# How do reds come out in your 5d3 ?



## K-amps (Aug 13, 2014)

I have often struggled with red objects in my 5d3. I wrote last year about it but did not get any replies. Yesterday while trying out my new 85 1.2 ii, I saw the same issue.

Red flowers come out in an over saturated red haze. The other colors seem saturated just fine, but the reds are over powered so much that the flowers lose detail.

I can reduced saturation in LR, but then the whole image looks washed out... the issue is only with reds.

If I reduce just red (Red channel only) , then it lacks punch, although I get back details in the flower...

Has anyone else observed this?


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## K-amps (Aug 13, 2014)

Another shot, all sliders at -0- values in LR (i.e. nothing adjusted)

overall saturation seems ok, but reds are just too overdone...


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## K-amps (Aug 13, 2014)

Finally I get it where I have good saturation AND details. but takes me 5 minutes to dial it in LR with these settings:

There has to be better way than having to work on the reds so much.

These where all shot/ processed in RAW in LR 4.4


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## K-amps (Aug 13, 2014)

This is the result


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## Jim Saunders (Aug 13, 2014)

I just had this fist-fight with my 1Dx; I found that calibrating colours with a colorchecker passport got the shade right, and then selectively dropping the exposure on red bits by around 0.6 got them sorted. Oddly enough it wasn't the reds that shifted on the histogram, but blues.

The images in order are as imported; lens profile; color profile and finally the upper flower dropped down 1/3 stop with a brush stroke in LR5.

Then again to compare them back to back for this one I might leave the exposure; I definitely agree that they're troublesome. I was out shooting some red uniforms under fluorescent light a week or so ago and post on those was a real pain.

Anyway I'll get a more useful response together tomorrow.

Jim


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## jrista (Aug 13, 2014)

You need to use per-channel color editing to bring down the red saturation independently of the rest of the colors. I've purposely increased the overall saturation on this rose photo of mine, then pulled down the reds, magentas, and purples to correct the oversaturation of the flowers without affecting the saturation of the greens:


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## K-amps (Aug 13, 2014)

Tks guys for the responses.

Jon, I did try the per channel red.... but it did not fix the issue, just washed out the red. In real life the flower has more red chroma, and I can match it on screen, but then all details are washed out.... it's not that easy of a fix... moreover I'd like a perm fix rather than spending hours everytime I shoot red.


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## jrista (Aug 13, 2014)

K-amps said:


> Tks guys for the responses.
> 
> Jon, I did try the per channel red.... but it did not fix the issue, just washed out the red. In real life the flower has more red chroma, and I can match it on screen, but then all details are washed out.... it's not that easy of a fix... moreover I'd like a perm fix rather than spending hours everytime I shoot red.



You can get it right. It may just require tweaking all of the color channels. If your willing to share the RAW, I can play around with it.


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## K-amps (Aug 13, 2014)

Is there an easy way of getting you the RAW (25mb file?)


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## jrista (Aug 13, 2014)

Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, etc.


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## K-amps (Aug 13, 2014)

Let me know if this works:

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=6B9B43DE47D8F292!107&authkey=!ACdE2UxlWoEM-mo&ithint=folder%2cCR2


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## jrista (Aug 13, 2014)

What do you think of this?






I chose the "Camera Faithful" profile under Camera Calibration. The settings can be seen in this before/after comparison:


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## FEBS (Aug 13, 2014)

Bobmanrea said:


> Intensive reds are often out of gamut.
> 
> The easiest way is to select ProPhoto color space and not smaller as Adobe RGB or S-RGB and chose to work in 16 bit mode.
> Then manual proof the color values ​​into a smaller color space as Adobe RGB and later on convert to the destinated color space as Adobe RGB or S-rgb.
> ...



The 5D3 can only write a file in Adobe RGB or S-RGB. Do you have experience then that a photo taken in Adobe RGB and uploading in LR or PS gives better result in Prophoto color space? Where would that supplemental detail come for your Prophoto color schema?


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## rs (Aug 13, 2014)

FEBS said:


> Bobmanrea said:
> 
> 
> > Intensive reds are often out of gamut.
> ...



It can only write jpegs in those colour spaces. Raw files are taken and stored with the only colour space constraints being that of the sensor itself. The raw converter will then apply a colour space which may or may not introduce further gamut restrictions.


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## FEBS (Aug 13, 2014)

rs said:


> It can only write jpegs in those colour spaces. Raw files are taken and stored with the only colour space constraints being that of the sensor itself. The raw converter will then apply a colour space which may or may not introduce further gamut restrictions.


OK, thx.

I didn't realize that the raw file is not according a colour space. However strange that Canon places a _ in front of the raw filename, in case you choose for AdobeRGB, while the raw file is independent of the colour space as you mentioned.


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## philmoz (Aug 13, 2014)

FEBS said:


> I didn't realize that the raw file is not according a colour space. However strange that Canon places a _ in front of the raw filename, in case you choose for AdobeRGB, while the raw file is independent of the colour space as you mentioned.



Keeps the filenames consistent if you shoot RAW + JPEG.

Phil.


