Comments on: It’s all subjective

By: One of my bright ideas | Adventures of an Idiot – occasional ramblings of a photography freak

Wed, 26 May 2010 12:30:08 +0000

[...] camera that I haven’t actually used for, oh, nearly a year or so. Cos I’d had “issues” with it. One of which was its somewhat questionable rendition of colour. That had provided [...]

By: fotdmike

fotdmike — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 13:31:48 +0000

Yeah, these colour variations are a source of ongoing frustration for me. Its not just colour either, its also brightness. The level at which this is set on any given screen can make a huge difference to how a photo appears… and who’s to say what’s “right”? So what should be taken as a standard to be sure that the majority of people see a pic as the photographer intends?
And (this being possibly the more pertinent issue) the presence of such variations could even conceivably lead to the photographer him/herself not being certain which version is “right”. After all, how reliable is peoples’ “colour memory”? Not as reliable as we’d imagine, I’m suspecting. Certainly my own experiences (most recently with some shots I did of traffic bollards in my village) are leading me to that conclusion.

Not entirely unconnected to this, I’m also reminded of how one’s own “colour vision” can be impacted by ambient lighting to the extent that one temporarily sees everything with a distinct colour-caste. Yet, because this is part of one’s own vision, one may not realise the phenomenon’s occurring.
This is a recollection from my old graphics days and remembering that working for any significant length of time in a darkroom with a tinted light source would impart a colour-caste to one’s vision for a period of time having returned to “normal” daylight.

But is such an effect confined just to darkroom workers? Likely not.

Maybe it wouldn’t be such a huge issue for me if I weren’t habitually swapping between different machines to do various things. If I only ever worked on the one machine then I’d probably be unaware that the problem even existed.

By: forkboy

forkboy — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 01:13:05 +0000

A rather large variation in all matters colour-related. I imagine it does leave one questioning the point of it all considering the markedly different results.

This must be a sign that we should all switch to black & white only

By: fotdmike

fotdmike — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 08:01:47 +0000

Bizarre, isn’t it? And I can’t even say which one is “correct”, or most “accurate”. For it all depends which machine I’m using to look at them with. I find the whole thing of “colour consistency” and related matters (as they apply to the Web at least) incredibly frustrating.

By: Tam

Tam — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 02:26:24 +0000

i like the third photo, the one titled…GX20 sky colour test FS215B _G201237.