Help with M240 RAW/DNG processing - too much orange/pink

papasnap

papasnap

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Hello all!

I recieved my M240 last week, and it's a damn fine camera - I'm so happy to have a digital successor to the M7/M6TTL/ZI's I've been using for years. It really is a joy to shoot. I've been finding the JPEGs are very impressive straight out of camera - even more so than my OM-D and X100s - and so I couldn't wait to try out the DNGs in Lightroom 5.

However I've been finding it a major struggle for most photos taken in artificial lighting (indoors). The white balance is majorly off, which I don't mind, but after bringing it back to what looks correct overall balance, I find blotchy pink and orange spots in my images - people look like they have pinkeye, and there are weird patches of orange I find in peoples ears, around their mouths, on their hands, etc.

For now, to control the orange, I simply desaturate orange in lightroom, but that affects other parts of the image too, resulting in a weird and unnatural look.

There's gotta be a solution to this - e.g today I'm thinking of buying a grey card to carry around and use, which would hopefully allow me to get a precise white balance that doesn't suffer from this. But I haven't had similar problems with my OM-D and X100s RAWs, which are well behaved.

Is anyone else finding this issue in their DNGs? And if so, what do you do to fix it?

Thanks for your help!
papasnap
 
I use ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) with Bridge & Photoshop.

Make in camera pics in RAW. All the time. I like consistency as it streamlines my workflow.

For RAW, in camera color balance doesn't mean anything. I can color balance during the process stage with ACR.

Haven't worked with DNG files yet but have duped RAW files into DNG as a backup. I'm going to assume DNG works the same as RAW with ACR.

ACR=Adobe Camera Raw.

DNG was designed by Adobe so as files could be standardized. Meaning, RAW with each camera mfgr. and, many times, each model, one needs the software in ACR to work them.

I understand Leica uses DNG to make in camera files rather than RAW.

In my mind, I think of in camera made JPEGs kinda like Polaroid film. A person is leaving it up to the cameras computer and software to develop the RAW file into a JPEG file. Some input can be made in camera with functions as what to apply when making the JPEG files.

RAW/DNG is like undeveloped film. The person operating the computer can develop/process the files. Working on files in RAW/DNG is nondestructive. For RAW a sidecar is attached telling the RAW file this is what I want the photo to look like without actually changing the file like it would with JPEG. When processing RAW/DNG files the original file is not changed, rather, the sidecar is telling the file what I want.

Just for grins, you can go to the files where RAW/DNG are located and you will see the sidecar on processed files as well. The sidecar can be put into trash and the original file would still be there just like it came out of the camera. There are other reasons to shoot in RAW.

I use Huey Pro to keep my monitor calibrated.

Hope this is a little clearer than mud!
 
I had a very similar thing happen when I bought an Epson RD-1 and opened the raw files in ACDSee Pro ... supposedly the software was supposed to be compliant for the Epson Raw files but it wasn't and what you describe is exactly what I was seeing. I managed to track down a version of the genuine Epson Raw converter software courtesy of our bartender's site and the difference was chalk and cheese.
 
Thanks all - I'll try and put a sequence of photos showing the colour balance later today or tomorrow

I'll have a try of some different converters too - I've got Catpure One downloading right now. I'll try my old LR4.4 as well

Some related reading I've found online:

http://www.pebbleplace.com/Review/Leica_M_Type_240_Page_4.html

I am hopeful Leica will improve the auto white balance; in a recent email exchange with Leica’s Jesko v. Oeynhausen, Jesko wrote -
“Thank you very much for offering your support to improve AWB, but we already received a lot of files and we managed to improve the performance in skin tones. This will be available with the next update.”
So, a firmware update is coming, though Jesko’s reply specifically references skin tones which is more about color mapping rather than white balance. Editing color is futile until white balance is set, so hopefully the Leica engineers are hard at work fixing the auto white balance.
Click to expand...

And in the comments of
http://www.samhurdphotography.com/2...ld-camera-review-mirrorless-full-frame-camera

Finally I am really struggling with not only the AutoWB (which is terrible) but the overall colors coming from the camera. Even after correcting the much too warm WB the skin tones still often come out with too much pink and orange; so much so that I have stopped showing previews to clients on the camera (which they all ask to see). The amount of PP to get acceptable results is currently maddening, because no two shots are the same. I have created custom profiles in Lightroom, but again it’s currently a moving target and no one profile is universally acceptable.

Read more: http://www.samhurdphotography.com/2...ew-mirrorless-full-frame-camera#ixzz2aCxBFL1V
Click to expand...

this last one mirrors my experience exactly
 
Some of us noticed this problem in early sample shots – and stuck with M9. I hope firmware updates and custom profiles will improve it. In the short run, M240 color persuaded me to buy a second M9 body. The images look better and the prices have gone down.
 
Orange may be the result of Leica trying to make their image look unique, ie a certain film look. Thorsten Overgard recommends -9 red & -20 orange. He had a pro color manager work it out for him.