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## FEBS (Aug 13, 2014)

Bobmanrea said:


> Yes if you are shooting JPG you can only chose between Adobe RGB or S-RGB in the camera
> 
> I thought you used RAW where one of the color spaces is Prophoto, and also the largest one which is handy when you are dealing with intensive colors and nuances.



No, I'm shooting raw only, but was not aware that the setting of colour space had no influence on the raw file, but only on the jpeg. 
So, once again I learned something from CR friends.

Thank you.


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## MxM (Aug 13, 2014)

See attachment: It's an calibrated (by SpyderCheckr from DataColor) ACR preset for the 5D3.

Maybe this will give you a good start to work from?

Best regards,

MxM


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## mackguyver (Aug 13, 2014)

I do a lot of macro work with flowers and see this a lot, and not just with reds, but blues and yellows as well. It's an issue with the capture, not the post-processing. The camera's meter is tricked by the strongly saturated colors and while it is metering the red channel correctly, but you have underexposed the blue and green channels (see histogram), and by "crushing" the shadows, you have oversaturated those colors. If you look at the screen shots, you'll see those channels are spiking on the left side. 

The solution is to use the RGB histogram mode on the camera and when you see this, bump up the exposure until the shadows are no longer blocked, probably just +1/3 or 1/2 EV. It sounds counter intuitive, but it works.


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## mackguyver (Aug 13, 2014)

P.S. here's some information from Michael at Luminous Landscape (from Optimizing Exposure):

"For example, with a typical DSLR, when photographing a red flowers under natural daylight, the LCD histogram will typically show the red channel as blown out. This doesn't tell whether the native raw red channel is actually blown. So one doesn't know whether to increase the exposure for ETTR, or reduce it. The natural reaction of most users is to say, "Uh oh, I'm gonna blow the red channel in these flowers, so I better reduce the exposure till the red histogram doesn't look blown out anymore." Unfortunately, that's almost always the wrong thing to do. In fact, the red channel (in the raw data) rarely clips on a typical DSLR with a normal daylight exposure, because the red sensitivity is very low (about 1.5 stops darker than green). If one was to reduce exposure till the red histogram no longer showed clipping, then the actual raw red channel would be very underexposed with a poor SNR. Result: noisy red flowers!

One colleague reports that he measured the relative sensitivity of the R, G and B of his DSLR at 5500K daylight (per daylight film). The ratio between the channels was very close to (G:B:R) 5:2:1. That helps explain the reasoning above. Food for thought."

They also have a nice tutorial on a good method to fix them, if you have already underexposed the image: Restore Those Clipped Channels


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## old-pr-pix (Aug 13, 2014)

O.K. sensor experts, help me out here... In film days it was well understood that flowers were difficult to photograph due to the fact they reflect a spectrum of colors well outside what humans can see. Film was calibrated to represent the human visible spectrum as accurately as possible; but, often would misrepresent flower colors due to high IR and/or UV content. The solution was the use of various filters to attempt to compensate. Obviously there was no good way to play with the various color channels of the film.

With digital sensors we can play with the color channels but are constrained by the manufacturer's IR filter (obviously with some exceptions). Can anyone point me to a source that discusses the science of flower photography with digital sensors? What frequencies need to be maintained/eliminated to get good representation with which basic sensors? I sense that some sensors/cameras might well work better than others. Or, is it just a matter of having enough PP skill and experience to get it right?


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## teedidy (Aug 13, 2014)

LightRoom tip: While holding down the alt key you can adjust the Whites the screen will turn completely white unless a channel is at 100%. If you see any black, that indicates pure white. If you see any other color, it indicates that channel is 100%. In your case with the Red flowers you will see large patches of red indicating that the red channel is at 100%. Back down the white slider until the last bit of red disappears and there is only one or two pixels that are at 100%. This will allow your flowers to have detail in the red. 

notes while holding down alt key and adjusting whites: 
Yellow = Red 100%, Green 100%
Purple = Red 100%, Blue 100%
Cyan = Blue 100%, Green 100%
Red = Red 100%
Green = 100%
Blue = 100%
Black = Red 100%, Green 100%, Blue 100%

Adjusting the Blacks works in a similar manor.

-T


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## mackguyver (Aug 13, 2014)

old-pr-pix said:


> O.K. sensor experts, help me out here... In film days it was well understood that flowers were difficult to photograph due to the fact they reflect a spectrum of colors well outside what humans can see. Film was calibrated to represent the human visible spectrum as accurately as possible; but, often would misrepresent flower colors due to high IR and/or UV content. The solution was the use of various filters to attempt to compensate. Obviously there was no good way to play with the various color channels of the film.
> 
> With digital sensors we can play with the color channels but are constrained by the manufacturer's IR filter (obviously with some exceptions). Can anyone point me to a source that discusses the science of flower photography with digital sensors? What frequencies need to be maintained/eliminated to get good representation with which basic sensors? I sense that some sensors/cameras might well work better than others. Or, is it just a matter of having enough PP skill and experience to get it right?


