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Lack of clarity/grey cast on pictures taken with D5000 with Nikkor 17-55 mm f/2.8G IF-ED AF-S DX


alok_k

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I came across a related version of this with a group of picture conservators. They wanted there 'before treatment' images to look flat, grubby, dull, lifeless etc, as it 'truly' appears to them.

 

The trouble is digital cameras, either phone, P&S or DSLR made them look too nice. They wish for the days of film, both print and slide where WYSIWYG.

 

I manged to make a custom setting on a D5300 which produced 'realistic' images (to them) and still allowed the improvements to the after treatment images to show.

 

The subjectivity is, by definition, never going to be sorted for everyone, but the sheer degree of image adjustments available with a well exposure RAW file allows everyone to make what they like.....

 

However, for something as technical as fine art restoration, you want the only thing to look different between 'before' and 'after' is what's been done to it.... not how it was taken, processed etc. It's very possible to make a before and after from the same image......;)

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subjectivity

One of the downsides of subjectivity is that it can become an impediment to improving one’s eye which, to me, is one of the benefits of photography. Typically seen jpgs of landscapes, at least a lot of them, are often too saturated, Disney-esque, and many are downright false and ugly. But we get so used to them that they become accepted as a norm or even a standard. Subjectivity might keep the naive view in tact, especially if it’s used as an excuse for one’s taste. On the other hand, a thoughtful viewer will not simply accept the subjective, but will try to deepen it and develop more sophisticated tastes. That takes recognizing both the personal and human side of subjectivity but also it’s ability to limit. An authentic and meaningful kind of subjectivity, IMO, requires always questioning it, and often moving beyond its present incarnation.

 

“Taste is the enemy of creativeness” —Picasso

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That said, I've often heard the argument that dSLRs produce fairly flat images with minimal sharpening in order to allow later processing. I wonder whether this is actually still a justification and habit from the early days of digital, given that you should really be starting with a raw file rather than JPEG if you're going to be making these changes. I've no objection to shooting relatively flat (or at least, natural) JPEGs, and I mostly use JPEGs as a way of checking framing and exposure (with some difficulty - I'm still hesitant about whether I should use active D-lighting to try to persuade highlight priority to work properly on raw), but I do wonder whether the traditional lack of "punch" associated with a dSLR is still a desirable default. Preferences for rendering are very personal (and I believe even an "average" preferred rendering varies by geography), so you'll never please all of the people all of the time, but we do seem to have to explain why the images look "unprocessed" a lot. I vaguely wonder whether the proliferation of HDR and wide-gamut displays is going to change the default rendering.

 

But then I pretty much never leave an image in the camera's default rendering, and I tweak every image separately - one reason I'm wary of electronic viewfinders (what I see isn't going to be what I get).

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(what I see isn't going to be what I get).

So far as I can tell this is and has always been the case, even with film. I remember the days of selecting which slide film I would use depending on the color saturation I preferred. Kodachrome was the best for reds and yellows, Fujichrome for greens, and Ektachrome for blues. (Funny, their box colors seemed to reflect these as well.?) No sensor or film ever "sees" a subject exactly like the human eye (each of which is different, anyways), so what is most accurate is always subject to development, processing, and presentation. Even the fact that we see an image on a backlit screen, versus by reflected, incident light from a print, changes our perceptual experience. "Perception is reality." (Attributed to Lee Atwater) My understanding is that RAW images are given generic, "neutral" processing values in-camera, so as to translate the raw, electronic signals from the sensor into a visible image on a screen. Those values are the opinion of a group of code writers and engineers, and likely have very little to do with the subject, nature of the conditions in which the photo is taken, or the display media. EVERYTHING about the image is therefore subject to manipulation and interpretation. There is nothing real about it, except individual visual perception. (Perhaps the most reliable digital characteristic and processing has to do with white balance, but only if every image is made after the white balance in the camera has been calibrated for that particular scene using a white card. Still, application of that data is subject to whatever algorithm is being used.)

