Splotchy colours in Lightroom - X-T1

[Trenton Talbot]

Which version of C1 did you use? I saw the Moire pattern in 8.2 and I still see it in Maurice's CP 7 express post. Look for yellow and magenta color moire pattern on the face zoomed up. Similar to this:

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3285146

 

You're right, I forgot that my "default" C1 settings aren't really default 

[x-tc]

Btw, exposure needed to be raised by 0.1-0.2 EV in order to accommodate the "analog" contrast curve. That would probably have been different with a light-skinned subject.

Rico,

I'm sorry I don't understand so I'd have to disagree. Reflective light meter always try to provide values which move your target area to medium gray. I.e. Zone V. Thus they overexpose for dark skin and dark clothes. Raising from zone IVish to V. In contrast, They under expose for light skin and light clothes. Lowering from Zone VIish to V.

 

In short if you use reflective metering then you should underexposed if pointing the meter at something dark, and overexposed if you are pointing to something light to map the tone correctly. The camera meter has no ideas what it is looking at in most cases. It just wants to move whatever you are pointing at to middle gray. Neither does LR it appears. CP1 appears to be smarter and actually looking at the colors to detect the skin tones. It would seem.

[x-tc]

Sweet dudes, definitely some things learnt. I'm not much of a studio guy either, still learning on that front, but used a photek soft lighter ii + a gridded softbox, so not sure how to get softer lighting than that.

I didn't spend a lot of time on it, but I put my final version up here..

https://instagram.com/p/2nPDM2Mk27/

Your lighting is fine. Did you use an incident light meter?

 

Looks like your key is up high and due to fall off is blowing the gray hat if you metering further down like under the chin.

 

If you simply chimped or used histogram off the camera to ETTR, then here is an example of why you don't want to do that. Your highlights are gray, not white. The hat and the white background due to fall off. Mono Histogram if fine all you want to do is avoid clipping, but you really don't know if you mapped the tones correctly if you are just looking at the mono histogram on the camera. If you were thinking the white background would be your highlight, then throw some background light on it. Otherwise, it's going to be gray due to fall off and position of key relative to the model vs background distance.

[Maurice]

Rico,

I'm sorry I don't understand so I'd have to disagree. Reflective light meter..

 

I believe he's just using a bad filter preset with a curve that happens to raise the highlights or overall exposure a little too much, so had to correct for it, don't know why he bothered telling us this.

[flysurfer]

I believe he's just using a bad filter preset with a curve that happens to raise the highlights or overall exposure a little too much, so had to correct for it, don't know why he bothered telling us this.

 

I understand that the forum etiquette is already going down the drain, so out I am from this thread.

[x-tc]

I understand that the forum etiquette is already going down the drain, so out I am from this thread.

I don't think Maurice meant any offense. I think we are just trying to understand what you meant. I agree it would have been best if you just explained it directly.

 

I still don't really understand what you meant. Hoping to learn more. I'm sure there is a logical explanation. Although I must admit, most people would agree that exposure compensation for reflective metering is quite counter intuitive.

 

"I should overexpose for the snow??? Say what??"

[Maurice]

I understand that the forum etiquette is already going down the drain, so out I am from this thread.

 

Does that yellow winking smiley not look harmless?

 

I don't think Maurice meant any offense.

 

Not even a little offense indeed. (honestly) You will have to excuse my lack of feelings, it is the Vulcan way.

[flysurfer]

I don't think Maurice meant any offense. I think we are just trying to understand what you meant. I agree it would have been best if you just explained it directly.

 

I still don't really understand what you meant. Hoping to learn more. I'm sure there is a logical explanation. Although I must admit, most people would agree that exposure compensation for reflective metering is quite counter intuitive.

 

"I should overexpose for the snow??? Say what??"

 

Well, then. Let's try to minimize confusion, as you are mixing a few things together that aren't really interrelated or relevant to the topic.

 

First of all, exposure metering is irrelevant. The only relevant thing is your exposure. Exposing right is the job of the photographer. It's not the camera's job at all. Metering may be the camera's job, if you decide not to use an external meter. However, exposure metering isn't responsible for your exposure, just like the speedometer in your car isn't responsible for you driving too slow or too fast. If things go wrong, you get the ticket, not the car.

 

Of course, there are two different exposures at work: (1) exposing the sensor (and hence the RAW file) with photons in a way that optimizes dynamic range (for the intended purposes) and shot noise, and (2) exposing an end result (JPEG, TIFF) in a RAW converter from the RAW file.

