Anyone get out for any Fall photography yet?

[maverick]

I like #3, but the snow in 2, and especially 1 has to much of a cyan cast in
it for my taste.

[John Dittli]

Wow! Awesome. Now I know why I am still a lowly amateur and others are professionals.

I've seen your site, you've got nice work. Your just too smart to take something fun and ruin it by making it work!

JD

[mountaineer]

Maverick, I see absolutely no cyan cast on the snow in either one of those shots.

[John Dittli]

I like #3, but the snow in 2, and especially 1 has to much of a cyan cast in
it for my taste.

Hey Mav

Good eye, I absolutely agree. These images are pretty much straight out of the camera (converted to jpg w/minor tweaking in Preview). Since I post process all my images I leave my camera WB on daylight and take care of color shifts later.

My wife, boss and cataloger extraordinaire, doesn't allow me to PS any images until she has metadata and numbered, screws up the workflow. I get in trouble for just posting them, so I have to be sneaky.

So sometimes I get excited with new work and post it before I should. I'll fix the cyan in the final tiff. Thanks for the input.

JD

[mountaineer]

Hmmmm...maybe I am colorblind.

[John Dittli]

Well, I don't know. I think it's "acceptable", snow is afterall a bit blue in the shade. But if you were to open that image in PS and run the info wand over the snow I think it would favor cyan. If it was side by side with white I think it would be more noticeable. I do like my snow pretty white even in the shade.

John

[mountaineer]

How did it look to your eye when you took the shot? I would venture to say that it looked a little gray then, therefore, any "cyan cast" would be more accurate.

[John Dittli]

It was morning, shade and coooold! So, yes it was cool in color temp as well. What it actually looked like at this point would be rather subjective. Of course any reproduction of color is subjective. I shoot in raw which leaves colors dull and contrast weak, so anything that happens in post processing is my interpretation.

Had I been shooting this in film I surely would have used an 81A or more likely an 812 to warm the overall cast.

To make the image presentable on the fly I simply sent it to email (jpeg) through iview, then increased saturation in Preview (mac). Preview doesn't have anything but a full spectrum sat. slider so increasing the yellows also saturates the blues and any other color for that matter.

John

[SSSdave]

Amused by the discussion about the cyan snow.

I''ll make some general web comments. The web is awash in posted images that are off in color. Uncalibrated digital cameras both compact and DSLR *(including RAW) tend to have only modest color accuracy because users have little interest in natural color so manufacturers have little incentiven to bother, but rather seek contrasty saturated striking color in order to impress other web viewers. Additionally even most photographers have never bothered to carefully study the color of natural elements in natural light so tend to have little developed mediocre ability to tell what is and what is not natural. And its impossible to have to "recall" hours or days later what one had actual captured so with digital cameras it all becomes "in one's mind's eye" aka "play with the Photoshop sliders". At least with some films like EPN100, Provia, Astia, or even the the old Kodachrome, color captured is reasonably accurate, thus photogs of the previous generation could learn from their own body of work. For those who wish to start understanding light and color, a good paperback on natural color and cheap at Amazon is M. Minnaert's classic "The nature of Light & Color in the open air".

For evaluating color on web posted images, a very useful tool is a "color picker" that can sample pixels of anything displayed on one's desktop including that snow. Even on serious photog boards it is occasionally laughable to come across threads where posters go on and on disputing some color when one mouse click could have instantly settled whatever issue. There are dozens of freeware aps one can download that include that functiion that can sample anything displayed on one's screen. I would highly recommend mwsnap that is mainly a small screen capture tool that keeps out of the way on one's desktop but also has a simply picker. In order to be able to reasonably evaluate what is on one's screen, calibrating one's monitor with a colorimter or spectrophotometer puck with sw is of course another necessity.

David
http://www.davidsenesac.com/david_philosophy1.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[John Dittli]

Hi David

Yes, I stuck with Kodachrome well into the age of Velvia much to my detriment. I refused to accept the warm color palate. I was finally convinced to shoot Velvia when it was what the editors wanted.

Of course the films you mention would only be "accurate" with a light source close to 5500K. The scene in mention shot on any of those films would render a cyan cast due to the fact that the light source was on the cooler side of the spectrum; hence the need (personal preference) of a warming filter.

Since the eye/brain adjusts for such changes automatically we find ourselves trying to emulate that on our final image through filtration or WB. A color picker will show if, in this case the snow, is cyan. What it won't tell you is if it should be. So should snow be slightly blue in the shade? It comes down to personal preference I suppose.

I didn't know you could use a color picker in general applications, I've used it in PS so that's good info.

John