Colors on iOS...I must be missing something

[dbr.ro]

I'm new to photography so please be patient with me if this has already been discussed elsewhere. I've really scoured the internet to find an answer to this and, though the discussion on color management is prolific, I can't get an answer to this scenario...I must be missing something.

 

When I shoot jpegs (with the sRGB color) on my XE2s and then try to send them to my phone, they look horrible - cooler, overexposed, and lose the comparative look I see in my camera. This is similar on my computer as well - if I first import them to my color calibrated mac then put them on the phone for instagram or sharing the same thing happens. This adds a step between the camera and iOS, but the main problem I don't understand is: Why, if I'm using sRGB from Fuji does it change the color on iPhone, which I understand to likewise be sRGB?

 

Thanks for any input you could give.

Edited April 13, 2017 by dbr.ro

[Barbara K. Lofton]

Well, correct me if I'm wrong but it seems to me it'll happen with any photo no matter what it was shot with... Different display settings maybe. The quality of an image taken with a camera is too high for a mobile device and that's why it looks distorted.
But I'm a newbie too so I might be wrong)

[kimcarsons]

Well, for one thing, the screen on your iPhone is much higher quality than the LCD on the camera. The screen on the iPhone is also pretty well-calibrated to sRGB by Apple. The screens on FujiFilm cameras, AFAICT, are not calibrated at all. Not even the LCD to the EVF. However, you can tweak the the settings a little bit... Brightness and saturation only. I find turning the saturation and brightness down on the camera displays helps get a more accurate impression of what the image will look like on a calibrated display... But it's an impression only.

 

As to the 'overexposed' part, you probably have the brightness on your screen turned up much too high (if you left it at the defaults or on auto brightness). Most modern smartphones have blindly bright backlights designed to make them usable in broad daylight.

Edited April 13, 2017 by kimcarsons

[dbr.ro]

Hey, thanks for your reply! So the thing with this that is confusing to me is that I feel like the image I see on my Fuji is much closer to what I'm seeing on a monitor. In other words, I feel like iOS is the only one that the image appears very differently.

[kimcarsons]

Well, there certainly could be something up with your phone, but the fact is that Apple's screens are the best out there in terms of being roughly calibrated to sRGB out of the box, so if your monitor isn't an Apple one, then I'd suspect that it's just a case of the two lower quality displays matching (the fuji and your montior) and the iPhone display being the more accurate one. Note that white-point (warm or cool) is not strictly part of the sRGB calibration here. It's possible for two displays to have different white balances and yet still be accurate representations of sRGB. (Similar to looking at the same print in daylight and tungsten... the colors will be perceived the same [barring metamerism], if you only look at one screen at a time and allow your eyes to adjust/match the ambient illuminant.)

 

If you *really* want to know what's what, you have to calibrate your monitor with a colorimeter/spectrometer and if you *reallyreally* want to match colors you need to profile your camera (a much more involved procedure). And your printer too if you print. 

 

If/when you do this, the first thing that will be very obvious is that the displays on the Fuji cameras are not calibrated. Nor do they have a method of calibration (some other brands actually allow you to use a colorimeter to calibrate the camera's display).

 

Yes, this does put a damper on the whole WYSIWYG EVF thing.

 

My advice is to use what limited controls the camera provides to tweak its display so that it matches your phone as closely as possible. You might want to do this with the Show Pic Effect setting off, so that you're not confusing matters of display settings (which affect only the display) with film simulation settings (which affect the recorded JPEGs).

Edited April 14, 2017 by kimcarsons

[Adam Woodhouse]

Did you purchase your iphone new or used?  If you purchased it used, there is a good chance it has an aftermarket screen on it due to it being replaced at a non-apple repair centre.  The colours will be off.  I had one of my phones replaced at an apple certified repair business, but they offered a lower cost screen option which I took.  It was not a genuine apple product, but I thought if it did the job, that's fine.  First thing I noticed when I go the phone back is colours were slightly different.