I can't help you with the science of it all, but I wouldn't recommend filters with digital. Canon's sensors tend to be slightly biased toward saturated reds and the way I shoot flowers is to make sure I'm in the RGB Histogram mode for image review. If I see clipping in any of the channels, particularly on the shadow side, I will increase or reduce the exposure compensation to get a good exposure. In post, the single best tool I've found to process flower photos is DxO. It has a "Protect Saturated Colors" tool (see #4 towards the bottom of this tutorial page) specifically for this situation. The auto mode is a little too aggressive, but the slider works extremely well. You can do similar things in PS/LR with ACR, but it's not as simple. DxO's tool makes it so easy.


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## ahsanford (Aug 13, 2014)

Excellent thread. This topic has vexed me on 5D3 flower work. The 5D3 has always been oversaturated on reds in my hands, and I seem to lose something when I try to rein in the reds in RAW processing.

I _don't_ want a great post-processing tool for this specific issue. More commentary on in-camera work, please. How do I preview this is going to happen, and when I find it, how do I compensate for it?

Keep talking, people.

- A


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## K-amps (Aug 13, 2014)

jrista said:


> What do you think of this?
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Certainly improved over the unprocessed RAW, but still not fully detailed. I can much around the whites and blacks only and get it to where I want it, my issue is, why do I have to much around with it anyway. Is there an in body setting or LR profile I can use?

I think McGyver has some good ideas too.... the blues and yellows might be the issue and in trying to fix those, the raw converter over saturates the reds.

I tried the alt+white or black slider trick and while is made the reds better, the rest of the photo became unappealing.

I like my rendition (3rd shot) where I reduced both black and whites... and show the LR settings

Great discussion guys.


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## jrista (Aug 13, 2014)

K-amps said:


> Certainly improved over the unprocessed RAW, but still not fully detailed.



Actually, the flower is fully detailed, for what detail was preserved in the RAW. That's why I posted the closeup...all the detail is there. The only additional thing you could do is adjust brightness or saturation further, or shift the hue...all of which will have the effect of reducing the impact of the reds overall. 

I think what your looking for now is enhancing the subtle variations in the detail. That is where microcontrast and sharpening come into play...but that is a different discussion than restoring over-saturated colors. 

Here is an image that has been sharpened:









K-amps said:


> I can much around the whites and blacks only and get it to where I want it, my issue is, why do I have to much around with it anyway. Is there an in body setting or LR profile I can use?
> 
> I think McGyver has some good ideas too.... the blues and yellows might be the issue and in trying to fix those, the raw converter over saturates the reds.
> 
> ...



Do you mean where you reduced the brightness and contrast of the image overall?


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## distant.star (Aug 13, 2014)

.
I don't have a solution, but I do know the problem well.

1. I simply spend a lot of time in post tweaking things until they're acceptable, if I can get them there. Frankly, at this point I'm leery of red flowers. Thanks, McG, that's a great tip about watching the red in histogram and going against the grain, so to speak.

2. I don't think the OP could have picked a worse lens -- in my experience the 85 1.2 LII is as bad as it gets. (It's a spectacular lens for what it does best, but it's the worst with this red issue.)

3. You could try a Fuji sensor. Working with the colors I get from my X100S has been a pleasure I seldom find with the 5D3. (And I shoot only RAW all the time.)


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## mrsfotografie (Aug 13, 2014)

K-amps said:


> I have often struggled with red objects in my 5d3. I wrote last year about it but did not get any replies. Yesterday while trying out my new 85 1.2 ii, I saw the same issue.
> 
> Red flowers come out in an over saturated red haze. The other colors seem saturated just fine, but the reds are over powered so much that the flowers lose detail.
> 
> ...



Looks like your auto white balance is thrown off by the amount of 'green' in the photo (greens look too blue). Try a WB setting of 'daylight' or 'cloudy'. I find this gives the best overall results if shooting in a 'green' environment.


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## sdsr (Aug 13, 2014)

ahsanford said:


> Excellent thread. This topic has vexed me on 5D3 flower work. The 5D3 has always been oversaturated on reds in my hands, and I seem to lose something when I try to rein in the reds in RAW processing.



You and others single out the 5DIII, but I'm pretty sure I've had the same problem with all the Canon cameras I own or have used (5DII and more recent models, both FF and APS-C). Is that true for you too? (I also find a related issue: even if I get reds to look right in LR, the process of exporting it to JPEG often screws up the results). For a while I more-or-less gave up photographing red flowers....

Other cameras I use/have used seem to treat red as a problem and understate it, at least when it's a component of other colours. The first time I photographed purple petunias with my Pentax K5 (I no longer own it), they came out almost pure blue, while my two Sonys (FF & APSC) do something similar, though not to the same extent (it may not be a Sony sensor thing - I'm pretty sure my OM-D doesn't do this, but it, like the K5, has a Sony sensor); so instead of taming reds I end up adding a bit of red to the purple tone in LR.


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## mackguyver (Aug 13, 2014)

A couple of follow ups on the replies: 

K-amps, that does look much better and I like Jon's version as well, with the sharpening.

As far as in-camera work goes, to get the best exposure (and negative/CR2 file) here's what I've had success doing:

1. Starting with the light, shoot in good, soft light, or use a 1 or 2 stop diffuser if the light is harsh. Extremes of dynamic range (DR) and saturated colors don't make for a good match. A reflector can be a nice fill as well.

