Choosing Equipment
Choose equipment that produces colours you like and ignore reviews that tell you a camera or lens is better than another because it measures better. My experience is that these reviews are helpful to a point but tend to focus on things that can be measured. This forms the immediate assumption that we are able to measure all the things that count but in practise this doesn't appear to be the case. Measuring how we perceive colour in photography is rather like measuring the quality of an audio system based on how loud it can go and how little distortion it makes. My advice here is that when you are looking at a review page, jump straight to the preview shots and assess your perception of the colours closely. This is what you will have to work with if you own that camera. Here are some questions that are worth asking...
- Do the colours create the mood or effect you want to achieve? Are they open, relaxed, and free, or are they somehow confined and introverted?
- Do the images have a deep perspective that draws your eye across a landscape or do they look flat?
- Do faces communicate character or is your eye just being drawn to the minute details on a person's face when you first look at it?
- Do the photos often show a noticeable colour tint? (note: this is something that can be measured effectively)
I've spent a good deal of time processing raw images and post-processing jpeg images in search of the ideal colour balance, many thousands in total, and have come to some interesting conclusions.
- Processing and post processing (workflow) take up a lot of time! - Nobody (unless they don't need to earn a living) has time to do half of the stuff that you can actually do. As a result, picking a camera which gives good default results is paramount, whether you're shooting jpeg or using the bundled raw conversion software.
- Pick the right raw processing engine. - This may well be the one that comes bundled with the camera (or indeed inside the camera which makes life much easier). As an example, I found with my previous camera (a Canon EOS 300D) that the bundled Canon 'professional' software was very fast, easy to use, and gave significantly better results in terms of colour than my copy of DxO version 4 when processing raw files. In every other respect relating to image quality, DxO was superior, however nothing else counts (for me) if the colour is not good. Outside of the camera and lens itself, this is the most important decision you will make in terms of colour.
- Ensure your processing and post-processing software has good granular sliders for hue, saturation, and contrast, as well as colour temperature and balance. Minor adjustments to any of these settings has a major affect on the colour so ease and subtlety of control is essential.
The huge colour discrepancies between different monitors mean that it's pointless to edit the colour in an image without screen calibration. No matter how much you try to do this by eye however, you will always fail to get satisfying (or at least consistent) results. I use an entry level Spyder 2 calibrator which works nicely on my Mac and PC machines and I now get more predictable results with images.
Two things I haven't yet explored are printer and camera (or scanner) calibration. These are for sure worth looking into and I would be interested for any feedback and experience on these.
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