Canon EOS digital colour

Last summer I treated myself to my first digital single lens reflex camera (DSLR). (A Canon EOS 100D for those who are interested in such things.) It was somewhat of an impulse purchase, as the plan was to shop for a laptop -- so I think I must have got distracted...

As with my earlier rambling blog postings about (compact) digital camera colour, I was interested to see what the default colour of a DSLR would look straight out of the factory, so to speak. This first image shows the results of "right out of the box", on the Automatic ("A+") setting.

My assessment of this photo is that -- like the output of the compact camera previously -- it is contrasty, over-saturated and too blue. Look at the reflection in the window in the background, and those flowers beyond the wall should be more purple. (But I appreciate that there are those who will prefer it this way. Life would be dull and devoid of variety if we all liked the same thing!)

Predictably, I felt that the colour reproduction could be improved. As the settings on modern EOS DSLRs are a little different from what I was used to in PowerShot compacts, I referred to this article for some suggestions as to what I could change and how it would affect my images. If it isn't already obvious, I am a believer in Straight Out Of Camera (SOOC) -- getting the camera settings as close as I can, so I don't have to waste time in front of the computer fiddling with stuff later!

Having experimented with the Custom Color settings of the Canon PowerShot S95, I was surprised to find that EOS DSLRs only offer settings for Picture Style, Contrast, Sharpness, Saturation, and Skin Tone. (Plus the usual adjustments for Auto White Balance (AWB).) The RGB adjustments of the S95 are absent, but the EOS allows seven steps of adjustment compared to the S95's five.

Following the Digital Photography Review article, it looked as though either the Faithful or Neutral picture style was the one most suitable for me. Contrast and saturation needed to be reduced -- par for the course in all digital cameras, it seems! Therefore, after a little testing in Program mode, I set Neutral picture style, Sharpness to 5, Contrast to -3, Saturation to -1, and left Color Tone as it was. This is denoted by (N,5,-3,-1,0). I was quite pleased with the results when I went on holiday with the camera in September 2016. However, I did think that the contrast was a little higher than I wanted and the colours were still slightly too saturated.

I subsequently read elsewhere that setting Sharpness beyond 3 can cause sharpening artefacts on images, so I reduced this to 3. In late December (UK) 2016, I tried the Faithful picture style: (F,3,-4,-3,0). I decided that it did strange things to reds in particular, especially in winter low light conditions. Canon's documentation seems a little vague, but I think the idea is that this picture style needs to be used under a (controlled) light source of 5200K to reproduce faithful colour.

It seems that many DSLR photographers "shoot raw", and don't worry too much about camera settings -- preferring to spend time with photo-editing software. Fair enough. It is more of an issue for those who use DSLRs to shoot video. This is how I came across the Prolost Flat setting: (N,0,-4,-2,0). Apart from the sharpening, this was near enough what I had decided on, so it was reassuring that someone else is extolling its virtues.

The second image had the camera set to (N,3,-4,-2,0). I am still working on the Auto White Balance settings, but this photo used (A8, G2). (I was surprised that I had to set Amber compensation so high.) It may not "pop", but I feel this is a better representation of what I experienced at the time, and the colour balance and saturation does not jar.