The last time I brought this up on another photography forum, it sparked a debate. But here goes...
Color only exists in your mind. The real world does not actually have color. Our brains invent it. Your eye has "cones" which are senstivie to specific wavelengths of light and your brain manufacturers an image based on the wavelengths being detected and you see it as "color".
Even with film, photographers would often select film specifically because of how it renders color. When I shot weddings, I always selected Kodak VPS film because VPS rendered subdued and softened tones that was very beautiful at soften the look of the bride, the flowers, etc. If I want to portray an emotion of soft, gentile beauty, then I tend to want to subdue and soften the colors. If I want to create an image to convey a feeling of excitment, high-energy, etc. then I want strong punchy color. Back the film days we handled this by film selection and processing methods. But today you can get this by changing a setting on your camera.
Your camera has something called "picture style" and you can use this to select natural/faithful color or you can use it to create subdued hues, saturated hues, or even perform color substitutions.
I have seen similar comparisons to the example you posted and I find that Canon's default settings are more true/faithful to the level of color my eye sees in the real world (which is what I want the camera to do). I have just occasinoally pulled an image out of the camera wherein I was expecting to see stronger colors -- the image did not match up with my "photographic vision" for a shot. I'd go back and evaluate the actual location I used and I'd realize... the grass actually IS faded. The greens actually were NOT lush. There was more "brown" and dullness in the scene than I remembered. The camera was being true.
Of course if want things to look more lush, I can always boost saturation. If you use a circular polarizing filter (and rotate the filter on your lens until it applies the amount of polarization that you want) you get a saturating effect (technically it reduces reflections, but this has the effect of boosting perceived saturation) and of course you can always saturate using your photo editor. Good editors usually have two adjustments... one is "saturation" which is flat, across the board color saturation. The other is "vibrance". Vibrance is the same as saturation except it tries to protect hues associated with skin tones. This lets you saturate a scene containing people without saturating their skin to the point that they resemble a tangerine color. (really good photo editors allow you to adjust saturation levels on any color hue you want.)
The bottom line is: you are in control. You can tell the camera to boost saturation either at the time of capture (if shooting JPEG) or in post-processing on your computer after the image is captured.
Here's quick sheet on Canon's Picture Style choices.
http://www.learn.usa.canon.com/app/pdfs/quickguides/CDLC_PictureStyles_QuickGuide.pdf
Also you can create your own custom Picture Styles and there's even a Picture Style editor (software that comes with the camera) that allows you to create your own named picture styles which you can then load into the camera.
Your camera is fairly sophisticated... if you want a saturated look, it's easily achieved.
Tim Campbell
5D III, 5D IV, 60Da
