Seven colours in a row.

A few minutes after getting soaked nature provided this evanescent scene:

Sidecar: dt310.seven.colours.xmp (14.7 KB) darktable 3.1.0
Raw: dt310.seven.colours.nef (27.5 MB)
License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

I found out that rainbows are an interesting subject to post-process; You can’t change the overall colours to much and you really need to watch your saturation levels. Stuff gets unnatural/ugly very fast.

As always I’m curious to see what others come up with.

EDIT: Fixed the RAW file.

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Which rainbow?

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Oops…

Thanks for the heads-up, fixed!

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Spectra… Geesh, I’m seeing them all over the place… :smiley:

Yep, I don’t imagine you can mess much with spectral colors. They are not the result of an amalgam of wavelengths, so their interpretation by your brain is arguably less subjective.

Anyway, here’s my take:

Just an abused filmic curve…

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dt310.seven.colours.nef.xmp (8.9 KB) dt310.seven.colours_01.nef.xmp (9.4 KB)

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That colour edit is really nice!

Even though the sky wasn’t as blue-ish grey as in your edit, it works very well. Not having the “burden” (knowledge) of having been there makes editing easier at times…

You use modules that i generally don’t use. Always good to be reminded what other modules can do :slight_smile:

I know you always upload a duo: Not sure about the B&W version this time though…

Ha, I’ve been looking at just that all week, a monochrome spectrum. I had to buy a monochrome camera do to it correctly, though, the bayer filters of a regular camera bollox the raw measurement of light intensity. I’m building a spectrometer that can measure light intensity across the spectrum, I’ll write about it later when I get some cogent results.

So you’re now the proud owner of a Leica M10 Monochrom a few lenses and had to sell your car and house :moneybag: :moneybag:

Seriously: Been following your endeavours with interest. Not sure how a monochrome camera (sensor sans bayer) would help. Doesn’t all light have a (combination of) wavelength and thus inherent not grey? You might explain that and more in one of your to-come articles.

Ah, I’ll do that when I post the DIY spectrometer installment, but I’ll say here that, strictly speaking, light isn’t anything other than radiant energy. The combinations occur in our heads, to make notions of a thing we call ‘color’. Really, @sls141’s monochrome rendition is the closest to representing light as it’s essential energy, although it’s still munged a bit through the bayer filters. That’s why I bought the ($25US, no Leicas in this house) monochrome camera, to be rid of those pesky filters… :smiley:

Truth be told, I’m never really sure of how well I get it in B&W. Sometimes I get a comment on one that I wasn’t really happy with like this frow playraw “scene revisited”…

… or this…

…which I really don’t understand.

My approach is to get a feel for how I remember B&W photos from when I was growing up, back in the 60’s & 70’s. Which is why I recently bought a Nikon F5 so I can start shooting B&W film. I’m going to start out with Kodak Tmax 400 to get my feet wet there. It’s amazing how many B&W films are out there.

@sls141 Your B&Ws are a hit or miss in my book. I don’t know the exact reason. Question: do you do the colour or the B&W first? I have trouble doing both in quick succession.


dt310.seven.colours.jpg.out.pp3 (13.2 KB)

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@afre I start with the color. When I have what I feel is approaching acceptable, I will use a module to get a B&W “look” at it. Usually I try the color zones “black & white film” preset first. Rarely do I like what that produces as is, without tweaking, but it sometimes happens. From there I try the monochrome module. Sometimes but rarely, I find a setting in there. From there I’ll try the contrast brightness saturation module with the saturation all the way down, and tweak the contrast and/or brightness sliders. From there I try the channel mixer presets. Usually one of them is close to what I’d like. Then I’ll change the setting to “gray” and try adjusting the sliders. If that doesn’t work, I try using the “swap R and B” or “swap G and B” and see what happens using a second instance with one of the B/W presets.

Many times I find that a gamma adjustment in the levels module will make things work better in the B&W edit and often helps out the color edit as well.

Also, I guess this is worth mentioning, I like to use the color edit and apply which ever method I use to to get to monochrome. It’s my own self imposed method. It isn’t anything scientific, just my own hangup of building upon which I have already created.

Thanks, I enjoy learning about others’ processes.

In other words, I tend to do each rendition in isolation.

Used Haze Removal here

dt310.seven.colours_RT-1.jpg.out.pp3 (13.6 KB)

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Photoflow:

dt310.seven.colours.pfi (24.4 KB)

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Nice. Very natural looking.

Doing B&W seems to be a lot harder in the digital age. I often see scene’s that I think are perfect for B&W and once I’m home I cannot get it the way I want to with my RAW editor.

About your scene revisited entry: It is a rather good edit but I do miss the deep blacks and the matte/pearl finish that paper would give you. I’m presuming that is also why you aren’t too happy with it.

That brings back memories! I used to have my own darkroom and used FP4, HP5 or T-MAX 3200 film. I still have not been able to get that B&W look in the digital age. Probably 'cause of the combo paper, film and your own development method.

I’m sure you’re going to like going back to film and paper.

I’m not dissing digital B&W, I’ve seen really beautiful results so it must be possible. Something just doesn’t click and I suspect that is does have something to do with having done B&W film + paper (I’m stuck is another way of putting it :slight_smile: ).

If I decide to do both a colour and B&W version I do them on different days and start from scratch for both of them (except WB, lenscorrection etc. The camera related basics).

darktable 3.0.2

dt310.seven.colours.nef.xmp (9,5 Ko)

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