 

This example is perfectly exposed for the sensor. The only thing I would have made different is using a smaller aperture in order to increase DOF. However, the relevant parts are in focus, so this file is perfectly usable, and it's also nicely exposed to the relevant highlights (aka the cap on the head).

 

Of course, adaptive exposure during RAW conversion is a different story, especially when we enjoy the freedom of an ISOless sensor. Thanks to advanced sensor technology, we can become little Ansel Adams clones in our digital lightroom (hence the beautly of the name Adobe Lightroom) and assign different zones to different parts of the image, either selectively or globally. What we do in the digital lightroom (aka the RAW converter) is often the more important part of exposing an image, especially in an ISOless world, where adaptive digital gain is replacing old-fashioned (think Canon) analog signal amplification.

 

We call this process tone-mapping, and we do it ourselves, we do not press "Auto" buttons, just like we don't shoot JPEG-only in SR+ mode. We just don't, because we want to take control over the process.

 

This example requires a slight overall contrast and exposure push, and possibly a slight reduction of whites and highlights to compensate for this. After all, it's the dark face we are after, not the bright cap. You can also use tone-curves along with Lightroom's adaptive exposure controls.

 

That said, none of this has any relation to the original topic at hand, which was false colors. In Lightroom, it's quickly handled with color NR settings. An aggressive 100/0/100 setting does the job, w/o the dire consequences some might fear. X-Trans is a different beast and less prone to color noise than Bayer cameras, so using these sliders in an aggressive way to fight false colors is often not a problem. Brian used to recommend aggressive slider action in earlier versions of Iridient, as well.

 

Of course you can use C1, Iridient, Lightroom, AccuRAW, Aperture, Photo Ninja, Silkypix/RFC or one of the open source converters. Just remember that none of them is perfect, and each will have different issues with different images. I own and use all of the mentioned converters, so I couldn't care less what other people use (fanboyism is a terrible disease). However, it's important to base your buying decision on knowledge and experience with the available options, because things are not always what they seem. Just because it's on the Internet doesn't make it true, not even when it's shared a million times.

[x-tc]

Well, then. Let's try to minimize confusion, as you are mixing a few things together that aren't really interrelated or relevant to the topic.

 

First of all, exposure metering is irrelevant. The only relevant thing is your exposure. Exposing right is the job of the photographer. It's not the camera's job at all. Metering may be the camera's job, if you decide not to use an external meter. However, exposure metering isn't responsible for your exposure, just like the speedometer in your car isn't responsible for you driving too slow or too fast. If things go wrong, you get the ticket, not the car.

 

Of course, there are two different exposures at work: (1) exposing the sensor (and hence the RAW file) with photons in a way that optimizes dynamic range (for the intended purposes) and shot noise, and (2) exposing an end result (JPEG, TIFF) in a RAW converter from the RAW file.

 

This example is perfectly exposed for the sensor. The only thing I would have made different is using a smaller aperture in order to increase DOF. However, the relevant parts are in focus, so this file is perfectly usable, and it's also nicely exposed to the relevant highlights (aka the cap on the head).

 

Of course, adaptive exposure during RAW conversion is a different story, especially when we enjoy the freedom of an ISOless sensor. Thanks to advanced sensor technology, we can become little Ansel Adams clones in our digital lightroom (hence the beautly of the name Adobe Lightroom) and assign different zones to different parts of the image, either selectively or globally. What we do in the digital lightroom (aka the RAW converter) is often the more important part of exposing an image, especially in ISOless world, where adaptive digital gain is replacing old-fashioned (think Canon) analog signal amplification.

 

We call this process tone-mapping, and we do it ourselves, we do not press "Auto" buttons, just like we don't shoot JPEG-only in SR+ mode. We just don't, because we want to take control over the process.

 

This example requires a slight overall contrast and exposure push, and possibly a slight reduction of whites and highlights to compensate for this. After all, it's the dark face we are after, not the bright cap. You can also use tone-curves along with Lightroom's adaptive exposure controls.

 

That said, none of this has any relation to the original topic at hand, which was false colors. In Lightroom, it's quickly handled with color NR settings. An aggressive 100/0/100 setting does the job, w/o the dire consequences some might fear. X-Trans is a different beast and less prone to color noise than Bayer cameras, so using these sliders in an aggressive way to fight false colors is often not a problem. Brian used to recommend aggressive slider action in earlier versions of Iridient, as well.

