THE VIBRANCE FACTOR - PART II

Continuing with last week’s theme of “vibrance”, the pictures in today’s entry are intended to demonstrate “vibrance”. But first, if you are looking for Canon DPP Color Styles, Canon has a whole website full of them - CANON DPP COLOR STYLES. I have not used any of the styles available from Canon site, but I will be trying some of their portrait profiles. Some of their examples have a cooler, less pinkish-red look - which has been Canon achilles heel.

This past week the sun and sky cooperated, resulting in some deep orange and red sunsets full of gradients and saturated colors. This week’s images were taken at the same spot as many other sunset images from the Canon 1Ds Mark II during the past couple years. In the Carrollton Photo Gallery there are many images from this same field, though slightly different viewing locations. The time of year and time of day are also consistent, so comparing the 1Ds Mark III pictures to those in the gallery is relatively fair comparison and should provide a loose benchmark for how the Canon 1Ds Mark II would render the colors.

The goal of the pictures on this page was to capture the colors (and associated gradients), strong contrasts and some type of subject or focal point. What you are not seeing in these images are the 100s and 100s of roof tops to the right and left of the sun, the five cell phone towers, two water towers and some other non-photogenic junk. By shooting in the 200-400mm range I can isolate a small slice of the scene and try to make it look more interesting than reality. Living in the middle of suburbia, that’s no small feat. The Canon 100-400mm L IS was used for the first four pictures on this page.

In last week’s entry I mentioned how the 1Ds Mark III highlights may have a sparkle or twinkle. The picture of the telephone poles has some specular highlights along the cable and connects on the near pole. The way the 1Ds3 holds the last little bit color before blowing the highlight is subtly different than the 1Ds Mark II. It is a minor nuance, but it is something the 1Ds Mark III does very well. Overall the images on this page have deeper, richer colors than the 1Ds Mark II files. The added richness is probably the biggest difference in the files from the 1Ds Mark III compared to the 1Ds Mark II.

PUSHING THE SHADOWS

All the images on this page had their levels pushed to extremes. I am amazed at how many times levels can be repeatedly boosted on the same area without incurring an appreciable increase in noise. The Phase One P25 amazed me in the same way; its shadows at ISO 50 were essentially noise-free. The shadows could be boosted by 3 or 4 stops with little or no visible noise. The Canon 1Ds Mark III files have more noise than the P25, but like the P25, the 1Ds Mark III noise levels do not magnify as levels are boosted. What noise there is in the shadows, remains somewhat constant. The Canon 1Ds Mark II behaved in a similar manner, but only to a point.

To illustrate how far the shadows can be pushed, the image at the bottom of this page (taken with the Contax 18mm F4 Distagon) had the lower region below the horizon boosted three times in Photoshop by pushing the upper levels from 255 down to 180. This edit was performed THREE TIMES and added ~3 stops of exposure to the lower region of the picture - which was almost completely black. Instead of Photoshopping the image, it would have been better to shoot with 4X grad and maybe some off-shoe fill flash. However, I did not have that equipment on hand, so at least the image could salvaged with some aggressive editing.

The primary goal of today’s entry was to show some pictures with moderately pushed levels. Compared to the Canon 1Ds Mark II, most of the Mark III improvement are incremental at best. Canon 5D owners will be dazzled be the improvements in image and file quality, but for the 1Ds Mark II owners, the differences are more subtle.

For the 1Ds3 to hold the highlights requires more negative EC adjustment, thus pushing more information down into the shadows. The 1Ds3 can handle shadow recovery nicely, but it becomes part of the normal editing procedure for high contrast scenes. Canon’s Chuck Westfall said, “We haven't made any claims about increasing dynamic range with our current image sensors. Instead, we've said that dynamic range remains about the same or similar to previous generations despite higher resolution and smaller photosites.” About is the key word. Hopefully the Canon 1Ds Mark IV will bring more dynamic range in the highlight range.