Sony A7 IV Wrong sky color

[Katbel]

First: Happy New Year!
Second: what am I doing wrong?
This morning I took a photo of a beautiful sunrise but my camera Sony A7 IV blew the colors completely
I tried two different lenses but the result didn't change
The iPhone did reproduce what I was seeing, not the A7. Usually it is pretty good. Not this morning
The one below was taken in Auto Mode, just in case I set it up with the wrong settings but the results are the same , sigh
Here the two photos
Thanks in advance for any suggestion!

iPhone

Sony A7 IV

 

[Uncle Kevriano]

Do you know what metering mode and white balance settings you used?

 

[Katbel]

Do you know what metering mode and white balance settings you used?

Metering mode : Multi
White Balance was in AUTO

 

[Uncle Kevriano]

I assume the top photo is the iPhone.
It looks like it's picked the wrong WB or metered the brightest part of the scene as a preference. This is why Auto modes are never a great idea, even if you have had good results before. If you shoot in RAW these can be corrected in photoshop, if JPEG it's not impossible, but not as effective.

 

[Jeff A]

Are you a Raw shooter?

 

[Brownie]

What shooting mode, P,A,S,M, or Auto? Is this a SOOC jpeg? It almost looks like the camera processed the image to look like what it thought it was supposed to and misinterpreted white balance. Although, that's pretty extreme.

 

[Katbel]

Trying to answer all of you in one response, beside being grateful to all of you for trying to sort this issue out

Are you a Raw shooter?

Raw: I have issues on BigSur to acquire Raw photos. For some reasons only GraphicConverter is able to get the photos
I have Raw Power but it tells me my photos are damaged or unsupported , sigh, when GC can easily but slow get the same photos
Frustrated, I use jpeg. I contacted Raw Power to know what is wrong but still waiting for an answer
Photos has issues too, probably the same as Raw Power . I tried all different Raw formats on the Sony camera but all, even uncompressed Raw have the same problem.

What shooting mode, P,A,S,M, or Auto? Is this a SOOC jpeg? It almost looks like the camera processed the image to look like what it thought it was supposed to and misinterpreted white balance. Although, that's pretty extreme.

Do you know what metering mode and white balance settings you used?

I guess Brownie is right about the misinterpretation. I was going to try again this morning, with different metering modes and White balance but alas it's raining and foggy and I have to postpone it.

Probably the issue is a metering issue, because I tried yesterday to take a photo displaying the iPhone photos on my big tv screen (not having the whole sky available.....I become inventive )
and Sony was perfect with the reds and not turning blue like it did with the sky, but of course is not the real deal.

 

[Katbel]

Yesterday I found a way to see the Raw photos ,with few tricks , on my computer.
This morning I was able to get the colors right, thanks to the sunrise available , not as nice as the other day but enough to let me
play with metering and White Balance

Even if it 's not a great photo but at least now I know what to do...somehow

What is your best WB setting for sunrise or sunset? I played a little with Kelvin° too but not sure what is the optimal setting.

 

[FowlersFreeTime]

Yesterday I found a way to see the Raw photos ,with few tricks , on my computer.
This morning I was able to get the colors right, thanks to the sunrise available , not as nice as the other day but enough to let me
play with metering and White Balance

Even if it 's not a great photo but at least now I know what to do...somehow

What is your best WB setting for sunrise or sunset? I played a little with Kelvin° too but not sure what is the optimal setting.

View attachment 29610

Good that you found a way to use the RAW files.
Temp/WhiteBalance adjustments are so subjective when it comes to sunsets and sunrise. I'm sure there's a proper kelvin rating for an "accurate" portrayal, but its really up to the photographer/editor.

 

[Brownie]

What is your best WB setting for sunrise or sunset? I played a little with Kelvin° too but not sure what is the optimal setting.

I always shoot RAW, never depend on jpeg, and have never experienced this. Colors are always correct. I use AWB and never, ever change it.

 

[Uncle Kevriano]

I always shoot RAW, never depend on jpeg, and have never experienced this. Colors are always correct. I use AWB and never, ever change it.

Same.

 

[AZHeaven]

I always shoot RAW, never depend on jpeg, and have never experienced this. Colors are always correct. I use AWB and never, ever change it.

I took photos in Joshua Tree NP of a sunset. The photos did not come out like what I saw. Until I got home and post processed them. I took Mark Galers advice and exposed for the highlights and then brought up the shadows in post.

 

[Gaz]

Ive been trying sunrises almost every morning. The iPhone 14 Pro tends to overexpose the hotspots, but seems to do a better job of the colours right out of the gate.