To get a useful histogram, do the following:

2. Set the white balance manually - if outdoors, use Sun, Shade, or Cloudy, or calibrate to a white card. If indoors, calibrate to your lights.

3. Set the Picture Style to Neutral if outdoors, or Faithful if using lights at 5200K.

4. From here, I generally use Evaluative metering, but Spot works well, too, especially for single flowers.

5. Compose, focus, and take a shot with exposure compensation set to zero.

6. In Play back mode, press the Info button until you see both the R-G-B and Brightness histograms. The standard Brightness histogram is all but useless for flowers or other saturated colors.

7. Check for clipped (i.e. spiked at the far right or far left) channels.

8. If the shadows (left) side of the R, G, or B are clipped, raise the exposure in 1/3 EV increments and repeat the shot until the clipping is gone.

9. It's a good idea to have the Highlight Alert turned on as well to make sure you don't blow out the highlights. Sometimes you'll have to find a good balance, but don't be afraid to blow out the highlights a bit (1/3 to 1/2 EV) to (un)clip the shadows. 

This process should give you the best "digital negative" for post processing. If shooting JPEG or if you don't intend to do any post work, you might want to switch back to Standard or Landscape Picture Styles and drop the exposure compensation about 1/2 EV for more saturated colors.
---------
Also, I agree with distant.star on the 85L II - it's a portrait lens and tends to run warmer than many of the other Canon lenses. The 100L macro and 180L macro are the best I've used, but all of the macro lenses, from any manufacturer all take excellent photos.

For some reason this part didn't come up in the post above:

I'm also going to post a link to a gallery from one of my photo books that focuses on flowers:
In Bloom: Alfred B. Maclay Gardens State Park

If you have specific questions about how I took any of the photos, feel free to ask, and I'll leave you with the two flowers that I found most difficult to capture/process - both shot with the 5DIII and 180L macro:

China Pink (Dianthus chinensis) - trying to hold detail in this flower with the most intense red I've ever seen was tough:





'Rosea Superba' camellia (Camellia japonica) - the high dynamic range and pretty much pure red flower really challenged the sensor:


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## ahsanford (Aug 13, 2014)

mrsfotografie said:


> K-amps said:
> 
> 
> > I have often struggled with red objects in my 5d3. I wrote last year about it but did not get any replies. Yesterday while trying out my new 85 1.2 ii, I saw the same issue.
> ...



Good tip, but I've seen this even 'as shot' from my RAW processing in ACR. I clip on my reds all the time, and tweaking the WB isn't doing it for me. I end up having to toy with sliders for saturation and (a) waste time doing that and (b) never like the output when I do.

This also isn't limited to strong green backgrounds being a trigger. I've seen this happen on anything with a strong field of red in the frame regardless of background. I am talking about the RAW file and not about picture-style related saturation effects with onboard JPGs.

I'm not a pro. I like to keep my RAW processing time down to around 60-120s per shot, so color is one of the things I would prefer to get right in-camera and only need to run global saturation/luminance changes on in RAW processing. There has got to be a way to manange this in-camera before you clip. 

Mackguyver's suggestion (see page 2 of this thread) to use multi-color histo and avoid clipping_ the shadows_ is interesting and will be tried out. Is exposure only a global adjustment for auto exposure modes? Is there anyway to run auto-exposure independently for R, G and B? I'm getting a headache thinking about how that would _not_ work -- colors would shift, the metering may not work that way, etc. -- but please sate my curiosity and tell me anyway. 

- A


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## mackguyver (Aug 13, 2014)

ahsanford said:


> Is exposure only a global adjustment for auto exposure modes? Is there anyway to run auto-exposure independently for R, G and B? I'm getting a headache thinking about how that would _not_ work -- colors would shift, the metering may not work that way, etc. -- but please sate my curiosity and tell me anyway.
> 
> - A


Exposure is exposure (shutter speed vs. ISO speed vs. aperture), and affects all channels, and there is no way to adjust one over the other. They are not affected equally (but don't worry about trying to get into all of that as it's not helpful). 

The key things to understand are that RAW files are recorded in a logarithmic manner and the highlights contain a lot of detail (in terms of data) while the shadows do not. If you clip the highlights completely, the data is gone, but if you are near the clipping (i.e. Expose to the Right), it's easy to recover. If you clip the shadows, it's totally gone and if your photo is underexposed, the detail that you can recover is mushy and noisy. 

So the idea is to get the data towards the right without clipping any of the channels completely (though a few small "blinkies" are okay), especially with flowers or other saturated color objects. To do this, you MUST have an accurate histogram and White Balance has a huge effect on the accuracy. The closer the WB is to the conditions, the more accurate the histogram.

The resulting photo will look overexposed, but when you take it into a RAW processor and drop the exposure a stop or so, the photo will look perfect and you have lots of detail. Plus, the shadows (i.e. saturated colors here) will also have more detail and latitude in terms of exposure and color adjustments.


