Okay, the colors on my new 40D are all out of whack

stream41 wrote in post #6935216
Yeah, I tried it several times and had the camera in the exact same position - the lighting didn't change.

How do you know? Do you use tungsten lighting, halogen, fluorescent, other discharge lamps, led? Some of them (fluorescent mainly) cycle between different colors, and since you shot at 1/40 instead of 1/30 or 1/60 (or 1/25 and 1/50 in parts of europe and japan), you only got part of a cycle, and some of them exhibit very uneven spectrums (all discharge lamps to some extent, including fluorescents, and LED lights to a large extent) and can cause certain colors to show up more or less depending on what it is. There's also the off chance of UV or infra-red based problems, especially with the LED laps (most "white" LEDs are actually UV leds that have phosphors), which may affect one more than the other

Just a thought - you set the WB to Tungsten but what is the actual lighting i.e. is it Tungsten incandescent bulbs or fluorescent mixed in??? If the latter then what you are seeing could simply (?) be differences in how the WB in the two bodies behaves in addition to the fact that depending on the shutter speed the natural frequency of a fluorescent could/may have effect.

Also try using a flash and set the WB to daylight or flash?

HTH maybe

Edit - basroil & I great minds think alike especially posting in the same minute !

PPS basroil - like the sig but did you ever see the 'noise' (lovely grain) on Konica ISO 3200 film ~ a very interesting film stock that one.

Oh yea, and this really does look like a WB issue, the camera will try to make something gray to begin with, so it's just your luck it had to be a green blanket (which looks like fluorescent shift anyway).

xarqi wrote in post #6935515
Take a RAW shot of the same scene with each body and process identically in PP. Compare.
This will eliminate any differences due to in-camera settings.

stream41 wrote in post #6935585
Uhh... that's what I did

Really?

stream41 wrote in post #6934969
With the 40D I took a version of the shot in Normal and Faithful mode and chose the "best" one.

stream41 wrote in post #6934969
The WB was set to "tungsten" on both cameras, but in PP I adjusted the 40D's temperature/tint to match the 350D's photo, in case that's what was causing the difference (it wasn't). So their WB is essentially equal.

xarqi wrote in post #6935649
Really?

Yes, really.

The lighting in that room is all tungsten bulbs. The 350D shot was at 1/25 and the 40D shot was at 1/30 - everything else was the same. If you drop down the 40D's exposure in PP just a tad (to make it 1/25, basically), it doesn't help - it just makes the blanket a lighter shade of gray.

Why did my 350D capture the colors more accurately under the same conditions?

stream41 wrote in post #6935724
...The 350D shot was at 1/25 and the 40D shot was at 1/30...

Didn't you say...

stream41 wrote in post #6934969
... These two shots were taken on my old 350D and my new 40D. All settings are the same - ISO, shutter speed, aperture. ...

Anyway, I would say try to go into the menu of the 40D and clear all settings.

Shoot in RAW and don't do any PP and post up the results.

Hmmm! what Picture Style is the 40D set to? That could well be having an effect???

If you take another in RAW on the 40D and view it in DPP you can change the "look" by selecting the various Picture Styles in DPP. That would be one quick way to see whether it is teh Style affecting the Green blanket.

aIpha wrote in post #6935773
Didn't you say...


Anyway, I would say try to go into the menu of the 40D and clear all settings.

Shoot in RAW and don't do any PP and post up the results.

Yeah I realized they were different - but I adjusted the exposure of the 40D's shot, and that didn't correct it.

I did a reset all settings on the camera - same results. I just updated the camera's firmware to 1.0.8 and I think it actually helped a little. I'm getting much closer to actual colors now.

Box Brownie wrote in post #6935803
Hmmm! what Picture Style is the 40D set to? That could well be having an effect???

If you take another in RAW on the 40D and view it in DPP you can change the "look" by selecting the various Picture Styles in DPP. That would be one quick way to see whether it is teh Style affecting the Green blanket.

I've tried Standard, Faithful, and Neutral. Faithful helps just a little, but it's still kinda gray.

I think this boils down to the way the WB is applied in low-light situations. It irks me that my 350D does a better job, though.

Okay, I updated the firmware to 1.0.8 and I'm using the Faithful picture setting, and it seems to be pretty darn accurate now, even under tungsten lighting with the appropriate WB settings.

Problem solved I guess Either I was doing something wrong (very possible) or it was the firmware update.

In the absence of a friend with another 40D to qualify if it 40D's generically or unique to that body and most of what you intend to do is low light non flash then maybe you need to get a return and see whether the next one is better?

As an aside - I took some indoor portraits a while back and frankly leave my WB on auto. I used my 430EX and the lighting was a real mixture of lamp types so when looking at the RAWs in DPP I was not 100% happy with the flesh tones so selected "daylight" WB in DPP and the flesh tones IMO became much more natural with other colours equally looking more IMO like they should have.

Subject to other real world testing only you can decide if the way this body is working is good enough???

stream41 wrote in post #6935840
Okay, I updated the firmware to 1.0.8 and I'm using the Faithful picture setting, and it seems to be pretty darn accurate now, even under tungsten lighting with the appropriate WB settings.

Problem solved I guess Either I was doing something wrong (very possible) or it was the firmware update.

Now that is interesting as I think mine is still on 1.0.3, not sure what Canon said about 1.0.8 so must go and check that again.

Oh for the record I use "Neutral" with sharpening & contrast set to "0"

Isn't this pretty much the exact same thread as this, that you posted 4 hrs ago? It might be easier in the future to keep all responses under "one roof" so to speak.

Medic1 wrote in post #6935865
Isn't this pretty much the exact same thread as this, that you posted 4 hrs ago? It might be easier in the future to keep all responses under "one roof" so to speak.

Sort of. I thought that was a white balance issue, but I became more concerned with the color accuracy as time passed, so I created a new thread about it in general to replace the one that pertained directly to WB.