Canon 30d color question....

I was thinking of buying a friend's 30d off him and tried it out today. Love the feel of it with my 400mm. Problem is that when I look at the LCD screen the colors are NOT at all what I'm seeing in real life. Example: I took a picture of a purple coneflower with my Rebel XT and the same flower with the 30d. Thought I took them with the same settings, but the ISO for the 30d was 400 (which in bright light should have made the image even brighter) and the Rebel XT was at ISO 200. There was no in-camera contrast, nor color adjustments, and the same exposure compensation was used. The shot with the XT is much more true to the real color, involving almost no post processing if I were to keep the shot. Here are the images. The first one was taken with the 30d and the second was taken with the Rebel XT. Both had the 400mm f 5.6 lens on. No post processing was done except resizing. Any ideas?? Oh yeah, they were taken in large JPEG format, I don't shoot in RAW, just don't have a fast enough computer and I've never shot in RAW and so far, it's fine with me.

30d, ISO 400, f 7.1, 1/250 sec., exp. -1, metering mode -1(I didn't adjust that, not sure what that is).

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to me the 30D looks better...*-)

Were these using the cameras to produce JPEGs or RAW? The different cameras handle JPEG differently, even if they're nominally at "standard, out-of-box" settings.

grinchy wrote in post #3924793
to me the 30D looks better...*-)

Not if you've seen the color of a real purple coneflower. It's not really purple, more pinkish.

grinchy wrote in post #3924793
to me the 30D looks better...*-)

I agree. The second one looks a little oversaturated to me.

Jon wrote in post #3924798
Were these using the cameras to produce JPEGs or RAW? The different cameras handle JPEG differently, even if they're nominally at "standard, out-of-box" settings.

Well these were just set at the highest quality JPEG setting and these were shot in AV mode. Forgot to mention that.

Strick wrote in post #3924822
I agree. The second one looks a little oversaturated to me.

Ahhh, I give up To the eye of the one behind the lens the first does not look right. Maybe it looks better on a different monitor. But even on the LCD screen the color looked extremely off.

ngannet wrote in post #3924823
Well these were just set at the highest quality JPEG setting and these were shot in AV mode. Forgot to mention that.

That might be the culprit. The XT probably does a lot more in-camera processing than the 30D - saturation, sharpness, etc. Color styles (i think that's what it's called. I haven't shot in JPEG in a while, so color styles is irrelevant to me) is applied when you shoot in JPEG.

Woogie wrote in post #3924836
That might be the culprit. The XT probably does a lot more in-camera processing than the 30D - saturation, sharpness, etc.

Even on its own without adjusting the settings? Wow...so in other words, I'd have to do way more post processing with a 30d? Honestly, as I was taking sample shots, they all looked terrible to me on the LCD. They looked slightly better on the computer screen. But if I was out all day photographing I would probably be deleting them as I went, based on what is on the screen. No matter what adjustments I eventually made on the 30d, I could not get anything close to what the flower actually looked like to even know if I had a decent shot. I understand the LCD is not the final word, but I couldn't even get a rough idea if I needed to make adjustments. When I'm out 'shooting' birds, I look at the LCD after just about every shot and it is quite reliable on the XT.

Do some shots in RAW and compare them to see if it the way the camera is processing them.

Thanks...i'll have to give that a shot!

30D has picture styles feature (Standard, portrait, landscape, faither, neutral). So this can be the reason, So check which picture style was set.

ngannet wrote in post #3924854
Even on its own without adjusting the settings? Wow...so in other words, I'd have to do way more post processing with a 30d? Honestly, as I was taking sample shots, they all looked terrible to me on the LCD. They looked slightly better on the computer screen. But if I was out all day photographing I would probably be deleting them as I went, based on what is on the screen. No matter what adjustments I eventually made on the 30d, I could not get anything close to what the flower actually looked like to even know if I had a decent shot. I understand the LCD is not the final word, but I couldn't even get a rough idea if I needed to make adjustments. When I'm out 'shooting' birds, I look at the LCD after just about every shot and it is quite reliable on the XT.

Picture styles only applies to shooting in JPEG from what I understand. You can go through the menus on your 30D and boost all the settings if you want. But I personally prefer to shoot in RAW.

DSLRs require more work in post processing than point and shoots. Some people like to point, shoot, and print. So shooting with a DSLR requires a little bit of time on the computer customizing the image to get your final pictures, but I'd say the results are a lot more pleasing as they are more customizable to meet your needs.

Woogie wrote in post #3924905
Picture styles only applies to shooting in JPEG from what I understand. You can go through the menus on your 30D and boost all the settings if you want. But I personally prefer to shoot in RAW.

DSLRs require more work in post processing than point and shoots. Some people like to point, shoot, and print. So shooting with a DSLR requires a little bit of time on the computer customizing the image to get your final pictures, but I'd say the results are a lot more pleasing as they are more customizable to meet your needs.

Thanks...I do understand that they require more PPing as I always do some with my Rebel XT. But the colors just seemed SO off to me with the 30d. Even if I underexpose the hell out of a shot on the XT the true color seems to be easy to pull out. Guess I'll probably just stick to the XT. I wanted to get the 30d as a main body, mainly for the faster FPS, but probably not now.

ngannet wrote in post #3924924
Thanks...I do understand that they require more PPing as I always do some with my Rebel XT. But the colors just seemed SO off to me with the 30d. Even if I underexpose the hell out of a shot on the XT the true color seems to be easy to pull out. Guess I'll probably just stick to the XT. I wanted to get the 30d as a main body, mainly for the faster FPS, but probably not now.

So it's only a matter of color that you won't switch to the 30D? There are definite advantages. Color can be corrected easily if you shot in RAW. There are other benefits to shooting in RAW.

To name a few: You have more AF points with the 30D, which helps out a bit. To me, it's easier to compose a picture with the 9 point AF than with the XT's 7 point AF. You also have a better, fast AF system with the 30D as well. This might matter to you if you're looking to do some wild life photography. The build is better as well - this is nice if you do a lot of hiking or traveling.