M9P - colour fade

[wintoid]

Can anyone explain this? The sky fades almost to monochrome in the left hand side of the frame. It was taken with a 35mm Biogon, coded as a Summicron Asph. Processed in Lightroom, nothing fancy.


Reflections by wintoid, on Flickr

 

[sleepyhead]

I have no idea, but the highlights in the clouds are totally blown-out as well.

 

[hellomikmik]

you got the same grey also in the edges of the cloud - my guess its that there is one particular value that got desaturated.

do you still have it on the card? how does it look on camera's lcd. first I would try different software. looks cropped - the fading is along longer edge I guess? are you sure there is no extra violent post-processing involved?

 

[sevo]

That area would presumably have had yellow in it that got shifted away when white balancing the main subject. You cannot rescue the colour in blown highlights by a mere white point adjustment (or CC filter) without giving the rest a strong colour cast, in all media that blow out the highlights rather than shadows, whether video, digital or slide film.

You'll have to toy around with partial correction masks/layers, or re-shoot doing some gentle HDR to capture the highlights more accurately.

 

[tonyc]

Hello

Is it a RAW file you have developed ?

If so, the desaturated effect looks like
over zealous use of highlight recover.

Highlight recover usually brings back
some details, but usually without any
colour information.
-TC

 

[Roger Hicks]

Hello

Is it a RAW file you have developed ?

If so, the desaturated effect looks like
over zealous use of highlight recover.

Highlight recover usually brings back
some details, but usually without any
colour information.
-TC

Dear Tony,

That certainly looks very like the cause. I didn't see it until you pointed it out, because I still don't 'think in digital' the way I almost instinctively 'think in film', but the symptoms seem EXACTLY right.

Cheers,

R.

 

[wintoid]

Hmm I did use the Lightroom auto button for a starting point, and it does have -23 highlight which doesn't seem too extreme.

I think in retrospect what has happened here is I've overexposed and blown out the left side of the image, because when I reset it in Lightroom, it was whited out in that area. I guess that's the great equaliser, removing all colour hue as it hits 255,255,255.

 

[Honus]

Looks like it hasn't been in the fixer long enough. Throw it back into Lightroom for about 10 min. and agitate your computer every 30 sec. That should do it. 😀

 

[wintoid]

Haha, thanks Robert

 

[jordanatkins]

Hmm I did use the Lightroom auto button for a starting point, and it does have -23 highlight which doesn't seem too extreme.

I think in retrospect what has happened here is I've overexposed and blown out the left side of the image, because when I reset it in Lightroom, it was whited out in that area. I guess that's the great equaliser, removing all colour hue as it hits 255,255,255.

Actually, -23 highlight is pretty extreme. As you can see, a large amount of highlight recovery not only doesn't recover color information in blown highlights, it can get ugly quickly where lightroom determines the boundaries between highlights and midtones, which is why you got the strange grey outlines on the edges of the the clouds as well, because the smooth tonal transitions are destroyed.

 

[EdwardKaraa]

The 35 Biogon should not be coded as a cron asph. In fact it should not be coded at all. The camera has over compensated for vignetting, and the correction affects the raw file irreversibly. If you really insist on coding the lens, you should use the profile of the 28/2 asph or 28/2.8 asph as recommended by Zeiss. I do not use any correction and keep the lens profiles on off.

 

[jordanatkins]

The 35 Biogon should not be coded as a cron asph. In fact it should not be coded at all. The camera has over compensated for vignetting, and the correction affects the raw file irreversibly. If you really insist on coding the lens, you should use the profile of the 28/2 asph or 28/2.8 asph as recommended by Zeiss. I do not use any correction and keep the lens profiles on off.

Not to say that the lens should be coded one way or another, but I don't see a problem with over-compensating for vignetting here, unless a significantly large amount of cropping on the top, right and bottom has been done. I don't see evidence of the camera over-correcting in this case, just a simple blown highlight with too much post-processing.

 

[EdwardKaraa]

Not to say that the lens should be coded one way or another, but I don't see a problem with over-compensating for vignetting here, unless a significantly large amount of cropping on the top, right and bottom has been done. I don't see evidence of the camera over-correcting in this case, just a simple blown highlight with too much post-processing.

I've had similar looking shots when I had the lens profiles on. The lens natural vignetting will darken the corners a bit and avoid the blown highlights. The lens profiles, if you use the correct one, will try to remove vignetting completely, which already isn't such a good thing. But if you use the wrong profile, the corners may become even lighter than the image center, not good.

 

[wintoid]

The 35 Biogon should not be coded as a cron asph. In fact it should not be coded at all. The camera has over compensated for vignetting, and the correction affects the raw file irreversibly. If you really insist on coding the lens, you should use the profile of the 28/2 asph or 28/2.8 asph as recommended by Zeiss. I do not use any correction and keep the lens profiles on off.

Thanks Edward, genuinely useful information!