[Leica] Digital: colour rendition and image quality

[datamaster at northcoastphotos.com (Gary Todoroff)]

Here in the small market area of Eureka, I did copy/repro work for a few
years to fill out the business a bit. Finally gave up, not because of
technical difficulties but because so few people were willing to pay the
price to deal with the technical difficulties. Good color workflow is hard.

For copy/repro, I used color charts, too, but mostly relied on a simple gray
card and a Photoshop color correction plug-in from Pictographics. Using
similar techniques to the old "Mitchell Color Calibrator" for color darkroom
adjustments, I got fairly consistent results (Does anyone remember Bob
Mitchell, a friendly fellow who was willing to discuss his process at length
over the phone? He died about five years ago, and I remember him fondly as
someone who helped me to understand darkroom color.)

I doubt you can ever get *every* color exactly right. Best technique is the
one that was often quoted for perfect slide duplication where no one could
tell the difference between original and copy - take two dups and throw away
the original!

Gary Todoroff
(Tree LUGger)

-----Original Message-----
From: lug-bounces+datamaster=northcoastphotos.com@leica-users.org
[mailto:lug-bounces+datamaster=northcoastphotos.com@leica-users.org]On
Behalf Of Peter Dzwig
Sent: Friday, May 06, 2005 3:34 PM
To: LUG@leica-users.org; DLUG@leica-users.org
Subject: [Leica] Digital: colour rendition and image quality


Dear All,

I have just spent a few days photographing and recording some of my late
father's paintings before they were sent on semi-permanent loan to the
University of Torun in Poland.

I decided for fairly obvious reasons to use my D-1 to take digital images of
the
  70-odd paintings which have been shipped. I was horrified at the variation
in
colour between the painting itself, what I saw on the screen and what I
actually
got on the SD card. Of course I am aware that my eye and the camera don't
have
the same response characteristics; but interestingly I could do little to
get
the camera to come close...

Is this my D-1, is it common or is there some reasonable explanation?

Further, my father painted largely abstract works (you might describe him as
an
abstract expressionist, but it's not particularly accurate). On those where
the
boundaries between areas of colour were not distinct the camera appeared to
have
difficulty in producing a sharp image. The opposite being true where there
were
strong boundaries. I am coming to the conclusion that the
image-reconstruction
algorithms taking the output from the chip and building the resultant image
in
memory must have been fooled. Any thoughts??

FWIW, conditions were flat daylight, no auxiliary lighting.

Thanks for any thoughts - as I have a lot more still to do I would like to
know
if anyone can suggest correction techniques.

Although this is a fairly stringent test - and an unusual one - when all is
said
and done the D-1 is a Leica and should have done better.

Peter Dzwig


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