Washed out neon light colour

Merlin5

Merlin5

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Lee
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Hi guys. I shoot nightime street scenes that quite often involve orange, blue, red or green neon lights. But instead of the camera (Sony a6600) capturing the colour of the neon lights properly, it always looks washed out and whitish when viewing through the EVF at and after the moment of capture. I shoot raw and can bring back a lot of colour in post, but I can't get it the way I saw it.

For instance, I shot an orange neon sign that says 'OPEN' on the front of a restaurant. Shot at f2.8 and 3200 ISO. I also tried underexposing by using a much lower ISO and even increasing shutter speed and it made no difference. The main body of the lettering in my image looks whitish with orange around the outside of it whereas the actual sign is a vibrant solid orange with no whiteness.

See picture below. That's after processing raw file in Lightroom and trying to saturate the orange.

I get the same issue with the rear lights on cars, the red looks washed out, so it's not limited to neon lighting.

What can I do to ensure I capture the colour properly?

Fouberts-Place.jpg
 
I wonder if it's actually just a touch over exposed.
From RAW especially you might rescue it with the HSL in Lightroom or similar but try luminosity rather than saturation, and the eyedropping tool on the problem area not just orange.
 
It's possible that the colours you're trying to catch are out of gamut.
 
The Neon light would be very very bright, compared to the rest of the scene. You could make 2 exposures and merge but you would need a tripod to get good alignment.
 
Nod said:
It's possible that the colours you're trying to catch are out of gamut.
Click to expand...

Nod has a very good point. If you use the soft proofing options in LR you will get blinvkies on colours that are out of gamut for your chosen colourspace
 
boyfalldown said:
Nod has a very good point. If you use the soft proofing options in LR you will get blinvkies on colours that are out of gamut for your chosen colourspace
Click to expand...


There's a first time for everything!

FWIW, I've never managed to get fluorescent colours to look right when shot under UV either so I've given up trying. The closest I've got is a washed out, detail free area where the fluoro should be.
 
Thanks guys. Yes, I think the neon light's brightness makes it look white through the EVF and so yes, probably needs under exposing. But whatever I tried didn't make it less white, well maybe a little less when on a very low ISO.

What does out of gamut mean?
 
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What's the lightroom histogram telling you?
 
droj said:
What's the lightroom histogram telling you?
Click to expand...

Well here's a couple of screenshots, the first straight out of camera with just lens correction in Lightroom, and the second is after processing. You can see the histograms. It's not a photo I'm going to use by the way, it's really a test photo. You can see that the neon sign in the before processing screenshot looks flat and red and it's certainly nothing like the vibrant orange of the actual sign when I was standing in front of the building looking at it. In the after processing screenshot, even saturating the colour of the sign doesn't reduce the white on the lettering.

Before PP.jpgAfter PP.jpg
 
Can not one just photoshop in whatever color one wants?
 
boyfalldown said:
An image, when displayed will have a set number of colours. It’s possible the lights fall outside of that and can’t display properly
Click to expand...
Ah right, thanks.

saltireblue said:
One tip I was given for shooting multi-coloured lights on stage at live gigs - and which may well help in your cases - is to set the white balance to 5200K. I have tried it and it does give better colour rendering and vibrancy.
Click to expand...

Thanks Malc. I must admit, it doesn't look I did anything with the white balance which is 3250. I'll increase it and see what happens. Since I shoot RAW only, does it matter if the white balance is set to 5200K at the point of taking the photo or should it be the same by adjusting it after that fact in Lightroom?

edit: I just tried 5200K but it didn't improve it. Maybe it needs to be done in camera, but presumably to adjust white balance in camera I'd need to shoot jpeg?

Interestingly, I googled images of 'orange neon signs' and looks like I'm not alone as most also have that whiteness. However, this one I saw on google is closest to what I actually saw and wanted.

open_neon_sign_149-R22-A.jpg
 
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AFAIK WB doesn't influence RAW files; it's simply added to the exit data
 
Merlin5 said:
Ah right, thanks.