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## jrista (Aug 13, 2014)

mackguyver said:


> ahsanford said:
> 
> 
> > Is exposure only a global adjustment for auto exposure modes? Is there anyway to run auto-exposure independently for R, G and B? I'm getting a headache thinking about how that would _not_ work -- colors would shift, the metering may not work that way, etc. -- but please sate my curiosity and tell me anyway.
> ...



Actually, exposure is JUST related to shutter speed and aperture. ISO is not really an exposure factor...it simply amplifies the signal that the exposure creates. 



mackguyver said:


> The key things to understand are that RAW files are recorded in a logarithmic manner and the highlights contain a lot of detail (in terms of data) while the shadows do not. If you clip the highlights completely, the data is gone, but if you are near the clipping (i.e. Expose to the Right), it's easy to recover. If you clip the shadows, it's totally gone and if your photo is underexposed, the detail that you can recover is mushy and noisy.



This is also fundamentally wrong. RAW data is _*recorded*_ linear. _Trust me on this_...I do astrophotography, with DSLRs, and the linearity of the data is absolutely critical to being able to process the data correctly. In PixInsight, the processing procedurs are also usually split, between processing in linear mode, and processing in non-linear (post-stretch) mode. 

The non-linearity of what we see in a tool like Lightroom has everything to do with the tool, NOT the data. The data is linear, it is rendered to the screen via non-linear tone curves, and non-linear processing.



mackguyver said:


> So the idea is to get the data towards the right without clipping any of the channels completely (though a few small "blinkies" are okay), especially with flowers or other saturated color objects. To do this, you MUST have an accurate histogram and White Balance has a huge effect on the accuracy. The closer the WB is to the conditions, the more accurate the histogram.



You can expose to the right right up to the clipping point. Since the data IS linear in a RAW file, if you expose your red channel to 2^14 - 1, then your right at, but not over, the clipping point. You will not have lost anything.

The in-camera histograms are usually based off of JPEG thumbnails, which are actually highly inaccurate. This is why some people use UniWB, to change the per-channel weighting, and force the JPEGs that the histograms are based on to more accurately reflect the real dynamic range and clipping point of each channel. 

Without UniWB, you can usually expose a little more than the in-camera histogram and "blinkies" would lead you to believe.



mackguyver said:


> The resulting photo will look overexposed, but when you take it into a RAW processor and drop the exposure a stop or so, the photo will look perfect and you have lots of detail. Plus, the shadows (i.e. saturated colors here) will also have more detail and latitude in terms of exposure and color adjustments.



There is one caveat...there is a very slight non-linearity to the response of the silicon in the sensor itself. That usually results in the uppermost levels near the clipping point tapering off in a small shoulder. It's best not to push exposure right up to the limit...i.e. 2^14-1. You want to keep your maximum levels just a little lower than that...2^14-10 or so is best. Otherwise, you'll notice that the highlights in those regions end up normalizing, becoming gray. You also start noticing very slight color shifts when you recover highlights that are right near the clipping point, as the processing algorithms are non-linear, and they will affect those upper upper highlights more than any other part of the signal.

Dropping the exposure by a stop or two is extreme. You want to ETTR, to maximize your use of the sensor's DR, but you don't want to push it too far. I'd say once you figure out where your real clipping point is, pull back by a third of a stop.


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## ahsanford (Aug 13, 2014)

Annnnnnd this is why I'm not a pro. 

Mackguyver: ETTR is not new to me at all, I've been doing that for some time. That principal is well in-hand for me.

But if I understood your and Jrista's posts correctly, I just learned that my in-camera WB _does affect my RAW files_ due to its effect on metering. That's a *big* deal for me, as I shoot everything in AWB and JPG+RAW, and I simply correct the white balance in my keeper RAW files.

So now I _do_ need to sweat my WB. I always thought that RAW alleviated me of that burden and I just focused on a general (non-color-specific) histo. 

- A


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## mackguyver (Aug 13, 2014)

ahsanford said:


> Annnnnnd this is why I'm not a pro.
> 
> Mackguyver: ETTR is not new to me at all, I've been doing that for some time. That principal is well in-hand for me.
> 
> ...


Sorry for the confusion, but fortunately this is a pretty simple one. For most things, auto WB is okay and gives a pretty good histogram...but if you're shooting deeply saturated colors, during golden hour or blue hour, snow, under indoor lighting, or anywhere else that throws the WB off significantly, it will affect the histogram, making ETTR and other exposure tweaks hard to see in the histogram. 

I leave my histogram on the general Brightness view most of the time, but for deeply saturated colors, the general Brightness histogram hides the clipped color channels because it averages all three channels and if the red channel is near 0, then 0 + 255 + 255 / = 170, which looks 2/3 of the way up, but not clipped.

Takeaway: most of the time, Auto WB (or Sunlight if outdoors) works pretty well, but for situations that throw it off, manual WB is best, and Custom WB is very best for critical (i.e. paid) shoots, at least for a good histogram.


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## mrsfotografie (Aug 13, 2014)

ahsanford said:


> Annnnnnd this is why I'm not a pro.
> 
> Mackguyver: ETTR is not new to me at all, I've been doing that for some time. That principal is well in-hand for me.
> 
> ...



