Comments and Profiles

Just a few notes:

1. I'm now allowing comments on this blog - so fire away! I'll moderate them first before publishing, but let me know what you think ;-)

2. There's been some progress on the Pentax *ist-D profile front. Hopefully have something to publish in a few weeks.

3. Finally published my capture sharpening method and action. The notes are available here, and the Photoshop action from here. I hope to have some screen-grabs and sample images ready in a week or so, and the whole thing should appear on this site.

Have fun!

Capture One camera profiles

I've been playing around with the QPcard, an Agfa IT-8 target and trying to get some sense from the Pentax *ist-D...

There are some seriously good quality profiles by Magne Nilsen which are available from: RawWorkflow.com. However, it's only for Canons, and a couple of Nikons. The *ist-D just isn't commercially viable :(

On a similar note I've found that the *ist-D (f/w 1.12) doesn't seem to capture manual white balance correctly. I used the Expodisc to set the WB and also capture a grey frame. In Capture One the camera reported 12400/30 (color temp & tint). Measuring off the Expodisc frame yielded 6900/20, and measuring off the QPcard 201 yielded 6600/21. Quite why the *ist-D gives such a strange WB I don't know... but it occurs in Capture One, Adobe Camera Raw (CS2), and Raw Shooter. So I have to assume it is either the camera or the (mis-)interpretation of the data.

And it's definitely not a linear relationship between the correct and manual WB either. Added to that is that manually set WB and JPG in the *ist-D is still just plain wrong. Something's goofed up somewhere, and I'm wondering if it's in the Pentax firmware.

So, I'm not sure whether I should try and profile the *ist-D with the camera WB, or an accurately set WB in Capture One. Am trying to find out some answers...

..tried this again and found the MWB agrees with the Expodisc... could it be that I'm using the Expodisc wrongly, or is there something about the way the *ist-D captures the MWB? (I'm trying to find out!)

White Balance and Colour Correction

I've had an Expodisc (www.expodisc.com) for a few months and absolutely love it. It's been fabulous to get an accurate white balance in even the craziest of lighting circumstances. So now I shoot RAW and use manual white balance - which is really easy on the Pentax *ist-D which has 3 manual settings.

In addition, I decided to get a QPcard 201 (www.qpcard.com) which has some interesting properties. The card itself has colour patches with an even spectrum, thus making it suitable for use under all kinds of lighting conditions (you don't get the metamemerism effect where the perceived colour changes under different lighting conditions). The software they provide allows you to correct the image colour and simulate "Neutral", "Velvia", and "Sinar". Now that's very nice... but my workflow is RAW and their software only works on JPGs. So the hunt is on to create a half decent ICC profile that can be used in Capture One....

Now I have an Agfa IT8 target, a QPcard 201, and the Expodisc I should be able to get a profile created... somehow! (I know there's stuff on www.aim-dtp.net, but I want to create three profiles: neutral, Velvia, and Sinar.) If anyone's got any ideas that don't involve hugely expensive software, do email me (mattmatic at hotmail dot com)!!