Thanks Malc. I must admit, it doesn't look I did anything with the white balance which is 3250. I'll increase it and see what happens. Since I shoot RAW only, does it matter if the white balance is set to 5200K at the point of taking the photo or should it be the same by adjusting it after that fact in Lightroom?

edit: I just tried 5200K but it didn't improve it. Maybe it needs to be done in camera, but presumably to adjust white balance in camera I'd need to shoot jpeg?

Interestingly, I googled images of 'orange neon signs' and looks like I'm not alone as most also have that whiteness. However, this one I saw on google is closest to what I actually saw and wanted.

View attachment 340309
Click to expand...
I haven't tried changing the WB in post, Lee, as the tip I was given was to change it in camera before shooting.
 
I note in passing that you haven't pulled the highlight slider right back ...
 
The general lighting isn't known except that it's artificial, so I wouldn't be fussing about the white balance at this stage, since it looks natural enough to me. Auto WB usually works pretty well.

Maybe you could go into colour settings (in LR) and pull back the reds / oranges / yellows a bit?

But that histogram looks full up - not in itself a bad thing, but there's a clumped peak at the highlight end. That means that the tonal range is quite demanding, and maybe something's got to give. My choice would then be to think of the highlights as key (which they commonly are) and expose to protect them, which you can do by dialling in exposure compensation in camera - try a stop, say. That means that you might have to pull the exposure up in LR afterwards, and might be sacrificing stuff at the dark end - some cameras are better than others at providing resilient raws. But you'll have more highlight material to play with.

Also consider exposure bracketing - invoke it on-camera.
 
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To be honest, I think the answer is in post #4.
Eyes have a far wider dynamic range than camera sensors, so while you can look at a bright light and see the colour whilst also seeing the background, the camera is either going to expose the bright light, or the background (roughly) correctly, and what you have is a visible background with a blown highlight.

You can't really get what you are after in a single shot, you are going to need to merge a couple of shots, one shot for the highlights and one shot for the background (this is actually what HDR is for in a way - albeit I'm not sure it would cope with shooting a light).

This was something I shot at the Tate Modern. I exposed for the highlights to get the neon lights more or less correct.
I didn't care about losing the background (a blank wall with wires running down it), but if I had wanted it, I would taken multiple shots at different exposures and prayed that the merge in PS sorted it all out ;)
1641749947523.png
 
In the two images you show in LR, the clipping light is lit. I suspect, as other have suggested, that the dynamic range is too high for this capture. I would normally always capture multiple exposures for street scenes at night.

Dave
 
Thanks guys. Yep, that seems to be the answer. Multiple exposures. I'll go back and try bracketing a couple of shots. One exposed for the neon sign and one for the rest of the scene, and merge. Street photography is a moving target but for a scene like this with a person sitting down, there's less movement and should be enough time for me to quickly capture a couple of different handheld bracketed exposures. Fortunately my Sony camera is quite quick between bracketed shots.
 
droj said:
I note in passing that you haven't pulled the highlight slider right back ...
Click to expand...

Yeah, I tried pulling the highlights right down to zero but because I'd blown them out it didn't change anything.
 
LC2 said:
To be honest, I think the answer is in post #4.
Eyes have a far wider dynamic range than camera sensors, so while you can look at a bright light and see the colour whilst also seeing the background, the camera is either going to expose the bright light, or the background (roughly) correctly, and what you have is a visible background with a blown highlight.

You can't really get what you are after in a single shot, you are going to need to merge a couple of shots, one shot for the highlights and one shot for the background (this is actually what HDR is for in a way - albeit I'm not sure it would cope with shooting a light).

This was something I shot at the Tate Modern. I exposed for the highlights to get the neon lights more or less correct.
I didn't care about losing the background (a blank wall with wires running down it), but if I had wanted it, I would taken multiple shots at different exposures and prayed that the merge in PS sorted it all out ;)
View attachment 340317
Click to expand...
Perfect exposure. I'd have been very happy if mine came out like that. :D (y)
 
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