 

Of course you can use C1, Iridient, Lightroom, AccuRAW, Aperture, Photo Ninja, Silkypix/RFC or one of the open source converters. Just remember that none of them is perfect, and each will have different issues with different images. I own and use all of the mentioned converters, so I couldn't care less what other people use (fanboyism is a terrible disease). However, it's important to base your buying decision on knowledge and experience with the available options, because things are not always what they seem. Just because it's on the Internet doesn't make it true, not even when it's shared a million times.

Wow.. You had a lot to say. I just have one remaining question. So about the +0.2 exposure for dark skin. I'm still not sure how you came up with this. That all I really was wanting to know.

[flysurfer]

Wow.. You had a lot to say. I just have one remaining question. So about the +0.2 exposure for dark skin. I'm still not sure how you came up with this. That all I really was wanting to know.

 

It looks better.

[x-tc]

It looks better.

Thanks Rico. I like simple explainations.

[Maurice]

Just to clarify the misunderstanding, and x-tc wanting to learn.

 

Rico said: "Btw, exposure needed to be raised by 0.1-0.2 EV in order to accommodate the "analog" contrast curve. That would probably have been different with a light-skinned subject."

 

But of course adjusting a curve will increase or decrease the exposure in parts of the image .. that is the whole idea of a curve. Lower the blacks, and raise the highlights and what you get is contrast. And when you raise or lower the curve more than the average, it can even inadvertently change the overall exposure. Or indeed as in this case when the skin tone is dark, those 'blacks' will get darker as well by using such a 'contrast curve', it happens. So in such a situation you can either compensate by fixing the overall exposure, of you can adjust the curve to fix the error there. And that is fine either way, but the point is was that it's a result of your own actions, and as such not relevant to the topic at hand. (or the camera's metering)

 

Hence my earlier response.

[mbb101]

Hi

 

I tried this in Photoninja and with a bit of noise reduction seems to give an acceptable result. PN is excellent at preserving highlights but needed to up the contrast a bit and put in a little detail.

 

[x-tc]

mbb101,

 

looks like PN did a great job on recovering the highlights. However, I still see the moire pattern. Its most noticiable in your conversion around  the highlight area just to the right of the eye on the side of the model's face; camera right.  The yellow and magenta moire patterns can also be seen as vertical patterns in the shirt around the highlighted folds. Look at the sleeve and pectoral muscle region of the shirt on camera right   Also I see, that some kind of shadow noise on the shirt (maybe due to JPEG compression), right about where the color bone is at; camera left. Anyone else see this?

 

 

Does PN have a moire adjustment?  IMHO its moire, not color noise because it was shot at ISO200. If it was me, I'd try putting back all of the color noise adjustments, leave shadows alone, and see if you can find a moire adjustment to deal specifically with the pattern.  The moire adjustment worked like a charm on both LR and C1.

[mbb101]

x-tc

 

I agree that the the remnants of it are still there, but as you can see I've downloaded what amounts to 100% jpg, at the viewing sizes that others have used for their samples I think that you wouldn't see it at all. Unfortunately PN does not have a moire control. Although I could import the jpg into LR and use that moire control. What I wanted to show that for this high dynamic range shot PN has bags of detail (despite considerable noise reduction) and gives an excellent balance between highlight and shadow areas

[x-tc]

mbb101,

understood. Yes, it look pretty good. Much better than what I got from LR.

 The JPEG output from PN still may be to blame for some of moire still and other issues I mentioned in the shadows.  I'd like to see the TIFF if you are inclined to upload it someplace.

 

I did two outputs in C1P 8.2, one for JPEG and one to TIFF.  I could still make out the moire in the JPEG output on the shirt but not the face. I don't detect any moire in the TIFF or on-screen in C1P.  weird. Maybe you can find some that I can't find in the TIFF.

 

Below is the TIFF output if you want to do a comparison for yourself from C1P 8.2 vs PN.  

My settings:

Moire 80.  

Exposure EV -0.2,

Highlight recovery at 80 for the hat.

Slight Shadows rescue at 8.

 Slight sharpness with Clarity Structure set at 10, I guess I could set it to 0, I don't see much difference.  I didn't want to over sharpen. Just a touch to make out the lint and weaving pattern on the bottom center portion of his shirt at 400%. ;-)  Amazing detail for 16MP. Awesome job Fuji. 

 

You can download the TIFF from here is you are interested; its 75MB after cropping:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/96cnaie4q3h8pim/DSCF9038.tif?dl=0

 

Hope you find it useful.

[mbb101]

x-tc

 

I am afraid I did not produce a tiff. I usually go from RAF to JPG and in any event I am away from my main computer for the next few days so won't be able to do any further work on this. But thanks for the info.