EOS R6 low light photos don't match between camera and computer

[katskyephoto]

Hi! I recently switched from the Mark iv to the R6 for a lot of reasons but mainly for the ability to shoot in low light better. I have the 28-70 lens that I keep on the majority of the time. I feel a little stuck because I shoot in low light and shoot in Kelvin and when I look at the screen the photos look great, and when I see them on my computer they aren't that sharp, out of focus or really soft. Plus, on my computer the photos are so so warm (from indoor lighting, so lots of ambient light), even though I was at around 4500 kelvin and they don't look that warm on my camera. I feel so confident taking the photos but then they look horrible on my computer and it's hard to save them. Is this common for the mirrorless cameras? I feel like the situations I'm in indoors, this camera should be able to handle fine but I feel like it's just not and it's been frustrating! Hopefully this all makes sense! Feel free to ask more questions if I need to be more specific 

[katskyephoto]

The difference is so drastic from the photo I see in camera to what it looks like in post that I would assume it would match! It's not like it's just a little off, it's a huge difference. And only for ambient lighting, never any outdoor photos or natural light inside photos

[Anonymous]

"The difference is so drastic from the photo I see in camera to what it looks like in post that I would assume it would match! It's not like it's just a little off, it's a huge difference."

Then either your white balance setting in the camera is wrong or your computer monitor is not color calibrated correctly or you need to work more with your RAW editing software.

[rs-eos]

I would recommend working with either auto white balance (AWB) or using the appropriate presets.  e.g. if you're indoors and have warm lighting (old incandescent or warm LED, etc), use the lightbulb (tungsten) preset.  For outdoors in full sun, choose the sun preset, etc.

After you get much more familiar with various lighting conditions, then perhaps explore working with Kelvin values should that lead to better results.

Also, as others have brought up, if your monitor is somehow really skewed in its settings, then you won't want to edit any photos under that condition.

Here's what I personally do for my setup:

• Color calibrated monitor (Mac Studio these days with Studio Display).
• Capture images in RAW.
• For crucial color reproduction, I capture a Datacolor color chart in one of my photos every single time I'm in a new lighting condition.   When shooting indoors with flash only (no ambient), and I'm not adding any gels, I just need to capture one image of the color chart.  Then in Lightroom, I follow the Datacolor process for applying adjustments.  Other brands of color charts will have different processes to follow.

[katskyephoto]

Thanks so much for taking the time to helping me out! I'm fully aware of my camera and lighting situations and presets/editing in post. I've been in the business 11 years so I have everything pretty dialed in, which is why this is so frustrating! I've never come across this before, so I think I might need to color calibrate my monitor or work with my white balance setting in my camera and see if anything helps. I've had photos from indoor situations look great on my camera and then more warm on my computer, but not to this degree. So I'm able to edit them just fine by cooling them a ton, but I'd rather not have to do that every time and hopefully figure out the problem! So I appreciate your feedback and I'll be looking into my monitor and see if it's something with the color calibration! 

[rs-eos]

Just be careful if doing extreme editing.  If your monitor is really out-of-whack, you're going to end up with photos that won't be good.  This is why a color chart can be really handy.  If a reference image isn't showing up correctly on your monitor, it will be the monitor that needs to be adjusted.

[katskyephoto]

sounds great! Thanks so much! I don't seem to have problems with any other photos, just the indoor lighting ones. And once I edit and export, the photos are all what my monitor shows. So I'm not sure if my monitor is actually out of whack or not, considering it's not an overall problem on all of my photos, just the indoor lighting ones

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

The Auto White Balance W (AWBW) setting in the camera works well to eliminate the yellowish tint (or any off-color tint) in photos. I have a EOS 5D MkIV and use that setting a lot. 

[katskyephoto]

It totally did! I just look some photos around my desk and the AWBW eliminated all the yellowish tint. I also took some in Kelvin at 4800K and it was way warmer than the AWBW. It's always the simplest fixes that work! I just haven't used AWBW in so long and the photos I take with kelvin always look fine in camera, but now that I'm seeing the difference, there is for sure a difference. Now I just need to work on why my photos are super great in indoor situations where I feel like it shouldn't be struggling so much. I really appreciate you taking the time to help!

[Anonymous]

Glad that it works for you as well as it works for me. Canon's AWBW is a great improvement over AWB in my opinion.