I spotted this flame tree full of Corella's this morning & couldn't resist taking a couple of photo's. First off I pulled out my little Sony Cybershot p&s & took a couple of photo's but when I looked at them they were pale & washed out! Then I took a couple with my iPhone & the colours were much more vibrant...the one on the top is the iPhone shot, while the one underneath is the Cybershot. I was amazed at the difference in colour between the two, now I wonder whether or not I bother to cart the Sony around with me? What do you think? Any idea why the colours look so washed out in the bottom photo?
I find that the digital zoom on my compact (which I assume is what the bottom one was taken on) can have an effect on the colours (as well as other things!). Just an idea...?
If so then the camera make all sorts of decisions for you as part of the processing done just after taking the raw image off the sensor and just before it's written to the memory card.
All the above is very complicated and heavily depends upon the camera being used and the information it receives.
Yep, I agree, I also think it's because of the zoom. I'm no expert, but I've tried comparing IPhone and p&s and still prefer the latter (also depends on how clean u keep ur phone's lens... not the case with me heeehe).
Anyway, just try taking the same identical pic with both and you'll know for sure ;)
Because on the iphone you can touch the screen and it will adjust the focus, shutter and app for the area you chose to highlight. Your cybershot is probably set to adjust for the whole photo.
For my sunset photo earlier this week if I had focused on the sky it would have been much lighter, but by focusing on the water it adjusted the camera so the sky was darker.
I do hate the zoom on my iphone because of camera shake becoming more obvious and a hint more noisy.
a lot of things can play into what happened to the color in the pns shot. White balance being a big part of that. What setting was your Cybershot on? (landscape, portrait, etc).
I suspect the issue here was that both cameras were in auto white balance mode.
White balance determines what colour the neutral parts of the image are. The human eye is extremely good at this, so we rarely notice the massive difference in the colour of something 'white' in different lighting conditions (sunlight, cloud, tungsten light, fluorescent light). We just see the object as 'white'.
The camera tries to replicate this, but often is unable to do such a good job. Our eyes adapt to everything that we're seeing and average this out over a period, whereas the camera will attempt to choose white balance based just on what it can see in the photo it's taken.
In the case of the iPhone shot, you have taken the whole tree. In this shot, we have got dark sky on the right of the shot, light clouds on the left of the shot, grass at the bottom of the shot, and various colours in the tree. When averaged out, the camera has been able to make an assumption of the white balance which reasonably closely matches how our eye perceived the scene.
On the second shot, the camera had a lot less to work with -- just the grey sky, the brown tree branches, and the white birds. In this case it's made a guess as to the correct white balance, but because it has less to work with, it's chosen a setting that less closely replicates how the scene looked.
The best way to fix this is to use the white balance control on the camera to choose an appropriate balance, probably 'cloudy' in this case. This would have given the camera information about the light source, rather than the camera trying to work it out. However, you need to remember to change this every time you move location, otherwise if you use 'cloudy' white balance indoors, you'll end up with very weird colours!
The good news is that these problems are also fairly easy to adjust in post-processing. I had a quick 30 second play to adjust the bottom photo to more closely resemble the top photo:
Personally I think that the top photo (and now my version of the bottom photo) is a little too blue, but it's very much personal preference.
If you see these issues on shots that are the same (e.g. a shot of the whole tree with your Sony) it might be worth posting some more examples -- it could be an issue with the settings rather than just how the photo was composed. Comparing two photos from different cameras with significantly different framing makes it difficult to come to any firm conclusion.
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If so then the camera make all sorts of decisions for you as part of the processing done just after taking the raw image off the sensor and just before it's written to the memory card.
All the above is very complicated and heavily depends upon the camera being used and the information it receives.
Hope this helps.
Anyway, just try taking the same identical pic with both and you'll know for sure ;)
For my sunset photo earlier this week if I had focused on the sky it would have been much lighter, but by focusing on the water it adjusted the camera so the sky was darker.
I do hate the zoom on my iphone because of camera shake becoming more obvious and a hint more noisy.
White balance determines what colour the neutral parts of the image are. The human eye is extremely good at this, so we rarely notice the massive difference in the colour of something 'white' in different lighting conditions (sunlight, cloud, tungsten light, fluorescent light). We just see the object as 'white'.
The camera tries to replicate this, but often is unable to do such a good job. Our eyes adapt to everything that we're seeing and average this out over a period, whereas the camera will attempt to choose white balance based just on what it can see in the photo it's taken.
In the case of the iPhone shot, you have taken the whole tree. In this shot, we have got dark sky on the right of the shot, light clouds on the left of the shot, grass at the bottom of the shot, and various colours in the tree. When averaged out, the camera has been able to make an assumption of the white balance which reasonably closely matches how our eye perceived the scene.
On the second shot, the camera had a lot less to work with -- just the grey sky, the brown tree branches, and the white birds. In this case it's made a guess as to the correct white balance, but because it has less to work with, it's chosen a setting that less closely replicates how the scene looked.
The best way to fix this is to use the white balance control on the camera to choose an appropriate balance, probably 'cloudy' in this case. This would have given the camera information about the light source, rather than the camera trying to work it out. However, you need to remember to change this every time you move location, otherwise if you use 'cloudy' white balance indoors, you'll end up with very weird colours!
The good news is that these problems are also fairly easy to adjust in post-processing. I had a quick 30 second play to adjust the bottom photo to more closely resemble the top photo:
Personally I think that the top photo (and now my version of the bottom photo) is a little too blue, but it's very much personal preference.
If you see these issues on shots that are the same (e.g. a shot of the whole tree with your Sony) it might be worth posting some more examples -- it could be an issue with the settings rather than just how the photo was composed. Comparing two photos from different cameras with significantly different framing makes it difficult to come to any firm conclusion.