Camera or monitor for lack of pic quality??

[grizzlygodin]

Hi there, I bought a used Canon 10D this past summer from a company with a very good reputation for its used camera equipment. The camera is great and all the functions work fine. Here is my question now. Most of the time the picture look just how I want them on the lcd screen on the back of the camera but when I get home and download them onto my computer they do not come close to what I see on the back of the camera. They are lacking the colours and shadows detail that is present on the back of my camera. I recently bought the Huey Monitor Calibrator thinking this would fix the problem but it has not either. My monitor is fairly new as well and is a Dell LCD. Any ideas what might be going on here?? Thanks for reading and I welcome any comments.

Chris

[bob_r]

Chris,

I've only seen reviews of Huey and haven't worked with it myself, but the reviews seem pretty positive. One thing you might try, is to take a few color shots and then take the card and have prints made from it. Compare the prints to the colors on your monitor and on your camera. If the prints seem to be true, but don't match your monitor, then your monitor needs more adjusting.

Bob R

P.S. Welcome to the forum!

[gldiana]

Chris,

not sure what software you are using to visualize your photos so it's a bit hard to help. As Bob said calibration is very important, but if the color profile in your camera and the one in your monitor don't match then the colors will look different. I use AdobeRGB (most cameras are set on sRGB which is a lower quality profile) since it gives the best gamut of the commercially available profile. On the 30D it can be changed through the menu, unfortunately I'm not familiar with the 10D.

[grizzlygodin]

Thanks guys, I think I will take the card to a photo store and make a couple prints to see how they match up. And I am using the sRGB setting so maybe I will switch it as well and see what results I get.

Thanks again, Chris

[Darrell]

I also have a 10D, go into the menu and just scroll down to color space and change it to Adobe RGB.

[Walczak Photo]

This is just my quick $.02 worth on this, but I actually use the sRGB all the way around. As gldiana mentioned, the Adobe RGB does have a better color gamet, however the two places where I have my prints done are both using the sRGB for their print equipment. In a small nutshell, when I was using the Adobe RGB on my system here at home, I was noticing that there was definitely a subtle difference between what I saw on my monitor and how my prints came out. By using the sRGB at the camera and on my system, along with the printers, I get consistency all the way thru the process...no surprises.

In my opinion it pays to talk to the folks at the lab where you're going to have your prints done and find out what they are using (assuming you're not printing your own) and work your way from there. I have had some serious problems because of the printers using different profiles...Ritz camera for example...every time they upgraded their kiosk software, they changed their color profiles and I ended up with things like green kangaroos and such and my selective color shots were really screwed up (and they charged me for their mistakes to boot).

Yes, there is this tendency to want to produce things at the highest quality with the most colors etc., etc., but remember that your "work flow" is only going to be as good as the weakest link in the chain. With that said, if your printer's don't support the Adobe RGB (which they probably don't), you'll get better consistency if you use sRGB (or other) on everything.


One other thing that I would like to mention that may or may not be an issue here is the monitor. I believe Chris said he was using a newer Dell LCD...now this could just be me, but I can't work on graphics on an LCD. I simply can't achieve the same results that I do with my ol' 19" Philips CRT. To me, brightness and saturation just never look the same on an LCD as they do on a (good) CRT. In either case, if the same profiles are indeed being used, system and camera, then I would suggest the monitor itself could be the problem. I would mention however that I find what I see on the back of my camera to be veeeeerrrrrrry subjective. With camera LCD's, how bright or saturated an image looks really depends on the ambient lighting and such. For example, there is a tendancy to under-expose an image at night based on what it looks like on the LCD because the LCD is bright. The opposite applies too...if you're shooting in bright sun light and you're basing your exposures on what you see on the LCD, there will be a tendency to over-expose because what you see on the LCD looks "washed out" in the brighter light. In extreme lighting, I strongly suggest using the histograms as a reference for correct exposure rather than "how it looks" on the camera's LCD. I find that a camera's LCD (even a large one) is good for framing references and seeing if the shot is really out of focus (and reading your menus of course), but that's pretty much it.

Again...just my $.02...
Peace,
Jim

[swoozie]

Just a note.. I use Adobe RGB as my profile and my lab uses sRGB. It doesn't affect how my prints come out.. I also tell my lab to turn off the automatic color correct..

[Walczak Photo]

Hey swoozie,

"I also tell my lab to turn off the automatic color correct.. "

Very good point...I forgot to mention that. I always have to tell the labs to turn off the correction otherwise the prints really get screwed up! I tend to be rather heavy-handed with the contrast and saturation and the auto software ends up making my shots look really washed out.

Yes, if you do your own corrections in PhotoShop (regardless of which profile you use) tell your lab to kill the auto-corrections!

Peace,
Jim