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Oh yes, film definitely has variable rendering - I've used Velvia specifically for bluebells, knowing how it handles their spectral response. I actually don't like what Velvia does to grass so much, and should probably shoot it with a mild warming filter. The cones in eyes have a spectral response that's different from film, and there's more than one set of cones that genetics can code for. Even then, do you really want to reproduce the human visual system perfectly? (I quite like being able to take infrared shots...)

 

Different camera models will have different combinations of sensor spectral response, digitiser response and colour filters, and there's some variation even on a per-device basis, I believe. "Raw" captures something that's not quite whatever gets digitised (people have done a histogram on Nikon raw files and found gaps, which suggests scaling), but isn't more converted than that - it being up to the raw converter to try to do something useful with the result. Fortunately we can then leave it to whoever's doing post-processing to sort out the mess. There does tend to be a "default" conversion, which as you say is the result of some engineers and possibly a focus group (that may be smaller than you think).

 

My concern with an electronic viewfinder is that it necessarily renders a processed version of the scene. If you tend to do your image processing in camera, this is good - it'll show you what you're going to get. If you tend to do a lot of dynamic range, curve and colour tweaking on an image-by-image basis after the fact, it's not really telling you anything useful - and as such I'd usually rather know what my eyes are looking at (via a mirror and lens) so I can take that as input to how I choose to render the scene. But I'm being a little pedantic (moi?), since the difference can often be subtle, and there are definite advantages to having extra information in the viewfinder - and I do have cameras with EVFs. I vaguely hope Nikon eventually gets a hybrid system working properly. Rumours suggest they're putting a lot of effort into their mirrorless viewfinder, so that'll be interesting to see.

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I managed to make a custom setting on a D5300 which produced 'realistic' images (to them) and still allowed the improvements to the after treatment images to show.

 

The subjectivity is, by definition, never going to be sorted for everyone, but the sheer degree of image adjustments available with a well exposure RAW file allows everyone to make what they like.....

 

Giving them the RAW was a good move, but then I wonder if the custom picture control made any difference?

 

[EDIT] I understand—the custom picture control would have determined the default rendering in Capture NX-whatever, assuming that's what they were using.

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Kind of sideways on this, but on the subject of film, I am almost certainly in a minority, but although one can argue that the greens are sickly and the blues blah, I used to love Velvia 100F for the way it rendered earth tones. A limited palette, but supreme within it.
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Even the fact that we see an image on a backlit screen, versus by reflected, incident light from a print, changes our perceptual experience. "Perception is reality." (Attributed to Lee Atwater)

Not so fast . . . LOL! :)

 

Knowledge plays a role in reality as well, probably an equal role to perception. So, the fact that we KNOW that the backlit screen we're currently looking at isn't the only perception possible, and that prints will be perceived somewhat differently, makes the perception a very significant but also temporary and transient experience. The REALITY is that perception changes based on viewing mechanism. Our PERCEPTION of the moon from here on Earth is only a specific kind of contextual reality. We know that it's bigger than we tend to think of it and that its bigness is relative to other things. Reading (by which we gain further knowledge) about the moon and its relative size to Earth and other planets and other bodies in the sky helps give us KNOWLEDGE of the moon's size that's every bit as key to the reality of the size of the moon as our individual perception of it is. The reality of the size of the moon is something different from what we typically see and perceive, or photograph.

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Knowledge plays a role in reality as well, probably an equal role to perception.

From where I sit, whatever knowledge or self- or situational-awareness that one brings to the party, this is an integral component of perception, and cannot be separated from it. My knowledge of photography deeply colors my perception of the images we discuss in these forums. I can recognize one particular member's work by the singular characteristics of his PP preferences. Though the images are frequently composed very nicely and are of interesting subjects, I don't particularly care for them. This perception (and evaluation) on my part is substantially due to my understanding of how the images arrived in their displayed form, and knowing I would not have processed them in that way. As we have discussed at length in previous threads, I believe we agree that one's understanding of a photograph cannot be divorced from the knowledge, background, history, and personal experience which define the lens through which it is perceived. Is this not so?

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Is this not so?