Absolutely, the in-camera WB has an effect on exposure. Also, I find the immediate results on the camera screen to give a better evaluation of what the end result will look like. I shoot AWB most of the time if there is enough color variation in the scene but in natural environments I find an approximation using cloudy/daylight/shade works best. That approximation is good enough to tweak in post if needed.

I am technical about my photography but don't want to turn it into a science. So a few clipped channels here and there are ok with me as long as the overall result is to my liking.

FWIW I'll join the red flower post ;D

Here's one shot with my NEX-6 and a Canon 50mm f/3.5 FL Macro (from the 60's).


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## mackguyver (Aug 13, 2014)

mrsfotografie said:


> Absolutely, the in-camera WB has an effect on exposure.


Nice photo MRS! I would like to clarify what you said above - it has an effect on the exposure of JPEGs and histograms, but zero affect on the exposure itself in RAW, and it does not affect the metering.


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## mrsfotografie (Aug 13, 2014)

mackguyver said:


> mrsfotografie said:
> 
> 
> > Absolutely, the in-camera WB has an effect on exposure.
> ...



Actually yes you're right but because it affects the histogram I think it better helps to evaluate if exposure is correct based om the output/clipping of the individual channels in the histogram. I always have my histogram showing in image review, set to RGB. In fact. being able to see the histogram is almost more important than being able to see the shots themselves.

Maybe it's the correct exposure for dynamic range per channel that counts, if something like that actually exists.


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## jrista (Aug 13, 2014)

ahsanford said:


> Annnnnnd this is why I'm not a pro.
> 
> Mackguyver: ETTR is not new to me at all, I've been doing that for some time. That principal is well in-hand for me.
> 
> ...



Yes, metering can affect the exposure, especially in cameras that use some kind of color metering (which includes most of Canon's higher end models, most of Nikon's cameras, etc.) Color metering, especially metering that aims to prevent clipping, can definitely result in underexposure of one or two channels, while another is right at the limit. Auto WB can help with that, however it often results in inconsistent white balance frame to frame, so manually picking a good WB setting (and that does not necessarily mean using one of the built-ins...you can often choose by Kelvin or simply create a custom profile from a sample shot of a scene) is often critical to getting balanced color.


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## DominoDude (Aug 13, 2014)

Sorry that I'm not of much help regarding the colours on the 5D Mk III and what it looks like in Lr, but from a tip that I've gotten regarding histograms and the jpg you can see on the screen of your cameras, it will be easier to see the correct balance between colours with a Picture Style set to Faithful (or Neutral).

I have no idea if Lr ignores that extra layer of information from the Picture Style while rendering files from RAW, or if gets to be some kind of starting point for the balance of colours in Lr.

If this doesn't apply to you and your shooting, then just ignore my mumbling...


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## mackguyver (Aug 13, 2014)

DominoDude said:


> Sorry that I'm not of much help regarding the colours on the 5D Mk III and what it looks like in Lr, but from a tip that I've gotten regarding histograms and the jpg you can see on the screen of your cameras, it will be easier to see the correct balance between colours with a Picture Style set to Faithful (or Neutral).
> 
> I have no idea if Lr ignores that extra layer of information from the Picture Style while rendering files from RAW, or if gets to be some kind of starting point for the balance of colours in Lr.
> 
> If this doesn't apply to you and your shooting, then just ignore my mumbling...


DominoDude - FYI, Neutral is best unless you're under studio lights as Faithful is designed for 5200K lighting, according the Canon's manuals...and LR uses it's own profiles, but DPP uses the Canon ones, needless to say...


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## DominoDude (Aug 13, 2014)

Ok great! Thanks for clarifying that, Mackguyver! Then that can't be the reason for hiccups with colour in Lr.


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## K-amps (Aug 13, 2014)

Thank you all, especially Jon and McG.

Nice shot Mrs.... only that on my monitor, the flower shows as a deep burnt orange, not red ;D


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## lexptr (Aug 13, 2014)

This exact problem with reds was shocked me when I first time started to use DSLR. Terrible overexposed reds when photographed in a sunny day. It helped to use compensation, but then the image was generally underexposed. I used jpegs those days, but after I tried to shoot jpeg+raw, I figured out, that while jpegs are bad-red, raws had no problem. I didn't dig too much, just stopped to use in-camera jpeg. Anyway I get better results via importing raws in Lightroom.


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## jrista (Aug 13, 2014)

K-amps said:


> Thank you all, especially Jon and McG.
> 
> Nice shot Mrs.... only that on my monitor, the flower shows as a deep burnt orange, not red ;D



Same here. That looks like a some kind of Poppy, and they are usually more orange than red.


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## mackguyver (Aug 13, 2014)

jrista said:


> K-amps said:
> 
> 
> > Thank you all, especially Jon and McG.
> ...


+1 - I'm on my nice calibrated monitor now, and while I agree mostly, it's very much red in the center and orange on the outer petals. It's a beautiful flower.


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## risc32 (Aug 13, 2014)

it's orange here on my crappy monitor, nice shot though.


