D2H Skin Tone

Paul_Luka · #71 03-16-2004, 12:09 AM

"On my monitor I would say the skin tones look really good. The exposure is bright but not over. If this was printed down you would probably see some yellow patches under the eyes and on the neck under the chin.

DennisS "

What? How in the world do you jump to that conclusion? For grins I took the posted photo and printed it on my Kodak 8500 and my Epson 2200. It looked as represented on the monitor. Pretty darn good. Why ask for good shots and then claim you can make them look bad?

Dennis...with all due respect, I think you need to either rent the camera or buy one from a shop with a decent return policy and give it a test. If it works for you, great, if not, find something that will. As Phil said, I too can make any photo look like garbage, actually it's pretty easy.

For me...I'm tired on beating my head against the "D2h is bad" individuals. It's not perfect, but there are many, many serious photographers that seem to think its works pretty well. If you need a Canon 1Ds or 1DMkII, go for it. I'm sure they are great cameras as well. For me the D2h has been a great investment and other than wondering how to justify the D2x purchase whenever its stable and widely available, I have no buyer's remorse.

I used to think that pros like Moose P. saw Nikon gear with rose colored glasses, but my opinion has changed since the D1. The D1 was truly problematic, but even with its well known issues, I managed to take some fabulous photos that I will treasure for many years. I think the key is to learn how to work with the individual tool's characteristics. Even Canon gear has quirks, I studied their products in detail before re-investing in Nikon. For me, the change didn't have a reasonable cost / benefit ratio, mainly because the 8mp doesn't by me that much for my type of prints (11x14 and below).

Good luck with whatever it is that you find to meet your needs. For me this is a closed issue and its seems for you as well.

Paul

Dennis_Stiff · #72 03-16-2004, 12:43 AM

Paul and Phil...I'm saying the photographs look darn good...excellent I might add. I was thinking out loud that exposure may have something to do with some of the stuff that has been posted. Do you understand what I'm saying? I think they look great...

DennisS

Dennis_Stiff · #73 03-16-2004, 01:06 AM

Been doing this stuff for a long time. When it comes to all things "photographic" my mind is never closed...this thread wasn't started to be a knock on anything...just looking for ideas and answers. I also printed out Phils shot of the girls and it came out fine.

DennisS

GeoffByers · #74 03-16-2004, 01:38 AM

What I’ve never seen anybody do is shoot the same portrait shot with a D100 and a D2H, both in RAW, process to achieve identical WB (with a Macbeth ColorChecker in the shot), and then compare side by side.

If I had a D2H I’d do it, but alas I haven’t.

The same could be done with a D2H and Canon 1D. It really doesn’t achieve much to just keep posting one-off portrait shots, and complaining of the skin tone, without showing what better results can be achieved with an alternative camera, and making sure there is a color reference chart in the shot.

BrianNg · #75 03-16-2004, 03:53 AM

Great point. For kicks, I shot a bunch of photos of my hand with the D100 and D2h swapping the SB-80DX and SB-800 between the cameras. I started out just wanting to see if I got bad skin tones w/the D2H/SB-800 combo w/flash and mixed available. I was bummed to see the too-red, too-yellow, blotchy results that some people were talking about. Then I pulled the D100 and shot the same type of photos and ended up with the same lame results. Far from scientific, just wanted to "prove" things to myself. At this point, I'm with the poster who said the too-red/yellow happens with flash and mixed lighting when the flash isn't dominating the other light sources. After I read that, I went and reshot both cameras but cranked the apertures down so the flash would have to fire harder and got the kind of flash photos I'm used to getting in dark churches and reception halls during weddings (meaning, the skin tones looked fine).

Now, I'm very willing to believe that the Fuji S2 has both the D100 and D2H beat in terms of color balance. But I don't have a Fuji S2 and am mainly concerned with whether the D2H is going to make life harder for me compared to the D100 - and I don't think it will.

Anyway, long thread, great posts. Oh and I shot all that stuff with a mix of white balance settings (incandescent, flourescent, sunlight, shade, flash). Again, I'm not saying I ran a definitive test - I'm sure I missed a lot of cases. Just wanted to second the suggestion to do side-by-side comparisons before coming to conclusions about how any particular camera may be deficient.

Regards,

-brian

Dennis_Stiff · #76 03-16-2004, 05:00 AM

Brian...thanks for the contibution. This adds to the techniques that we may all need to get good results. I now know that mixed light and exposure has made life difficult for some D2h shooters and I agree that the yellow and magenta tones are not limited to the D2H. We just need to know why they appear and how to get rid of it in camera. Thanks again for the test.

DennisS

Karl_Westman · #77 03-16-2004, 07:39 AM

I haven't done any large number of indoor shots with people in them. However, as I'm a owner of a Rhodesian-Ridgeback ( a dog for those who didn't know) I've done more than plenty of shots of him [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] . I've noticed some untrue coloring of his fur under indoor lightning, even though I alway use preset WB. I fiddled with the hue adjustments on the camera and found that setting this to +3 or sometimes as high as +9 gives a much more true rendition of his colors. I only shoot in color mode II.

As any one of you tried this with portraits?

Kind regards,
Karl

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