Right, I think we'd agree that knowledge (or understanding) and perception go hand in hand and each affects the other and each is a part of reality, and neither is the sole faculty by which we relate to reality.

I believe we agree that one's understanding of a photograph cannot be divorced from the knowledge, background, history, and personal experience which define the lens through which it is perceived

We agree on that. I do find myself, however, modulating how much influence knowledge and understanding will have relative to perception. Sometimes, I want to stay in as much a perception mode as possible, setting aside my understanding to whatever degree I can achieve. This allows me to experience even photography, art, and music I know a lot about in a sort of primal or innocent state. I can do that especially well with music, simply listen and appreciate Beethoven on a gut level and not allow my knowledge of him and his place in musical history to influence me terribly much. I don't believe we can completely rid ourselves of prior knowledge, but I do think we can experience art with varying degrees of that knowledge's influence.

 

I will very often go to a museum exhibition or a theater, music, or dance performance and forego my more critical (in the sense of critical analysis rather than disapproval) side in favor of simply appreciating on as innocent a level as possible what's before me. Later, I may go back through the exhibit again or revisit the performance in my mind and do more critical analysis, which can also be important to me. So for me it's important to be as flexible as possible with the different ways I might approach viewing photographs, sometimes in a more critical and more knowledge-oriented space, sometimes much less so.

 

Knowledge and perception go hand in hand and are often in different balances.

Though the images are frequently composed very nicely and are of interesting subjects, I don't particularly care for them. This perception (and evaluation) on my part is substantially due to my understanding of how the images arrived in their displayed form, and knowing I would not have processed them in that way.

In addition to your understanding of how the images arrived at their form and knowing you would not process them that way, I imagine some of it is also a matter of simply how badly they look to you, regardless of how they were made and for reasons of taste, which is subjective but which you've also refined.

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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I imagine some of it is also a matter of simply how badly they look to you

So, here's the problem: I don't want to go into any more detail for risk of identifying this person by description of his/her work. It's clear to me that the effect this photographer achieves is very intentional, and there are some posts which do not incorporate the features I find unappealing, suggesting he/she is conscious of the impact. So, rather than say they look "badly" to me, I'd much rather acknowledge that this photographer has developed a personal style which is not to my taste. Clearly it is satisfactory to this individual, and I choose not to depreciate it further.

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So, rather than say they look "badly" to me, I'd much rather acknowledge that this photographer has developed a personal style which is not to my taste.

That's fine and I appreciate how caring you can be.

 

So let me say what I said differently, avoiding the word "badly." You had said:

Though the images are frequently composed very nicely and are of interesting subjects, I don't particularly care for them. This perception (and evaluation) on my part is substantially due to my understanding of how the images arrived in their displayed form, and knowing I would not have processed them in that way.

Knowing the process may be important information, but I think what you're judging is substantially based on what you're seeing, which is the RESULT of whatever process was used to get there more than on your understanding of the process per se.

 

If I said to someone, "Your photo is not to my taste because you used a digital instead of a film process," I'd consider that a somewhat shallow or irrelevant judgment. That would be me allowing their process to determine my aesthetic response. Instead, I'd be more inclined to tell them what's to my taste and what's not to my taste based on the results of their process.

 

A photo might not be to my taste, usually because of the way it LOOKS to me, not because of my knowledge or understanding of the PROCESS the photographer used to get it to look that way.

 

Additionally, another photographer's satisfaction with his own work may be every reason for a colleague or friend to push him or her beyond that satisfaction if one genuinely feels they can point the photographer in a direction of more refined and less naive taste.

 

There are plenty of people satisfied with pushing slider bars way too far and saturating their work to an extreme. If they've asked for critique, I wouldn't hesitate to get them to reconsider or at least think about their satisfaction by telling them some specific things I see that they might not want to be satisfied with in order to further develop their own vision. Suggesting that someone might not be so satisfied is not telling them exactly what to do instead.

 

There are plenty of times we're satisfied only until we realize doing a little less or a little more would be more satisfying. Colleagues nudging each other to mess around with that balance and find something that works and to NOT necessarily be satisfied is a great thing, as long as it's done constructively. The photographer in question is free to reject the nudge.

