize, White balance is as irrelevant as whatnot and camera manuf did not have any choice but come up with this one and Photoshop came up with curves which means reliying on your eyes with no reference hence the need to use a gamma monitor or you are toast.
I reiterate, Gamma stuff is for very high end and the world continues to revolve without it. As for white balance, it is a stop gap as whatever you do. it is only your eyes who are the judge as everything you do is perceptual!
How many of you changed the gamma in their Photoshop application and their colour settings and without being pedantic, do you know why and how you should change the settings. 99% of users simply accept Photoshop crap defaults.
Which brings me to another subject related to Photoshop. Do you have the correct Photoshop settings. Nowhere and nobody will ever reveal their settings.
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The catch is that the tri-stimulus model assumes that hue, brightness and chroma do not interact, and in the human visual system they do, so accurately reproducing the colours on the card with standardised brightness and chroma does not guarantee that colours with different brightness and chroma will be "accurately" - ie, as we see it - reproduced.
Isn't this what the different characteristic curves of each layer of traditional colour film attempts to address? Successfully or not is another question. That's to say that for any given "brightness" the ratio of red, green and blue "recorded" will be different.
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It is not that Nikon's definition of "red" is different from X-rite's. Colour is defined, for the purposes of printing and so on, by the tri-stimulus model - hue, brightness and chroma or saturation. Each of those three values can be specified as a number and the resulting colour is precisely and unequivocally described. Hue, in turn, is the RGB values. Hue, chroma etc do not exist in the real world: the photons have wavelengths and there are more or less of them and that is it. The sensor just captures photons, and values for hue, brightness and chroma have to be created by the image processing engine to create the recipe for the colours on a screen or on paper. What the image processing engine does varies, and that is what creates Nikon colours vs Adobe colours.
The value of a profile based on a colour card is that the card has specified RGB values for each square and standardised brightness and chroma. A colorimeter can measure the RGB values for each patch on your screen, then software works out how to adjust the display so the output has the same RGB values as the colour card. Then your printer can use the same RGB values and get the same colour as the card.
The catch is that the tri-stimulus model assumes that hue, brightness and chroma do not interact, and in the human visual system they do, so accurately reproducing the colours on the card with standardised brightness and chroma does not guarantee that colours with different brightness and chroma will be "accurately" - ie, as we see it - reproduced.
This is also why ETTR is sometimes a bad idea. When you reduce brightness (misleadingly called "exposure" in Lightroom) in software the program does not change all the values equally: mid-tones are changed most and the extremes least. That causes shifts in perceived colour. There is an example at http://nikongear.net/revival/index.php/topic,5905.msg95734.html#msg95734
Thank you for an interesting reply, Les! Clearly, there isn't a "quick fix" here..... :)
I've never thought of the effect of reducing the Exposure in the way you describe.
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Let's be here serious. What Les Olson said here and in the Pixel Shift thread is correct. However, I would not call it "color constancy" but Color Balance or Color Harmony in the sense of achieving the totality of an image stimulus.
Without going into a full fledged tech discussion on colour, the white balance part of it used by in camera software or digital software plays with the Brightness side of color v Hue and Saturation. In other words, it does not matter as the final judge is your own eyes. Perception is key and in camera alone cannot achieve it and white balance is the poor man solution.
When it comes to White Balance, I would not give a monkey at shooting stage unless I am shooting technical where things get tricky and we have been doing our colour correction using calibrated Sony Gamma monitors and VectorScope. Today if you are serious about colour, Photoshop levels and cureves and whatnot simply do not cut it. I appreciate entirely that the cost of a gamma monitor and vectorscope is beyond the needs and the means of run of the mill photography. We use it strictly for commercial shoots where colour harmony is critical. I also use it for standard shoots in case I am sitting in front of the station.
To summarize, White balance is as irrelevant as whatnot and camera manuf did not have any choice but come up with this one and Photoshop came up with curves which means reliying on your eyes with no reference hence the need to use a gamma monitor or you are toast.
I reiterate, Gamma stuff is for very high end and the world continues to revolve without it. As for white balance, it is a stop gap as whatever you do. it is only your eyes who are the judge as everything you do is perceptual!
How many of you changed the gamma in their Photoshop application and their colour settings and without being pedantic, do you know why and how you should change the settings. 99% of users simply accept Photoshop crap defaults.
Which brings me to another subject related to Photoshop. Do you have the correct Photoshop settings. Nowhere and nobody will ever reveal their settings.
Thank you Ethan!
Interesting!
I've adjusted the standard settings in Photoshop and I also run a calibration on my screen every now and then. Of course, far from optimal from a professional point of view. Though, I will say that I get fair enough prints compared to what I see on my screen. Though, always searching to optimize :).
I appreciate your detailed response, Ethan. Always something to learn!
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Isn't this what the different characteristic curves of each layer of traditional colour film attempts to address? Successfully or not is another question. That's to say that for any given "brightness" the ratio of red, green and blue "recorded" will be different.
