Over the years, I have used different sensors, including the Kodak SLR/C, which I like the colour very much; the Canon 1D with a 4 MP CCD sensor with vibrant colours; the garden variety of Canon CMOS sensors, with very please colour pallets; there is still the Panasonic LiveMOS, with similar colour signature as the Canon 1D; and of course the Sony CCD and CMOS sensors in various Pentax cameras and the NEX series.
Can't say I prefer one over the other, although in some situations, like skin tones, the Canon does look more pleasing to the eyes. All these sensors are a wonder of engineering, which allow us to capture memories with vivid details at the price so affordable that we could only dream of a mere decade ago.
Colours - Canon 5D Mark II & Air Ministry 8 Inch f5.6. Click for larger.
In the analogue past you had different kind of film material like orwo, agfa, fuji and kodak...
ReplyDeleteIf you took kodak slides you could be sure to have blue sky - even it was actually more gray...
Yup. It's even harder to get accurate colour with film, but many of us like the more vibrant and inaccurate colours of the Velvia.
DeleteI started playing with vintage lenses on my NEX as well. I'm not as far along as you, but am interested in buying a couple of helicoids and learning to adapt some of these strange beasts to my NEX for experimentation.
ReplyDeleteWell done and thanks for sharing. I love many of your images. You have an interesting perspective.
It's great fun to play with these kind of lenses. There is a feeling of joy to put old but great lenses back to life. You will enjoy yours.
DeleteThe colour signature is heavily based on both the design of the colour filter array over the sensor and the post-processing. This is one reason why the Sony A900 has such poor high ISO, it has a very thick CFA which gives superbly accurate colour at the expense of reducing the amount of light which hits the actual sensor well. The Canon 5DII, arguably the worst Canon FF body for colour did exactly the opposite, having a very mild CFA which reduces the separation of the channels and results in worse colour and better high ISO as it does allow more light to hit the sensor well.
ReplyDeletePersonally, in terms of colour my favourites remain the Pentax K10D, the Sony A700 and the Olympus E-30. My OM-D is just a bit behind the E-30.
I've never much like the colour from Canon's, it always seemed to plastic, without the fine gradation that I could get elsewhere.
I have grown used to the Canon colour and I think it's fine by me. Of course, horses for courses; everyone has their own preferences. I owned a K-10D but didn't think its colour stand out to my liking. Not saying it's bad. Its CCD definitely looks different than CMOS sensors, but it all comes down to how we perceive the colours.
DeleteEven if the sensor captures the colours faithfully, the RAW decoding software may have it's own interpretation of how colours should be decoded.
ReplyDeleteWhat you tell about color acouracy here is most important ... could be the reason for my main concern with Samsung (and my Sigma Foveon cameras anyway).
I always wondered why I couldn't achieve a correct Lightroom workflow for my Samsung NX cameras. Jpgs colors are fine , but raw files I cannot bring them to the same level of "correct natural look". May have to with my old LR version 3.6. I still use (the new 20 Mpix models have never been supported by LR3 anyway, thus I have to use converted DNG files).
I will ask other Samsung photographers at the dpreview forum for their experience. Maybe newer versions of Lightroom will do a better job.