D2H Skin Tone

[Paul_Luka]

OK....as Sal suggested I tried a little experiement. A willing subject, me -only one I could find, in a interior room with incandescent lights and fill flash. Shot with slow synch at 1/15 using auto WB, then using flash WB.

Sorry can't post results, don't have a way to and even if I did you don't have my skin to compare it to. I will try for a better subject / more complete test in a few days and look for a volunteer to host the pixs.

I particularly looked at hands and arms so that I could compare actual to what's on my screen (Calibrated Sony Artisan). Results... In JPEG they don't look so good. not sure why, but I haven't shot anything in JPEG for fours years, so it could be I have bad settings. As NEFs, unaltered in 4.1, the flash WB using Mode 1 (Nikon's recommendation for skin) look dead on. The blotchy spots in my too dry hands are extremely accurate, in auto WB the general observation is that everything seems a little bleached in color, perhaps a little overexposed (-.17 seems to fix it). Looking at the D1x, using similar settings, the auto wb is too yellow, the flash wb is close the D2h in auto, but a little less saturated.

Bottom line is that the results between the two cameras, in my limited test, doesn't reveal any huge differences. BTW shooting in Mode II produced less accurate results in both cameras.

I'm sure this won't convince anyone differently from their previous conclusions, but I did confirm for myself that I am not overlooking a shortcoming.

I suspect that those with problems were early models. If you take notice, Nikon's recent new products (last 6 years or so) have had early production issues i.e. 70-200VR autofocus lockups, 24-120 problems, 17-35 SWM failures...

Paul

>>to work much better than trying to set to "daylight<<

I wasn't speaking directly. I guess I was just talking about Nikon D series cameras in general.

I have heard also (as you suggest) that the S2 camera's produce _really_ nice skin tones. A good friend who has one swears by it for people stuff.

Don't know much about them, though, myself. But the Nikon AWB is / was (from what I saw) not that hot.

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

SAS

[Dennis_Stiff]

Phil Askey has a series of sample photographs (taken my him) for everything that has been reviewed on his site. Check out the D2H...etc...including other brands. Look for semi or not semi closeups of people. In most cases I get a better "read" on the images with my monitor on that site than I do elsewhere. I also looked at blue skys as well.

DennisS

[Israel_Hadari]

[/ QUOTE ] look for a volunteer to host the pixs.

[/ QUOTE ]

I can help you with hosting the photos.

[BrianMcDonnell]

Thanks for the info Paul. I would certainly be satisfied if shooting raw provided the results I need.

[Jerry_Sutherlin]

Aaaaaaaaa, Good old skin tones. In Colombia we have beautiful women of all skin tones, the olive tone of the Arabic women, the creamy brown of the morena’s, of course the beautiful black women, and the fair skinned girls. Of these only the fair skinned have given any re-occurring problems. These problems come from my metering. I often check the camera’s meter with a hand held, just to be safe. I guess this is all part of the craft and science of photography. Nikon will help if you make the right noise.

[Robbe_Gibson]

Does anyone have a couple of samples of your basic caucasian female(blond or brunette, not readhead) with some white clothing to make a skintone and color shift comparison? Other samples have been posted, but it's harder to guess color accuracy with deeply toned or fair/redhead skintones.

It seems like almost everything shot with this camera that I've seen posted has dark or reddish/magenta or underexposed skintones.

Thanks.

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