There is a phenomenon that if you increase luminance the perceived hue changes (the Bezold-Brucke effect), but it is complex - the shift is towards blue if the stimulus is below 500nm (cyan) but towards yellow if it is above 500nm, so it is hard to see that colour film could adapt to it. There are other perceptual effects film could not modify that invalidate the assumption that the tri-stimuli are independent - in particular, if you increase luminance perceived saturation increases (Hunt effect; this is why colours in photographs taken on bright sunny days are not as vivid as we perceived them), and if you increase saturation the perceived luminance increases (Helmholtz-Kohlrausch effect; this is why women wear bright red lipstick).
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the shift is towards blue if the stimulus is below 500nm (cyan) but towards yellow if it is above 500nm, so it is hard to see that colour film could adapt to it.
I was not suggesting that it would adapt to the colours in the scene (the stimulus), but the characteristic curves does show a different bias in the shadows, mid tones and highlights. It would make sense to pick the "best bias" that results in the most pleasing result as I agree I don't see how it can adapted to the colours in the scene. It must be there for a reason, it was my understanding it's there to give a more perceptually correct, or pleasing result.
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Frode, as someone living in a winter country, you should be familiar with snow appearing blue instead of white in shadows ... The camera simply tells the truth and we believe our erratic eyes.
The blue snow in shadows is not an illusion: the snow is really blue because it is lit by the blue skylight. That is why the camera also captures it as blue. The principle was demonstrated by Goethe as part of his (futile) attempt to show that Newton was wrong about colour; Newton said that shadows were the absence of light, so they must be black.
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As I said, the camera tells the truth. In the old days, colour film did the same re snow in shadows (however film lied about a lot else). As long as we had white snow as the reference within the field of view, we "saw" more white than blue, however. Thus the perceived whiteness of the snow all over was a sensory illusion.
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This has to do with the fact that shadow areas tend to have the complementary color of the sunny parts.
The sun is warm 4800-5600K or something like that. The sky is blue and that's the light that fills the shadows. Maybe 11000K... unless ...it's smoggy then the shadows are filled with warm light reflected off the smog in the later afternoon. You point the color meter west in the afternoon and the color temp is 5000K or so. You point the color meter east and it's WTF? it's still 5000K. I'm just guessing here but I did this once and thought open up your mind Dave. Look at that light source. Our brains fool us but as photographers they can't do it totally and they can't do it all the time.
I see the color of various light sources but not fully. That's why I like to under correct WB because when I'm aware my brain can only partly fool me. I mean I see yellow late afternoon winter light as yellow but not as yellow as it really is. I see the yellow light messes with the color of objects bathed in it.
In days of film one had to be careful of under exposure of shadow areas when using deep orange and red filters. The film was more sensitive to blue. I shot an old tree trunk, burned inside and dead. I wanted to show a ghost of detail of the burned charcoal inside. I shot one sheet of 4x5 normally then one and two stops over and I should have shot +1, +2 and +3 EV. Plus two barely gave me what I wanted. I was using a simplified zone system and measuring the dark inside with a 1* spot meter. The negative was hard to print. The charcoal inside was lit by only sky so the blue light had to make it's way through a Wratten #29 filter and not much did. Then it had to reflect off the shiny part of the charcoal.
When I was really green I tried a film speed test of Tri-X under tungsten light. I only got 125 ASA. The film was quite sensitive to blue light and the tungsten offered yellow, orange and red. I conservatively rated Tri-X (non-professional) at EI 200 in daylight but it was more like EI 250. Another open up your mind Dave and think this out. I rated film at the edge (not deep corner) of a 105/2.5 negative at f/5.6.
Dave Hartman
Again I'm guessing color temperatures for sunlight and skylight. 5200 or 5300K is often the standard for daylight color side film as I recall.
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As I said, the camera tells the truth.
Isn't that it in a nutshell? Yes the camera tells the truth but the story needs to "shortened" or edited to match our perceptions given the limitations of the display medium, because the display medium in combination with its viewing environment is not cable of the telling the truth...
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Women wear bright red lipstick to look aroused. Well maybe they don't think about but it makes them more interesting to who ever they want to look interesting to.
When I was in my teens young women wore pale lavender lipstick to look... dead? Old women wore primary red lipstick as that's what was popular during WWII.
It's all very confusing.
Dave Hartman
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As I said, the camera tells the truth.
The truth, the whole truth and a very slanted truth ...but still the truth. :) ;) :D
Who was it that said, "Now we know that we shall never know."?
Probably a nuclear physics but in my messed up head the statement seemed appropriate.
Dave Hartman who collects photons as a hobby.
[Forgot the smilies.]
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I was not suggesting that it would adapt to the colours in the scene (the stimulus), but the characteristic curves does show a different bias in the shadows, mid tones and highlights. It would make sense to pick the "best bias" that results in the most pleasing result as I agree I don't see how it can adapted to the colours in the scene. It must be there for a reason, it was my understanding it's there to give a more perceptually correct, or pleasing result.
Yes, I think you are correct; films differed because of the manufacturer's beliefs about what people with particular uses wanted. So Velvia was designed to give highly saturated landscape colours because that is what landscape photographers wanted. Colour print film was designed to give pleasing skin tones - unfortunately, only white skin was taken into consideration. It was not until the 1990s that Kodak changed its film to render brown well - and even then, it is said, it was because the chocolate manufacturers complained.
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"Wrong colour" can also be because of coloured reflections, such as this plane flying over a grass airfield. Colour correction is needed to neutralise the green on the subframe.
(1) without correction
(2) with correction