The issue k had btw wasn’t in the whites or greys. It are the reds that shift quite different , so I wonder if a greycard shot would reveal much.
I develop my original shot like this (as a test ):
- Reset everything to default / discard history , disable filmic and disable highlight reconstruction
- Set white balance to reference
- In color calibration take a sample on the lower left corner
- Put a lab color picker on the cheek of the baby, and raise exposure in the exposure module until the L value says +/- 55
- Sample color calibration again just to be sure
- Enable denoise profiled with auto / default settings
- Enable filmic , set the ‘extend dynamic range’ slider or whatever the name is to 10% (right click to enter value ), then hit the auto button to set black and white. The rest is at the filmic V6 (DT 3.9 ) defaults.
- Enable color balance RGB with the 'more colorful ’ preset
- Enable local contrast with default settings
Now, take a snapshot. Then discard the history , and begin all over again , but now use the legacy color method (as in , disable color calibration and use white balance to sample to lower left corner ).
Finally compare with the snapshot taken earlier. There are now (almost) no luminance differences , since the exposure is matched to L 55 on the cheek.
The white of the bed is basically spot on the same. The grey in the lower right has slight differences but not that much. The blue/green/teal of the blanket is different but not even that much (not so much that I would be bothered by it , personally ). But the skin, just the skin , is the difference between warm baby skin tone and just plain 'make fun of Sony colors ’ magenta / purple .
It’s not that ‘there is a bit of magenta’ to the skin tone, no it really turned magenta , like an alien :).
Bit this is somethingi just seem to have to live with , that the Sony color profile is quite different depending on the scene lighting and I haven’t found a profile yet that works and doesn’t have this (except not using an input profile at all). Setting the white balance to be more neutral before going into the rest of the pipeline seems to be my trick now , but I wonder if color calibration is then still doing something or if it’s just a noop now (or a glorified gamut compressor )