 

Getting back specifically to the thread at hand, plenty of people are satisfied with the results of what comes directly out of a camera in jpg form. That may be just fine, but I will still continue to challenge that generic look among fellow photographers who are trying to take their own photography seriously and, perhaps, to a different place, maybe trying to develop their own personal style (as you so nicely put it). If they resist, so be it. But if I can alert them to an alternative aesthetic from what currently satisfies them they might just take even more satisfaction in such new awareness and vision. When my photos get critiqued, I want to be challenged as much as I also want satisfaction.

Edited by Norma Desmond
We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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This thread got way more philosophical while I wasn't looking! One thing I did want to call out:

 

Even the fact that we see an image on a backlit screen, versus by reflected, incident light from a print,changes our perceptual experience.

 

While I agree that there may be an effect on perception caused by knowing the medium in which an image is produced (is it painted, photocopied, printed on a cake?) I've had some frustration at responses from colour calibration companies who appeared to claim there was a fundamental difference between emitted photons and reflected ones. In the general case, not dealing with exotica such as angle-dependent polarisation.

 

I was arguing that, given a calibrated light source for viewing a print-out, I wanted a calibrated display to give me an exact match (within the precision of the technology), letting me iterate changes while viewing in both media. Despite the different emission curves of the monitor and print/light combination, I believe it should be possible to match the cones' response (although I've never seen a calibration system test the user's cone genetics). Yet I was told there was some fundamental difference that exceeds my understanding of particle physics...

 

For what it's worth, I gave up, and rarely print anything anyway these days. I do think in these times of digital transmission, those of us producing content for others to view need to have some awareness of the range of viewing conditions, even with a "calibrated monitor" - more so than concerns about the conditions in which a print might be hung. Even many phones run with a wide gamut by default these days - I have mine switched down to sRGB in the developer settings most of the time.

 

It's certainly easy for the environment, including previous exposure to images, to affect perception. This is very true of brightness, white balance and saturation, among other things. If tuning lots of images manually it's quite hard to avoid "drift" away from the look you started with, even before preferences come into account.

 

For what it's worth, I tend to expand the contrast and slightly push the saturation in images I post here, while trying to preserve detail in highlights and shadows (I don't like blown clouds). I often pull back the haze a bit too (DxO "clearview"; other implementations are available). I certainly don't emulate my yellow/blue polariser with every shot or go the full Rockwell/Velvia "argh my eyes" (usually) but I don't feel obliged to stick to realism either.

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I was arguing that, given a calibrated light source for viewing a print-out, I wanted a calibrated display to give me an exact match (within the precision of the technology), letting me iterate changes while viewing in both media.

This is interesting and I can understand your desire here.

 

I come at it from almost the opposite place. Because I feel the medium of print and backlit screen are so different, each unique in their own ways, I actually often don't try to match the image exactly for each medium. I frequently create a different file for print than I've used for screen display. Often, it's because I want different things from each. Sometimes, the medium is such a strong influence on the image that I'll want, for example, a softer and perhaps less saturated print and a little more sharp and saturated image for the screen. The kind of contrast that often works for me in print will not translate as well to screen so I will nuance it, not to get it to look similar to the print but to get it to bring the screen experience to life in a way of its own.

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On the subject of subjectivity and perception. Has that Scandi-drama "The Bridge" reached the US yet?

 

To me, the whole over-hyped series is a triumph of presentation over content. With under-saturated, dark and off colour, a continuously droning and sinister soundtrack and melodramatic acting attempting to make up for banal and non-sequiter scripting and the fact that not much actually happens. Yawwwwn.

 

Save yourself the agony of actually watching it, and simply listen to the water-cooler conversations about it from people with no lives!

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No spoilers, Joe! I've got all of the current series so far broadcast in the UK queued up on my PVR. (I've finished the Tunnel, though, the British/French adaptation. I believe there are various regional variants on a similar theme in other places.)

 

I don't claim to have a life, though. Which explains how much space I don't have left on my PVR.

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