A7Rii Colour Rendition

[AndyH]

Evening all,

 

I am new to this forum and to Sony cameras.  I have been shooting Canon for years, and still do, but I bought an A7Rii for a few reasons.  So far I'm liking it.  It is a fantastic bit of kit for my landscape work.  I'm still learning my way round it and appraoching the point where I don't need to fuss about where things are and am just able to get on and shoot.  Most of my shooting is slow tripod based landscapes, a lot of which are in low light or at night.

 

ANYWAY...... My question to you folks is...... 

 

How do you find the colour rendition on the A7Rii?  I am noticing various colour casts in different lighting situations.  I know every camera system has its own intricacies and feel.  I guess after years of processing Canon RAWs I feel as if the A7Rii has a different feel to it.  I know this could easily be my processing, and that I need to find different ways to treat colour and tones etc. 

 

Has anyone else found this after shooting other systems?

 

 

 

 

[chrisqphoto]

I suggest using a color calibration chart, regardless of the brand you use. it helps me a lot with consistency

[addicted2light]

Same boat here, I too shoot landscapes and I too switched from Canon (5D mk II) to Sony a few years back (A7r).

 

1) the auto wb of the Sony is really bad, switch to daylight (or whatever lighting condition you're in at the moment). Especially in the woods it will otherwise constantly trying to overcompensate the green tonalities

 

2) the files, thanks to the great latitude aka dynamic range of the sensor are extremely flat. Think of them, in film terms, as of stand processed negatives: lots of potential, but hyper-flat before proper processing

 

I'm finding that for the very best results (keepers, not the lot of the images) I often have to use Photoshop and the LUTs. There are various sites offering free LUTs made for the Sony, just google it (sorry I don't have the links anymore). Even in Lightroom the processing requires often adding a ton of contrast, compared to the level I was used to add to Canon files.

 

Another problem is that LR defaults every file to the Adobe camera profile, that IMO is crap. Plenty of camera profiles you can DIY with a chart and plenty more available for free for the Sony, for example the ones this guy made (scroll down for the A7 series):

 

http://www.piraccini.net/2011/02/profili-colore-sony-a900-per-adobe-lr.html

 

Sometimes I too notice weird colors casts, but my guess is that is just the sensor that is better than what we were used to, and it is capable of discerning more tonalities for a given light source compared to other manufacturers' sensors.

 

And I definitely agree with chrisqphoto about the color calibration chart.

[AndyH]

Thanks for your opinions chaps.

 

I'll get myself a colour chart and try and hone things down that way.  Luckily the rest of my work flow is well calibrated.  This will be an interesting exercise as I've got a couple of real keepers from the last two days of experimenting that I just can't quite get right in LR.  I'll repeat with the chart and see the difference.  Then I'll throw the LUT's into the mix.  I'm installing the Sony profiles into LR as we speak. Oh, I did try Capture Pro on a trial basis......  Result was - Straight back to LR!

 

I'll get back to you with results, good ones hopefully!