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Color Problem with 5D Mark 3

Dusty87
Contributor

Hello!

New member here, so bear with me.

I am a portrait photographer, and recently upgraded from a 5D Mark 2 to a 5D Mark 3.. Despite advice from a friend, I took the Mark 3 to a shoot without practicing first. As as I shot, I was looking at the LCD playback screen, and thought they all looked wonderful. But once I got home, I quickly realized that I have a problem. I was not quite prepared for the drastic difference in color between the 2 and the 3. When I shot with my Mark 2, I never had an issue with color... and if I did, it was user error. But the color is awful in the images that I made with the new Mark 3.

 

I have Googled until my fingers were numb, so I joined the forum just so I could ask... Is there any way to correct this IN-CAMERA?!?! (And if not, what is the easiest way to correct the problem for any & all future RAW files that I shoot?)

 

I have tried changing picture styles. I have tried changing the Kelvin settings.. No matter what I do, the color looks "off". Please help me!!

I have attached some links to examples from the shoot. And while I'm well aware that there are probably "other" technical problems with the images, I ask that you only look at the image color(s) as the problem. (For what it's worth.. I know the location is not the issue, because I shot in the very same location with my Mark 2, and the colors were lovely. But in the photos below, as you'll see, there's an over-abundance of green.)

https://ibb.co/eYyNGk
https://ibb.co/hN6W95

 

 

Image details.. 6850 Kelvin (which, btw, is not what it said in-camera as I was shooting) with +5 magenta 
And yes, I shot these in RAW.


Thanks for any and all advice/tips/suggestions you might have!

 

Best,

-Dusty

97 REPLIES 97


@kacprek wrote:

Can you describe eduardohferraz your problem with Canon 5D mark iii more acurate please?


I suggest that you start a new thread for your issue.  

No one takes perfect pictures 100% of the time.  I think you simply need more practice and experience.

--------------------------------------------------------
"The right mouse button is your friend."

I simply have attached myself to this thread because I didn't wanted to describe the problems all over again, but perhaps I should to start a new one


@kacprek wrote:
I simply have attached myself to this thread because I didn't wanted to describe the problems all over again, but perhaps I should to start a new one

Starting a different thread isn't going to solve anything. The issue is that the other 5D3 users in the forum (and there are quite a few of us) haven't experienced your problem and don't know how to reproduce it. We (or at least I) think you are mis-handling your white-balance settings and that there is probably nothing wrong with your camera. If, at this point, you still don't agree, you're probably going to have to send the camera to Canon for evaluation. Without a collection of your RAW files to work with (which most of us wouldn't have time to spend on anyway), there's not a lot more we can do.

Bob
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania USA

You may not like this answer but it is the correct one.

 

"You need to know, you can not view a Raw file.  It has to be converted into something else.  A tiff or probably more likely a jpg. The conversion software doesn't know how to do this so it relies on the tag file, metadata, embedded in the Raw file.  In other words it reads your camera settings and that is the starting point. ... "

 

Even using two different converters, say DPP4 vs LR, you will get two different renditions.  In other words they won't look the same.  I agree with Robert entirely, lack of experience in either the camera or the post editor is most likely the reason.  You only other choice is to send it to Canon, again like Robert suggests, for a C&C.

 

Again quoting Robert, no one gets 100%.  Not even me!  Smiley Wink

 

 

EB
EOS 1DX and 1D Mk IV and less lenses then before!


@ebiggs1 wrote:

You may not like this answer but it is the correct one.

 

"You need to know, you can not view a Raw file.  It has to be converted into something else.  A tiff or probably more likely a jpg. The conversion software doesn't know how to do this so it relies on the tag file, metadata, embedded in the Raw file.  In other words it reads your camera settings and that is the starting point. ... "  


I thought that every conversion software uses and relies on its own camera profiles rather than meta tags, the only excpetion is white balance maybe. Although in spite of that everybody is saying you can set any white balance in post processing without missing anything, I have other experiences anyway. If I set wrong white balance for exemple "sunny-daylight" color temperature and shoot the photo in shadowed place, I can do nothing in post processing because the colors will be lost for myself. I can try to set white balance temperature sliders but can't obtain right colors in this case. The example is below.