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## mb66energy (Aug 14, 2014)

mackguyver said:


> I can't help you with the science of it all, but I wouldn't recommend filters with digital. Canon's sensors tend to be slightly biased toward saturated reds and the way I shoot flowers is to make sure I'm in the RGB Histogram mode for image review. If I see clipping in any of the channels, particularly on the shadow side, I will increase or reduce the exposure compensation to get a good exposure. In post, the single best tool I've found to process flower photos is DxO. It has a "Protect Saturated Colors" tool (see #4 towards the bottom of this tutorial page) specifically for this situation. The auto mode is a little too aggressive, but the slider works extremely well. You can do similar things in PS/LR with ACR, but it's not as simple. DxO's tool makes it so easy.



+1 for DxO's quality handling of oversaturated colors. 

I would like to give you 4 comparisons between the "original raw" (whatever that means) and the changed colors.

Image 1: RAW untouched by DxO

Image 2: RAW corrected with the "Protect Saturated Colors"-slider - automatically determined by DxO

Image 3: RAW corrected manually by sliding the color temperature from approx. 5200K -> 3200K (This destroys the afternoon light in the green vegetation.) Have seen that I used a similar setting with DPP 2 years ago - 5200K -> 3800K

Image 4: RAW corrected manually by changing the color temperature from 5200K -> 4200K to preserve the "afternoon cast" but reduced the max. intensity of the reds (right toolbar, graph below)

Image 2-4 show good color reproduction on my monitor (non calibrated EIZO S2100) and this species of poppies is almost RED!


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## privatebydesign (Aug 14, 2014)

Jim Saunders gave far and away the most important advice in the first answer on the thread, camera calibration is the key to troublesome colours.

Take a couple of minutes to do that and even the most difficult colours are just a click away. Different RAW converters are just using different calibration profiles, none of which are as accurate as a custom one.


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## nvsravank (Aug 14, 2014)

Reds are the first color that gets saturated. Try taking the photo of a red rose and you will understand what i am saying. The best thing that i like to do is to actually underexpose the photo by a stop or two and combine it with a regularly exposed photo and do a bit of HDR magic to get it to look real life.
This gets some of the texture back into the photo without making the photo look dull with a very dull red.

This might be hard to do in your example since the red most probably are all clipping out.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Aug 14, 2014)

It's not that Canon sensors can't handle red. It's that sRGB can't handle intense colors and even the simple red rose is far behind sRGB. All the stuff about Canon sensors can't handle red or digital cameras can't handle red is nothing but old wives tales.

I tried to spread the gospel of wide gamut, but always end up with a gang of Luddites slamming me and telling me that wide gamut is just marketing nonsense and everyone knows you have to use sRGB or can only post in sRGB etc. etc.

But it's 95% of the time 99% of the time simply a gamut clipping issue. Many flowers, certain clouds bands and parts of sunsets, some fall foliage, some tropical waters, some emeralds and other such gems, some parts of the plumage on some birds, some really bright clothing and cars, etc. is simply too intense for sRGB gamut.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Aug 14, 2014)

K-amps said:


> Tks guys for the responses.
> 
> Jon, I did try the per channel red.... but it did not fix the issue, just washed out the red. In real life the flower has more red chroma, and I can match it on screen, but then all details are washed out.... it's not that easy of a fix... moreover I'd like a perm fix rather than spending hours everytime I shoot red.



The only perm solution is to buy the widest gamut monitor you can find, run it in native gamut (NOT AdobeRGB, although even this would do you much better for reds (recall that the max 2D plot slice that makes it appear to have the same reds as sRGB gives a false impression, look at the full 3D gamut) but why clip off what the monitor can do since it can do more blue-greens, more purples, more reds and oranges than AdobeRGB) mode, and edit photo in ProphotoRGB 16bits. Even then some clipping will occur, but it will definitely be less than viewing in sRGB conditions.

Problems like these are why the display industry has set a hoped for target of no more small gamut displays after 2018, they want everything to be ultra wide gamut after that.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Aug 14, 2014)

FEBS said:


> rs said:
> 
> 
> > It can only write jpegs in those colour spaces. Raw files are taken and stored with the only colour space constraints being that of the sensor itself. The raw converter will then apply a colour space which may or may not introduce further gamut restrictions.
> ...



The embedded jpg preview in those RAWs is stored in AdobeRGB so it tags on the a_ (also it probably makes it easier to keep the files together if you shot RAW+JPG).


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## jrista (Aug 14, 2014)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> K-amps said:
> 
> 
> > Tks guys for the responses.
> ...



Yeah, I kind of skipped past screen gamut, but my screen does pretty well in that area (I think it's 97% AdobeRGB). I guess it is entirely possible that the reds I'm seeing on my screen still look overly saturated on K-amps screen. It is important to use a properly calibrated screen, and to perform your processing work in the widest gamut possible until you have good reason to convert to a smaller gamut.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Aug 14, 2014)

I have some shots of flowers and leaves that I saved and posted as ProphotoRGB and when viewed on a regular gamut monitor you see large flat spots of not much detail and some sunset shots where some of the glowing bands just disappear and look blended in with the other cloud bands. Pop back over to wide gamut monitor and the detail in the flowers/leaves and glowing sunset bands are back. Same with even a Pileated Woodpecker. The crest may sometimes lose detail and look flat or fuzzy but pop to wide gamut and it's rich glowing scarlet with full details instead of flat, fuzzy orange-red.

