Lenses with "good" colors

I have always been wondering, when people say the color you get from a specific lens is good, which color do they actually refer to?


- color you get from the camera settings (white balance, picture-style)


- or if you shoot RAW, the optimal color set you obtained from adjusting WB and picture style in DPP? (this should be the same as adjusting them in the camera, right?)


- or the color you obtained after applying photoshop techniques? (this is unlikely to be what they are referring to, right?)


- or the color is relative: using the same settings but different lenses to tell the difference

When someone speaks about 'good color' they are referring to the lenses ability to render colors accurately straight out of the camera (no PP) as they are seen by the naked eye. For instance you will often hear things about some Sigma lenses having a yellow cast--that is not good when it comes to color rendition.

"- or the color is relative: using the same settings but different lenses to tell the difference"





I can shoot with my Canon 50 1.4 at f/4 then set my 24-105 4.0L to 50mm and f/4 and the colors out of the 24-105 will be more lush and vivid.


I can pretty much end up with similar colors making corrections in Aperture, but it is always better to start out with best, most accurate, true-to- life image.

Thanks for explaining!


But I am still wondering what does it mean by "straight out of the camera" in terms of WB and picture style settings.

Basically you want to nail everything in the camera like exposure and WB. In the case of jpeg shots and picture styling, sharpening and saturation too. If you leave dialing in you images to post production the image will lose detail and gain noise among other things.


Oh and time, it will save you time.

But as digital files, is there any difference between setting WB & PS in camera and in DPP? I only shoot in RAW now btw.

I'm sure you will find different opinions on this too, but I think it is pretty important to get the white balance pretty close in the camera.


I've had images images I shot AWB under Tungsten lights and AWB did a poor job and as I corrected the WB in RAW I lost detail in edges where white met dark colors. I didn't have a shot under the same conditions correctly white balanced to compare, but I got to think I'd have been off with with a proper WB.

good idea, next time I will take similar shots but with different in-camera settings and see the difference with the ones adjusted in DPP...


but come to think of it, it is a digital file per se, what would be the difference of processing it in camera vs. processing it on a computer? Computational-wise, the processing on a computer should be more powerful, no?

Camera has to process it any way, why not get it right the first time. Someday you may just hand a card over to someone with out the opportunity to do any adjustments. So you want that person to open up the images and think that you are a hack?

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Originally Posted by Keith B

Camera has to process it any way, why not get it right the first time.
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Yeah, sounds reasonable.