X100 WB issue?

[Pinphot]

I've had an X100 for two days now, and am starting to find a few quirks regarding AF and the camera not applying a universal ISO over all shooting modes, ie the camera ASA settings are set diifferently in the A, P and M settings. Please fix this in firmware Fuji. it's annoying having to reset ASA to desired settings when changing exposure modes.

My main issue so far has been the daylight WB setting. I shot some pics in bright afternoon sunlight yesterday, and the colour was horrendous. The sky went a weird cyany yellow and there was a cast in the midtones which couldn't be fixed without really messing the skies up further. The files ended up looking like slide film from 30 years, and not in a good way. You can take this retro thing far too far Fuji!!

I've spent a couple of hours today messing with various WB settings and WB shifts, and appear to have come up with a setting which seems to work. I've set the WB to the shade setting, (which gave a fairly unpleasant yellow cast), and then cranked the WB shift to +5 blue which is now giving a much more neutral WB which I'm pretty happy with. I have the camera set to Adobe RGB rather than sRGB, as I'm working in a fully colour managed system and my clients expect delivery in this colour space.

I wondered whether I might have a faulty camera, but speaking to a friend and colleague who bought the other X100 in the shop at the same time as myself, it appears that his camera is showing the same unpleasant colour problems in the daylight presets.

I'd be interested to hear whether any other user's are having similar WB issues or not, and if so what their fixes were?

On the whole, I'm pretty happy with the X100 so far, but I have come across one or two quirks, which i hope Fuji will fix in firmware.

Cheers,

Mark

www.markpinderphotography.co.uk

 

[btgc]

Can't believe this happened SO fast.

 

[hausen]

I have been using mine mainly B&W and in Aperture priority so have seen major Colour shift. Will try using settings you mention and see if mine does as well. So far I am loving in B&W.

 

[Soothsayerman]

Is there a custom white balance function where you can set your own wb??

 

[_larky]

I'm not seeing this, is this in camera or via conversion?

I've not changed anything on my camera out of the box, just set it to manual everything and it all seems good. But, I've not had a chance to shoot outside much and it's been overcast so...

I'll test this tomorrow and report back.

Oh, I see you use Adobe RGB. I use sRGB. Adobe RGB is a known problem on Fuji cameras apparently.

 

[Soothsayerman]

Right, custom white balance and you can set the tempererature. If that's the case. I would never use AWB anyway.

 

[Pinphot]

Some sample files

Some sample files

Find here 3 files manifesting the wonky colour balance. No 3 is a bit under' but that shouldn't make any difference.

I had a fuji point n' shoot a few years ago with similar colour issues. I sincerely hope this isn't the Fuji look? I've never seen colour like this from any of the Canon DSLR's I've owned nor the Panny GF1/20mm which has been my compact of choice for 18 months. The colour from the Panny has been close enough for me to not worry about mixing n' matching with my Canon 5D2 files, I'm not so sure about the Fuji colours though.

Cheers,

Mark

www.markpinderphotography.co.uk

 

[ray*j*gun]

Maybe its my monitor but I don't think the balance is off.....and I'm no fan of digicams.

 

[Arjay]

Frome the pictures shown, I can't see any serious WB problem. On my screen, the pictures have a somewhat coolish rendition, which is to be expected from the light situation. I suggest you check your monitor. Do you use a color-calibrated workflow?

 

[Pickett Wilson]

The photos posted look fine to me, on both a calibrated and uncalibrated monitor. Maybe it's time you bought a new monitor to go with that X100! 🙂

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

Can't believe this happened SO fast.

Every big camera has a very big panic factor in the Intertoobes' chatrooms. This is more or less what I think happens at the NYSE whenever Bill Gates sneezes or Soros changes tissue paper brands.

 

[gavinlg]

Those examples don't look bad at all to me (on my calibrated monitor). They look very good in fact. They're slightly cool and very slightly cyan but it's a pleasant rendition to me. One thing the 5d's do is err on the pink side - perhaps you're used to this? Otherwise feel free to post more examples you feel illustrate your point.

Or just wait for RAW support to get to the major raw vendors and shoot raw.

 

[Pinphot]

The monitors of my Mac and macbook-pro are hardware calibrated every 3 months or so, so monitor calibration should not be an issue. I'm also working fully within the closed loop of an Adobe RGB colour managed workflow.

I do think that there are problems with the preset white balances, some posters have acknowledged a shift towards the cyan, which don't clean up well in post, suggesting that the cast is not universal across the full colour range.

After further testing, using my GF1 as a control, I have settled on this setting which appears to give a much more neutral and accurate colour balance in most daylight, from sunny to overcast. WB set to 6300K, and then a +7 adjustment in the y/b slider and -1 in the r/cy slider in the WB shift menu option. Files using this setting appear much more post production friendly too, in that they can be weirded up if you want but the Fuji default presets as they stand are pretty difficult to correct.

Having come from Canon DSLR's and the Panny GF1, I much prefer the WB presets on planet Canon then Planet Fuji, if my experiences with the X100 and a previously owned Fuji compact are anything to go by.

Obviously, if your happy with the baked in Fuji presets then fine, but I think that there will be a lot of photographers new to Fuji, used to Canon/Panasonic and recent Nikon's colour fidelity who will not like Fuji's take on reality and not like the camera for this reason which would be a shame, as in most other respects, (some AF/shutter button implementation issues excepted), the camera is fantastic.

www.markpinderphotography.co.uk