Custom Camera Calibration Profiles

tzalman wrote in post #17015225
Your Raw files lack all color! Raws are greyscale images at best. Putting in the colors is part of the process by which data from the Raw serves as the basis for creating a color image by LR, DPP or the Digic processor in your camera. If you don't like the colors that LR creates, that's what all the sliders are for. Oh, I forgot, that would take away from the purity and realism. Make it sullied and artificial. Detract from the immediacy of the photographic experience. What you want is an application that will automagically reproduce at the push of a button what you think you remember. Some day maybe, not quite yet.

Yes, I know what RAW files really are and I've been processing them for years, but when I take a trip down the Na Pali coast for instance, I want the colors that are actually there. Not added color in LR or photoshop, but the real colors of the scene. I think maybe I'll try the color checker passport and see how that is. Every camera profile I've tried for my 5D2 just leaves something to be desired. I would never shoot JPG because you're just taking away from the quality and flexibility of RAW and honestly my iphone does a better job picking white balance than my camera unless I pick it for the camera. I do like to be creative with RAW files and landscapes, but I'd like the correct rendition of the scene as a starting point

Canon_Shoe wrote in post #17015326
Yes, I know what RAW files really are and I've been processing them for years, but when I take a trip down the Na Pali coast for instance, I want the colors that are actually there. Not added color in LR or photoshop, but the real colors of the scene. I think maybe I'll try the color checker passport and see how that is. Every camera profile I've tried for my 5D2 just leaves something to be desired. I would never shoot JPG because you're just taking away from the quality and flexibility of RAW and honestly my iphone does a better job picking white balance than my camera unless I pick it for the camera. I do like to be creative with RAW files and landscapes, but I'd like the correct rendition of the scene as a starting point

You will likely see no perceptible difference between Adobe Standard and a carefully made dual illuminant profile using a ColorChecker Passport. There is also a chance that your dual illuminate profile will give a poor result compared to what Adobe created because you wont have controlled ISO standard lighting to create the profile with and will resort to using tungsten room lighting and a sunny outdoor day.

The profile I created matched Adobe Standard for my Nikon D700 perfectly ... so I tossed it and have stuck with Adobe Standard ever since.

I've never had any profile created using the xrite software look indistiguisable to the Adobe standard on any of the three canon bodies I have.

I always thought that the whole point of creating a custom profile is because of possiblity of different sensors responding in different ways. So the 'Standard' profiles created by Canon and Adobe will match the average response of a particular sensor. If your sensor's response is close to that average then 'Standard' profiles will be close to your custom profile. If, however, your sensor's response is different from the average then 'Standard' profiles won't be as accurate as the custom ones.

In a video interview on The Luminous Landscape a couple years ago Eric Chan admitted (rather sheepishly) that often only a single camera is used by the Adobe lab to make the profile. So the gamble cuts both ways; your camera may be off the center of the bell-curve, but so may have Adobe's unit been off - although if markedly so I imagine they would be made aware of it fairly soon and redo it.

Canon_Shoe wrote in post #17015326
Yes, I know what RAW files really are and I've been processing them for years, but when I take a trip down the Na Pali coast for instance, I want the colors that are actually there. Not added color in LR or photoshop, but the real colors of the scene. I think maybe I'll try the color checker passport and see how that is. Every camera profile I've tried for my 5D2 just leaves something to be desired. I would never shoot JPG because you're just taking away from the quality and flexibility of RAW and honestly my iphone does a better job picking white balance than my camera unless I pick it for the camera. I do like to be creative with RAW files and landscapes, but I'd like the correct rendition of the scene as a starting point

I really don't know what to suggest, I mean there are so many variables with that type of thing I really don't know what "correct" is. It's not like shooting in a studio where you have artificial/fixed lighting and you can set a "correct" white balance and come up with predictable results. With outdoor shooting you are either dealing with the effects of daylight on your colors and tones and your visual perception of those colors and tones, or at night you are dealing with a multitude of artificial lights, again affecting your vision as well as how they come across in a digital capture. So, to me, looking for good colors and tones is a toss-up between a "standard" outcome in my Raw converter and then whatever tweaks please my eye!

tzalman wrote in post #17018561
In a video interview on The Luminous Landscape a couple years ago Eric Chan admitted (rather sheepishly) that often only a single camera is used by the Adobe lab to make the profile. So the gamble cuts both ways; your camera may be off the center of the bell-curve, but so may have Adobe's unit been off - although if markedly so I imagine they would be made aware of it fairly soon and redo it.

That's exactly what I understood. And all of the profiles appear to go through beta testing, so I'd be surprised if adjustments aren't made if testers report that the profile looks "off".

My feeling though is that even if in theory making your own would give a better result if your camera doesn't match the sample Adobe used, it's highly unlikely that the average person will nail the lighting required to make the profile, which will probably introduce more error than the tiny difference between sensor copies. I'm not saying that will be the case for all users, but I bet some seeing significant differences between Adobe Standard and the ColorChecker simply made the profile wrong.

Example: Eric Chan corrected one user that was using a 2500K compact fluorescent for the tungsten illuminant.

Bob_A wrote in post #17021947
My feeling though is that even if in theory making your own would give a better result if your camera doesn't match the sample Adobe used, it's highly unlikely that the average person will nail the lighting required to make the profile, which will probably introduce more error than the tiny difference between sensor copies.

The calibration process is actually pretty tolerant of lighting differences, at least for daylight and tungsten. The Rodney video I posted earlier explains why.

I do understand the doubting though. I have often wondered why there would be significant variance among different cameras of the same make and model.

But all I know is that I like the color better with my custom profile. Skin tones in particular are much better. With the DNG Profile Editor, I also can get consistent results from one calibration shot to the next. In the old "Rags script" days previous to the DNG Profile Editor, I was never able to get consistent calibration results.

Eyeball2 wrote in post #17022573
The calibration process is actually pretty tolerant of lighting differences, at least for daylight and tungsten. The Rodney video I posted earlier explains why.

I do understand the doubting though. I have often wondered why there would be significant variance among different cameras of the same make and model.

But all I know is that I like the color better with my custom profile. Skin tones in particular are much better. With the DNG Profile Editor, I also can get consistent results from one calibration shot to the next. In the old "Rags script" days previous to the DNG Profile Editor, I was never able to get consistent calibration results.

Daylight doesn't make much of a difference, but tungsten can make some, and a few folks just shouldn't bother because they don't know how to follow instructions. I was really careful when I made my dual illuminant profiles and as I said before I tossed them because there was zero difference with them from Adobe Standard. Maybe I'm just a lucky one that has a camera that closely matches the one used by Adobe. Adobe Standard for my old Canon 20D is also much better than Camera Standard that emulates "Canon colors". Using it I get pretty similar results between my Nikon and Canon equipment.

The calibration target also has an expiry date, and there's no way I'm going to buy a new one every time I buy a new camera.

I'm glad that you are getting what you paid for though. It's pretty impressive that if you do have a camera not matching the norm that it's so easy to fix.

By the way, the video you linked to is really excellent. Almost makes me want to pull out my ColorChecker and try it out again.