Grey card is the wrong device, ok for exposure not for color bal. I use a whi Bal card made for white bal . Expodisk also OK.

Make sure LR is set for 16 bit. Make some exposures with raw + JPEG and if the JPEG is ok, the problem is not in camera,

Make a camera profile with Adobe Profile editor. This will neutralize the bias Leica makes to the colors. You still need to WB correctly. I like my M8 almost as much as my M9 since profiling it.

Once it is profiled, LR and PS can be set to read that profile when a pic from that serial # camera is opened. Or you can just make it a preset or new camera default.
 
You may have your camera profile/settings wrong in LR. Take a sunny landscape shot. First you must switch to " embedded", then you can adjust the colour balance -Desaturating
and then you can set your colour preferences for the camera at the bottom. Save as the new default.
Make sure you are in process 2012.
Nowyou have set LR up to your taste and you can use the colour balance control.

The colour balance is always a bit of an interpretive thing (well, actually any light, but artificial light takes some more fiddling)
You adjust it by the colour balance sliders, first set the temperature to hot or cool -sliding between blue and yellow. If needed you can adjust magenta (red is affected here as well) and green by the lower slider. This is not done by fiddling with the colour later on. The tungsten preset is mostly too blue for my taste.
If you end up with slightly oversaturated reds, as you may on the 240, this is the moment to adjust saturation, either general or by colour channels, but you can make it a default by changing you camera preferences (see above)
The difficulties will come with mixed light, and mostly with lightsources with a discontinuous spectrum, like ecolights or TL. TL again is really nasty because it cycles as well and will vary from shot to shot, especially in the greens.

As mentioned above you can make your own profiles for LR per camera, but it takes a small amount of expertise and a colour chart+software to do so.

If you want to make life easy for yourself set an individual light balance for the specific light you are in. It is in the "set" menu and the camera will take you through the two steps needed.
 
There is indeed too much red and magenta saturation out of ACR, LR and C1 imho. Doing a personal profile is the best thing to do. Otherwise just reducing red and magenta saturation by 20% to 30% might help in many situations.
 
jaapv said:
No it does not .That had nothing to do with camera profiles and colour balance. Actually it feels like the early days with any new camera.
Click to expand...


Come on I'm joking sarcastically 😛
Every sophisticated product goes through teething. We all get that.
Leica has had a bit more than their share of "User Beta Testing". 😉
 
Ronald M said:
Thorsten Overgard recommends -9 red & -20 orange. He had a pro color manager work it out for him.
Click to expand...

That's pretty much exactly what I'd found too - I've been making much the same adjustments to my images (sometimes more, sometimes less on the red).

Thanks for the advice all - I'm going to try creating my own M240 profile for Lightroom 5 and see how that goes. My M240 photos have been on hold for the last couple of weeks, I found my camera was visibly front-focusing so it's back to germany for repairs alas (along with a 28mm summicron, which curiously was backfocusing by about the same amount the M240 was front-focusing, so that pair was working fine!).

I miss my M240 already! On the plus side, it's meant spending some more quality time with my 0.58x M7 and lovely Fuji Provia 400X film, which I hear has been discontinued
 
papasnap said:
That's pretty much exactly what I'd found too - I've been making much the same adjustments to my images (sometimes more, sometimes less on the red).

Thanks for the advice all - I'm going to try creating my own M240 profile for Lightroom 5 and see how that goes. My M240 photos have been on hold for the last couple of weeks, I found my camera was visibly front-focusing so it's back to germany for repairs alas (along with a 28mm summicron, which curiously was backfocusing by about the same amount the M240 was front-focusing, so that pair was working fine!).

I miss my M240 already! On the plus side, it's meant spending some more quality time with my 0.58x M7 and lovely Fuji Provia 400X film, which I hear has been discontinued
Click to expand...

Dude… your pics look damn good, some of the best I've seen from the M240 yet. They feel right at home with your chromes.

You're doing something right because it's the first time I've actually wanted the new M.
 
tightsqueez said:
Dude… your pics look damn good, some of the best I've seen from the M240 yet. They feel right at home with your chromes.

You're doing something right because it's the first time I've actually wanted the new M.
Click to expand...

aww thanks tightsqueez! For me, the M240 is the first time I felt willing to part with ~US$7k for a leica digital - I've seen amazing photos from the M9, but only when people kept the ISOs down. Whereas M9 seemed to be good to ~ISO800, the M240 seems very nice to ISO1600, and usable to ISO6400.

While I'm waiting for my M240 back, in the mean time I've posted some straight from camera JPEGs on default settings to my tumblr - http://papasnap.tumblr.com/post/58783817521/bad-kidz-on-work-ski-trip-all-photos-straighthttp://papasnap.tumblr.com/post/58783817521/bad-kidz-on-work-ski-trip-all-photos-straight
 
do you have photoshop?

I hate to add weight to the LAB bandwagon but this is the sort of situation it would actually be useful in. maybe LR has it?

anyway I took a look at one of your shots and it was trivial to remove the pinkness of their skin with a gentle Z shape in the A channel.
 
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