You can bring the details back and stick with sRGB but only by doing some combo of making the area too dim, shifting to the wrong color shade, or undersaturated.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Aug 14, 2014)

Almost anything under super intense golden hour sunlight also tends to clip sRGB.


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## privatebydesign (Aug 14, 2014)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> I have some shots of flowers and leaves that I saved and posted as ProphotoRGB and when viewed on a regular gamut monitor you see large flat spots of not much detail and some sunset shots where some of the glowing bands just disappear and look blended in with the other cloud bands. Pop back over to wide gamut monitor and the detail in the flowers/leaves and glowing sunset bands are back. Same with even a Pileated Woodpecker. The crest may sometimes lose detail and look flat or fuzzy but pop to wide gamut and it's rich glowing scarlet with full details instead of flat, fuzzy orange-red.
> 
> You can bring the details back and stick with sRGB but only by doing some combo of making the area too dim, shifting to the wrong color shade, or undersaturated.


You need to change your rendering intent from Absolute Colormetric to Perceptual or Relative Colormetric to avoid that.


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## mrsfotografie (Aug 14, 2014)

mackguyver said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > K-amps said:
> ...





risc32 said:


> it's orange here on my crappy monitor, nice shot though.



Of course all of you are correct - it's a deep orange, not red - a good representation of the actual color of the flower, but then it was also shot with a NEX-6 so yeah, it may not be such a good example of 5DMkIII reds ;D

Thanks for all the nice comments by the way - I feel like I'm floating on flowers


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Aug 14, 2014)

privatebydesign said:


> LetTheRightLensIn said:
> 
> 
> > I have some shots of flowers and leaves that I saved and posted as ProphotoRGB and when viewed on a regular gamut monitor you see large flat spots of not much detail and some sunset shots where some of the glowing bands just disappear and look blended in with the other cloud bands. Pop back over to wide gamut monitor and the detail in the flowers/leaves and glowing sunset bands are back. Same with even a Pileated Woodpecker. The crest may sometimes lose detail and look flat or fuzzy but pop to wide gamut and it's rich glowing scarlet with full details instead of flat, fuzzy orange-red.
> ...



I have it on the default Relative.

The special intents don't seem to do anything unless you tell it to apply sRGB v4 ICC profile, since the v2 ones don't have a cooked in Perceptual, etc.

But that is all besides the point, that doesn't avoid it the last stuff I mentioned, it may prevent loss of detail to varying degrees, but as I said, then you either suffer from too dim, shifted to the wrong color shade or undersaturation.

And I've found that the cooked in Perceptual intent for srgb v4 ICC often does a poor job IMO and looks worse than relative or absolute or mess around with it yourself.


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## privatebydesign (Aug 14, 2014)

But if nothing is capable of reproducing the "original" colours, which is true in very saturated flowers (not the camera or screen or printer ink), then all we can ever hope for is the best realistic interpretation and that has to include the detail, which we can accurately replicate if not the most saturated of the colours. If Perceptual is blocking up you have other issues.

Besides, colour is not as static a concept as we think, besides the "is red to me red to you?" unprovable conundrum, any reproduction is limited by what light is either shining on it, for a print, or out of it for a screen.

Best practice is to shoot with a color checker card and create your own profile, everything else is just guessing and we are notoriously unreliable at that, then post process for detail. It isn't difficult or time consuming, it just takes discipline.


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## mackguyver (Aug 14, 2014)

privatebydesign said:


> But if nothing is capable of reproducing the "original" colours, which is true in very saturated flowers (not the camera or screen or printer ink), then all we can ever hope for is the best realistic interpretation and that has to include the detail, which we can accurately replicate if not the most saturated of the colours. If Perceptual is blocking up you have other issues.
> 
> Besides, colour is not as static a concept as we think, besides the "is red to me red to you?" unprovable conundrum, any reproduction is limited by what light is either shining on it, for a print, or out of it for a screen.
> 
> Best practice is to shoot with a color checker card and create your own profile, everything else is just guessing and we are notoriously unreliable at that, then post process for detail. It isn't difficult or time consuming, it just takes discipline.


You are quite right about colors being a matter of perception. Between reflective & transmissive mediums and individual vision, it's impossible to produce perfect accuracy. I feel that color management has come a very long way and gotten to the point where we can get close, but for me I follow the 80/20 rule. For most of my work, I use a calibrated wide gamut monitor and AdobeRGB color space and adjust to taste. That gets me close and really only represents what I believe the colors to be. For color-critical work (I shoot art reproductions and products occasionally), I build a profile with my Passport ColorChecker and shoot under controlled lighting and work hard to produce accurate colors. Even then, the final product generally depends on who my client uses for printing or their website (typically an ad agency). If they have me print, I generally use Bay Photo or Aspen Creek, and use their latest profiles. In the end, I've never had a print come out perfectly, but it's always been so close that no one (other than me) has ever noticed.

On a side note, the biggest shock to me when I started using a wide gamut monitor was white balance. In the past, subtle differences (of say 100K) had never bothered me, but suddenly I became very sensitive to them.


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