D2H Skin Tone

[Dennis_Stiff]

I agree that what I'm seeing depends on exposure. Like underexposing slides to saturate them. Brighter images have the same problem but the whites have exposure masking out the colors I see. If I take them into photoshop and drag the cursor over selected areas with the info box active I can see numbers in the RGB channels that show what I've been talking about...or use the channels box or hue. The colors I see are not weird or psychedelic. The yellow looks like jaundice and the magenta is a little too red. When you look at the histogram of Danny's shot there is a spike on the far right and the left has the black moved very slighlty to the right. In Israel's photo PS shows massive clipping because they are bitmaps and posterized.

DennisS

[Mark_Shaheen_]

"thing _should_ be able to squeeze out a decent skin tone under totally IDEAL conditions. That's a given.
It's the _un_ideal (read most, and read normal) condidtions that are the concern."

Might I suggest shipping your camera back to Nikon like they requested people do, include a CD with images of the issue and let Nikon correct or replace your camera. They offered, you accept. Get it fixed, I don't see this issue in my D2H in the least.
I am posting an example of one of my people shots, I think the skin tones look normal, Might I ask the poster here, do you detect the hint, just the slightest green tinge to his skin? Wonder if I should send my D2H in for poor skin tones?

http://www.pbase.com/image/26328239/large.jpg

[Paul_Luka]

" do you detect the hint, just the slightest green tinge to his skin? Wonder if I should send my D2H in for poor skin tones?"

Skin looks great, but I do see yellow teeth [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Paul

>>> here, do you detect the hint, just the slightest <<<

[img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

SAS

[David_Buzzard]

Perhaps I should clarify what I posted earlier about camera profiling. I meant CAMERA PROFILING, not MONITOR PROFILING, and I was wondering if anybody had tried it on the D2H. I recently did an advanced photoshop course instructed by a very good portrait photogapher named Ken Frazer, and it dealt a lot in the importance of both camera and monitor profiling. In essence, digital cameras, like monitors, are all not alike, and tend favour different colour chanels over others. When you do a colour profile, you photograph a special colour swatch under controled lighting, and then run the profiling software to calibrate your camera. Now you have a custom colour space that you can apply to your digital image that balances any colour shifts that may be inherent in that particular camera. Ken used the example of his Kodak DCS 760, which he loves, but says that it has a real shift towards yellow. He calibrates the camera on a regular basis, and then during his work flow, applies the calibrated colour space to the camera files, and that evens out the yellow bias on the camera.

As for the D2H, from what I've seen, it does shift a bit towards red and yellow, but not a lot. Look at Edmond Terakopian's photos that he recently posted to test the 17-35 lens. No problems with skin tones or noise there. The guy who recently did a story on Iran (I'm sorry, I can't remember his name), again, no apparent skin tone or noise issues.

I would highly recomend the course for any of the Canadians out there. it's called Digital Dynamics, and does periodic road trips accross Canada. It's put on a by the Life Touch Canada photo lab, and their web page is Life Touch Professional

David Buzzard

[Jonathan_Wienke]

[ QUOTE ]
My feeling is that it is possible for the D2H to be incorrectly tuned so that the green channel, which is responsible for Green and Magenta, to be out of sync with the Red and Blue channels. I don't take images of people and know little about flesh tone but I do take images of skies and subjects that are suppose to be white. I've found that in general, MY CAMERA produces greens that are too high, making my skies too greenish. I said my camera because I have no idea what other people's cameras are doing. It seems to me that if the green channel is too low, you get a Magenta cast and if the green channel is too high, you get a green or yellow cast.

[/ QUOTE ]
Does the D2H allow the user to create custom tone curves? I had a similar problem with my 1Ds (yes, I'm from the dark side, sorry); it consistently had a slight green tinge to the deep shadows, about like adding 3-4 points of green to the shadows in the Photoshop Color Balance tool. I created a custom tone curve that tweaked the green channel in the deep shadows down a little, and now the green shadows are gone. I got a little over 1 stop of usable additional dynamic range as well. If the D2H has a similar function, developing a similar tone curve might be helpful to many D2H owners.

[DougThompson]

[ QUOTE ]

So, each side of the fence sees the other as being "nuts."

What does that mean? We all can't be nuts. Most of the folks liking it are qualified. Most of the folks not liking it are qualified.

It's the Jeckyll and Hyde of all cameras!


[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not saying anyone is nuts. It's just odd that the same photo will look OK to some people and not OK to others. That, in itself, suggests a monitor calibration problem.

As for the camera, some people report problems and others do not. That suggests (1) a wide variance in quality control at Nikon (which has not been my experience in 40 years of using their equipment) or (2) differences in how people are setting up their cameras.

I'm not sure where the answer lies. All I can speak from is personal experience and my experience with 2 D2Hs has been extremely positive. Maybe I was lucky and did not get any of the "lemons." Maybe I set my camera up differently. Or maybe I'm color blind. Who knows in this crazy business?

Doug

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