I love colors. I love even more the connection you drew between your trip to the Dolomites and the color wheel. What continues to amaze me is how often I 'discover' new colors. It almost seems like there's no math to it, but maybe there is?
‘How many colours can we see?’ As I’ve said, your typical digital image has millions of colours to choose from, but that doesn’t mean an individual can distinguish them all. Apparently the Pantone system, which is widely used in colour printing, has just 2161 shades. But look at a Pantone chart and most people can easily distinguish between adjacent colours.
And then some people’s vision extends a bit further into infra-red or ultra-violet than others…
And in the very first Discworld novel, ‘The Colour of Magic’, Terry Pratchett introduces us to the eighth colour of the spectrum, octarine. Visible only to wizards and cats, it’s described as a fluorescent greenish yellow-purple.
I’m with you on always having preferred colour to B&W and loving Velvia film.
What’s little talked about in today’s digital world is how different cameras encode colour in photographs producing varying images of the same scene. It seems to be largely a brand difference with Canon photos having more red, Nikon stronger on cyan etc.. This is significant to camera choice but doesn’t seem to be covered much by consumer magazines (print or online).
Back in the days when I sold prints and cards direct at craft fairs, I was regularly asked 'what camera do you use?'. The inquirers were invariably male and usually had an SLR and show-off lens around their necks. The reply I was (usually) to polite to give was 'what difference does it make?' Partly on the principle that 'it's not the camera, it's the photographer', but mainly because the look of the end product owed much more to the materials than the camera. Velvia and Cibachrome would give distinctly different results to using C41 film and printing from the negatives.
Since going digital, however, it is a more relevant question. Software like Photoshop and Lightroom has different colour profiles for every conceivable camera.As you know, I've used and written about loads of different Nikon DSLRs, but I've also used cameras by Fuji, Panasonic, Canon, Sony, and Sigma. The one which gave me the biggest headaches trying to get natural-looking images was a Sigma DP-1, but its devotees swore it was the best for exactly this.
I love colors. I love even more the connection you drew between your trip to the Dolomites and the color wheel. What continues to amaze me is how often I 'discover' new colors. It almost seems like there's no math to it, but maybe there is?
‘How many colours can we see?’ As I’ve said, your typical digital image has millions of colours to choose from, but that doesn’t mean an individual can distinguish them all. Apparently the Pantone system, which is widely used in colour printing, has just 2161 shades. But look at a Pantone chart and most people can easily distinguish between adjacent colours.
And then some people’s vision extends a bit further into infra-red or ultra-violet than others…
And in the very first Discworld novel, ‘The Colour of Magic’, Terry Pratchett introduces us to the eighth colour of the spectrum, octarine. Visible only to wizards and cats, it’s described as a fluorescent greenish yellow-purple.
Interesting article thanks
I’m with you on always having preferred colour to B&W and loving Velvia film.
What’s little talked about in today’s digital world is how different cameras encode colour in photographs producing varying images of the same scene. It seems to be largely a brand difference with Canon photos having more red, Nikon stronger on cyan etc.. This is significant to camera choice but doesn’t seem to be covered much by consumer magazines (print or online).
That's a very good point.
Back in the days when I sold prints and cards direct at craft fairs, I was regularly asked 'what camera do you use?'. The inquirers were invariably male and usually had an SLR and show-off lens around their necks. The reply I was (usually) to polite to give was 'what difference does it make?' Partly on the principle that 'it's not the camera, it's the photographer', but mainly because the look of the end product owed much more to the materials than the camera. Velvia and Cibachrome would give distinctly different results to using C41 film and printing from the negatives.
Since going digital, however, it is a more relevant question. Software like Photoshop and Lightroom has different colour profiles for every conceivable camera.As you know, I've used and written about loads of different Nikon DSLRs, but I've also used cameras by Fuji, Panasonic, Canon, Sony, and Sigma. The one which gave me the biggest headaches trying to get natural-looking images was a Sigma DP-1, but its devotees swore it was the best for exactly this.