Frustrated :-(

nickjohnwatson

nickjohnwatson

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Nick
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Having a frustrating time latey :-(

Had loads of comments that a lot of my skies look red, this is because of the cokin filters i use but the the most frustrating thing is that i'm not noticing it.

I've always had slight colour blindness. I struggle sometimes to distinguish between grey/pink - white/pink - red/brown - blue/purple - yellow/green - blue/purple so sometimes i miss the colour cast completely.

Getting to the stage now where i'm putting off processing stuff and feeling like i dont even want to take pictures because of it. Hoping to buy some better filters that actually are neutral (or near enough) and have no cast but they (LEE / Hitech) are expensive and its taking me ages to save.

Here's an example.
I can barely see the red, i can only see it because my wife pointed it out, otherwise i'd have been completely oblivious


Bah dont mean to rant im just getting annoyed with myself :-(
 
Well, FWIW, she's right, but I can completely understand your frustration!
 
Is your screen properly calibrated as that won't help things!
My slight colour blindness can cause problems too, but its normally about things at home like
"can you pass me that grey thing" "what grey thing" "that one right next to you" "oh you mean this thing which to any normal visioned person would be the greenest thing they've ever seen?" "just pass me it please!" :oops: :$ :ROFLMAO:
 
My step is colour blind so know it can be frustrating quite often go to work to find he has stitched a purple panel instead of blue lol.

If in doubt though ask your wife to double check it. Maybe a set sample chart you know to be true night help so you can compare side by side may not be of help depending how bad your colour blindness is as such.

Either way looks a great image and who cares some people charge a lot of money to have their own style
 
Yes, that is very Magenta! However I say who cares? I will often fake different colour casts in skies on much of my work. As long as you have a fairly uniform cloudy sky as above I think it works well, obviously there are issues if the sky is blue with lonely fluffy white clouds though!
 
Have you tried sticking to your guns and claiming that the sky was actually that colour ;)
Then get all stroppy with people and say "you weren't there, you don't know!":LOL:
 
Cokin filters? Somewhere on here is a very long post of mine about the issues I had with a set of Cokin filters bought from WEX. WEX basically fobbed me off, blamed my camera, etc but I could repeat every time, just by putting two of their ND grad filters together.
With and without the filters
113823525.jpg

113823528.jpg


They even took my comments off their review site warning users of the magenta tint - saying these were their most popular grad filters.

It's why I won't buy anything from WEX anymore.

The filters are shocking - the magenta tint can't even easily be removed.
 
Hiya folks, Sorry for the lack of replies i forgot about this thread :-)

I've been looking at the Hitech 0.9ND soft grad, hears these are more or less neutral but with a very slight cool cast. Anyone use them who could confirm?
I could live with a slightly cool look as its easy to warm it up in PP, just the magenta is overwhelming and im struggling with it massively!!
I've got a Z-pro 100mm filter holder and 77mm adapter so looking at 100mm filters now :-)

Thanks!
 
I can imagine the frustration - would another option be to do the grad in post production - that way you can see from the sliders whats going on without having to rely on colour?

EDIT: Or if its a simple grey sky you could remove the saturation from the sky area - again post production but that should work too - though obviously its only any good for cloudy days.
 
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Is there no way to test it yourself (e.g. get the RGB values for a patch and check the red component)? Maybe a faff but as a final check it might be useful.
 
An easy way to sort this is to just click 'black and white' :LOL:

Don't be disheartened mate, your work is awesome and when you sort the filter issue you'll be sound. But maybe get the missus to give it the once over before you save it.

G'luck! :)
 
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In your position, I'd probably take two exposures.... one for sky, one for ground, and do the grad in post where I can see it's neutral numerically.
 
just a thought, would it be of any benefit during the post processing phase to invert the image from time to time to help you identify any problem areas?
 
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