 

The Raw file as the Capture One see it, converted to jpg:

_MGL3822_one_raw.jpg

 

 And the tweaked version by me, where the white balance was set from the lump of the bright pice of model shorts and corrected a bit. The final colors I really don't like at all. I had to decrease the color saturation -10 because there was huge saturation, and I added a little bit the blue color in shadows as well.
_MGL3822_one.jpg

 


@ebiggs1 wrote:

 

 

Even using two different converters, say DPP4 vs LR, you will get two different renditions.  In other words they won't look the same. 


I know that, it is because diffrent converters use diffrent demosaic technik.

 


@ebiggs1 wrote: 

 I agree with Robert entirely, lack of experience in either the camera or the post editor is most likely the reason.


That's why I need some help and want to find a solution for me 😉

Your monitor colors are completely off. Either that or your color preference is very different from most of us...the top one looks perfect to me...I wouldn't even bother to correct anything.  Your revised version is totally green and blue...horrible.

================================================
Diverhank's photos on Flickr

Thanks for you opinion 🙂 But in the real world the hedge was not so green yellow as on the first photo and the white balance in camera is set to sunny day as I said although I was shooting in shadowed place. Maybe your right the picture is to much green and blueish now but this is wb just from the picker. What kind of display do you use to watch my photos?

In the top photo the skin tones are realistic, the bottom one clearly has a green tint to the model's skin.

 

I am just using a Samsung monitor with no special profiling.

 

And it is not an opinion, it is a fact.

 

(Maybe you can use the color tool to look at the color values in the white of her eyes - the only neutral tone I can see on the image.)


@kacprek wrote:
Thanks for you opinion 🙂 But in the real world the hedge was not so green yellow as on the first photo and the white balance in camera is set to sunny day as I said although I was shooting in shadowed place. Maybe your right the picture is to much green and blueish now but this is wb just from the picker. What kind of display do you use to watch my photos?

When using the picker to set white balance, it's important to find something that is meant to be "neutral" in real life.  Neutral means the amount of cyan, magenta, and yellow are perfectly equal such that the result is a perfect "gray" with no color cast.

 

Typically you use something that is unquestionably known to be a perfect neutral "gray" such as a photographic gray card that can used as the target for the picker (it only needs to be shown in one reference frame).  

 

If you try to just pick something in the scene, often the object isn't truely color neutral and you can get poor results.  Unfortunately there's really nothing suitable to use as a white-balance picker target in that image.

 

While technially "white" can be used for white balance (e.g. a sheet of white printer paper)... white is easy to over-expose and if that happens, you can get the illusion of having balance because one or more color channels may have clipped.  A middle-gray target card is preferred because it's unlikely to be clipped if using a correct exposure.

 

But I do agree with diverhank in that I suspect your monitor is probably not correctly color-calibrated.  I use calibrated displays (via an X-Rite "ColorMunki") and the colors in your model on the adjusted image are quite strongly green (the model has skin with a rather strong green color cast -- making her appear very sickly.) 

 

Don't feel badly... I made the same mistake myself.

 

Before I bought a calibration tool to fix my display, I used to think it was accurate ... but everyone else would comment that things had a rather strong orange color cast.  I thought they were just being fussy.  One day someone showed me one of my images (from my Flickr account) displayed on his monitor.  It was very strongly tangerine orange.

 

I tried some self-calibration techniques (being too cheap to buy the tool).  That didn't work.  I finally broke down and brought the tool to calibrate my displays and I'm much happier for it.  Finally colors are bang-on accurate.

 

I think you'll really be amazed at the results (and much happier) once you get your displays properly color calibrated.  

 

There are less-expensive versions of color calibration tools that only calibrate monitors.  There are more expensive versions that can also calibrate printers, projectors, scanners, and other products that require color accuracy.  

 

If you were shooting products where color accuracy is important (e.g. fashioin), there are calibration tools that can sample the color of fabric and then match that to the output to guarantee that product photos show bang-on accurate color.

 

Those calibration tools cost a little more than the tools that only calibrate monitors.

 

X-Rite and DataColor are the two big names in color calibration tools.

 

Tim Campbell
5D III, 5D IV, 60Da

"When using the picker to set white balance, it's important to find something that is meant to be "neutral" in real life."

 

Maybe this will help and make it more clear.

grayscale.jpg

 

In PS select the curves adjustment layer. Use the color picker and if it hovers over a spot in your photo that puts a dot right in the center of the curve, it is neutral gray. Almost all photos will have something like this or something very close.  With experience and time you will be able to just see these places and the selection will become easy. After you do this edit, you can do the others to make it a great photograph.

EB
EOS 1DX and 1D Mk IV and less lenses then before!
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