Color Casts for Some Commonly Remarked on Lenses

[Michael Erlewine]

First, I probably have not done this right, so if you will point out (within reason), I will try to find time to do this again. Here is what I did do, using the Nikon D810.

(1) Took photos at night using two 5600K LED lights.
(2) More or less tried to frame them the same, but hard to do because they are very different.
(3) Tried to use f/5.6
(4) Use Passport color checker only in photo (not internally).
(5) Brightened exposure to make them roughly equal.
(6) Did NOT do any retouching or use of white-balance eyedropper
(7) Focus point was tip of light leaf.

The photos are labeled by lens, but they are, in order:

El Nikkor 105mm APO
CRT-Nikkor
Noct Nikkor
Voigtlander 125mm APO-Lanthar
Otus 55mm
Otus 85mm
Otus 28mm

Now, what should I do instead of what I did?

[Almass]

My preferences are in this order: Voigt followed by Noct followed by Otus55

Reason: General look and feel.

Voigt sharpness + bokeh + lack of coma
Noct: Ohhhh those colors + Pity on Line on leaf
Otus 55: Surgical and boring but wins on technical.

What say you?

[Michael Erlewine]

I would want to adjust each one based on the color-checker and remove color casts, etc., which I did not try to do in these shots.

[BW]

Common lenses? It's not like they are in every photographers bag

[Jakov Minić]

Børge, my thought exactly
The only common thing about these lenses is that they are not common

[Michael Erlewine]

Børge, my thought exactly
The only common thing about these lenses is that they are not common

Well, common to me and my work. Must be some other comments, like I would color-correct all of these, etc.

[BW]

Børge, my thought exactly
The only common thing about these lenses is that they are not common

I agree with your comment. Another commonality are that they are not for common people. I will now commence further commenting in this thread

[Michael Erlewine]

What I was looking for are suggestions on how to go about comparing color from different lenses. Perhaps someone could comment on the thread, not on the title. I should have written "Color Cast for Some Commonly Remarked on Lenses." After all, this is NikonGear. We commonly look at all kinds of uncommon lenses.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Assuming you have PhotoNinja or similar, for each lens build a session profile by shooting the Color Passport or Color Checker card under the same light conditions and apply this when the files are processed.  This simple remedy should ensure the maximum of colour consistency across the lenses.

However, while you can, to some extent, equalise colour rendition  post shooting this way, the lenses still will appear different simply because they *are* different. For example, the CRT Nikkor is not designed for use under white light and thus does not draw colours equally distinctly as the CV 125 APO. The clinical nature of the Otus lenses still will contrast that of the temperamental Noct-Nikkor or the the rounded, pleasant rendition of the CV 125. And so on.

[BW]

Sorry! I couldnt help myself. I find it very hard to compare different color cast, even when I am using colorchecker. I usually only divide them into warm and cold. The warm ones are more to the red/yellow side and the cold ones more on the blue/magenta side. But on the other hand, if I color correct, I take away the signature of that lens and the picture is just one of many.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

You can only control colours so much, as I implied. A lens character will remain. If the lens design cannot properly deal with, and differentiate between, colours in the first place, you cannot correct colour rendition perfectly post facto.

[Michael Erlewine]

You can only control colours so much, as I implied. A lens character will remain. If the lens design cannot properly deal with, and differentiate between, colours in the first place, you cannot correct colour rendition perfectly post facto.

Can you list how best, if any, to show how different lenses (common or uncommon) draw. How should I present this. Might as well educate me on this. What would be the best way to show a photo of each lens, so that it might be useful to others?

[BW]

But these lenses are chosen because they have no character. The only thing that differentiate them are the color rendition. Everything else is corrected away.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

I'm afraid this line of reasoning is beyond me, Børge. A CRT-Nikkor or a Noct-Nikkor both have a lot of character. Same goes for the CV 125 APO, which is less temperamental yet still imprints its drawing on the captures. Not familiar with the APO EL-Nikkor, but any enlarger lens is not designed for the same working conditions as an ordinary photographic lens.

The Otus lenses are designed to be clinical, though.

[Andrea B.]

Forgive me in what follows if you already know this stuff. Hard to keep track of who knows what. 

First shoot the CC Passport straight-on in good even lighting using each lens with exposures all at the same aperture and ISO. Try to fill the frame with the CC Passport but leave the focus very slightly blurred.

Next, using Photo Ninja, for each lens combo, create what is called a Custom Light Profile (colour correction) made from the CC Passport photo. This Custom Light Profile is automatically saved in PN's Color Correction tool so that it can be applied from a drop-down menu to subsequent photos made with the same combo. You can also create Presets containing the Custom Light together with other edits.

Once these Profiles are created you can compare the shots of the CC Passport colours as Before & After composites to see where or how the colour casts occur for a given lens.

******

I wrote a tutorial about Custom Light Profiles once and later I added a Before & After composite shot. I've attached that here to illustrate the point about comparing Before & After. I was a little fanciful and created a flower overlay in Photoshop for this. 

The point I was making with my photos below is that merely white-balancing does not always fully correct colours. (This is especially evident when using full spectrum camera without internal filtration. It is not at all as evident when using normal, visible cameras.)

But for Michael's purposes, these photos illustrate a way to determine how a particular lens is affecting colour by comparing non-profiled and profiled shots for a particular lens. That is, by comparing uncorrected vs corrected colours.
This also gives you some material to directly compare two different lenses if desired.


Equipment: D600-broadband + 60/4.5 UV-Planar + Baader UVIR-Cut Filter
[Note to NG readers:  the D600 internal UV/IR blocking filter was removed.]
 

(1), (2), (3) and (4) are the photo captions for the 4 photos which I can't match up in this forum software.

(1) BEFORE:  The original photo with only in-camera white balance does not look too bad, but the yellow & purple are obviously off. The other differences are more subtle. Photo Ninja does a good job (at least in this example) of preserving the in-camera white balance preset.

Yes, Kitty Mocha contributed some cat hair to the orange patch. 

(2) AFTER:  The Custom Light profile created and applied. Corrected colours look better. Saturation can be further adjusted if desired.

(3) DIFFERENCE LAYER: The Before & After differences are not so easy to see when the two versions are separated. In Photoshop I made a difference layer to show where the differences occur. The difference layer was brightened slightly to make the difference locations more apparent because some of them are subtle.

(4) COMPARISON COMPOSITE: The After flowers atop the Before background show the PN corrected colour against the in-camera white-balanced colour. There are only the minorest of differences in the top monotone row. This means that the in-camera white balance setting made it through the converter (Photo Ninja) without major alternation. Do be aware that this may not always happen with other converters. The flower overlay illustrates that white-balance alone is not enough to fully correct colours in the broadband camera.