My A7iv shooting in raw looks miserable. The auto white balance is too cool for starters. But what I'm trying, with mixed results, is to use EV and stop it down anywhere between 1 stop and 3, the latter once the sun is on the horizon... Then try warming them with custom white balance post-production.

Quite obviously, I'm still a beginner, but joy will come from shooting in a manual config.

• ILCE-7M4
• FE 24-240mm F3.5-6.3 OSS
• 24.0 mm
• ƒ/3.5
• 1/15 sec
• ISO 320

• ILCE-7M4
• FE 24-240mm F3.5-6.3 OSS
• 63.0 mm
• ƒ/5
• 55923/44738401 sec
• ISO 1250

• ILCE-7M4
• FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS
• 200.0 mm
• ƒ/32
• 1/400 sec
• ISO 200

 

[Brownie]

Ive been trying sunrises almost every morning. The iPhone 14 Pro tends to overexpose the hotspots, but seems to do a better job of the colours right out of the gate.

My A7iv shooting in raw looks miserable. The auto white balance is too cool for starters. But what I'm trying, with mixed results, is to use EV and stop it down anywhere between 1 stop and 3, the latter once the sun is on the horizon... Then try warming them with custom white balance post-production.

Quite obviously, I'm still a beginner, but joy will come from shooting in a manual config.

Gaz, please take this in the spirit of offering assistance. If you already know all of this, then my apology. In reading some of your posts, I'm not sure you have a complete understanding of RAW, what it is, and what to expect.

RAW is not an acronym, it is exactly as it sounds. RAW is raw data, a bunch of zeros and ones in a file. It is not meant to be an image in the sense that we know an image, any more than a Word document is meant to be an image. The idea behind RAW is completely and totally non-destructive editing, and the ability to make changes, sometimes massive, without negatively affecting the outcome. Things that you could never accomplish with a jpeg file.

A jpeg is indeed meant to be a finished image. Some guys get together at Microsoft, or Sony, or Canon, and decide how they think a finished image should look. They program the camera to generate that for you. In most cases they do pretty well, but there's never been a case when a jpeg looks better to me than a properly processed RAW file.

When you open a file with a RAW decoder it's a rough version of your image. It's only something to get you started. It's not meant to be finished, although depending on the software some are more finished looking than others. I use Darktable and Affinity, and I can tell you Affinity does a much better job on a RAW file upon opening than Darktable. But, the Darktable designers do that on purpose. They mess with the image only enough to get you started. You can't adjust what you can't see. Sometimes I open an Affinity file and don't need to do much of anything, whereas I almost always have to do something in DT.

With RAW, in most cases you can change things that you could never change with a jpeg. For instance, you could never actually change the exposure value in a jpeg image. Ok, the software may tell you that you can, but you can't. With RAW, you can. Same with a lot of other things. White Balance, blackpoint, etc. When you change them in RAW, it's 'almost' as if you've re-made the image. When you adjust those in a jpeg, you aren't really changing them in the same manner, and are destructively editing the image.

A RAW image is almost always going to look worse than a jpeg when first opened, for the exact reasons described above. However, a RAW image will almost always end up looking better than a camera generated jpeg. I am not surprised your white balance isn't perfect in RAW for a sunset. What's interesting is that different software may indeed show you the colors you expected right off the bat.

Time in front of the computer is as important as time behind the camera. I can't tell you how many images I posted with halos from over correcting a blown-out sky because I didn't know how to approach it. I came to grips with my own deficiencies when it came to processing early on and vowed at the time to process every single image from RAW, at least until I sorted it all out. I still do to this day, with the exception of an odd shot here or there from a phone or something. The HEIF images I posted from the Clear Image Zoom testing were a rare exception. If that feature were available in RAW, I'd shoot that way.

Typical mistakes people make when first starting are 'over' correcting Contrast, Saturation, Sharpening. And while not directly related to RAW processing, over copping. One way to test your processing is to shoot both RAW and jpeg, process the RAW, then compare them side by side. What did you get right? What did you get wrong? Does the image look cartoonish or over processed? Was the water really that blue? What don't you like about the jpeg that you can improve with the RAW file?

Don't dwell on how your RAW file looks out of the camera, focus on the outcome.

 

[Gaz]

Gaz, please take this in the spirit of offering assistance. If you already know all of this, then my apology. In reading some of your posts, I'm not sure you have a complete understanding of RAW, what it is, and what to expect.

RAW is not an acronym, it is exactly as it sounds. RAW is raw data, a bunch of zeros and ones in a file. It is not meant to be an image in the sense that we know an image, any more than a Word document is meant to be an image. The idea behind RAW is completely and totally non-destructive editing, and the ability to make changes, sometimes massive, without negatively affecting the outcome. Things that you could never accomplish with a jpeg file.

A jpeg is indeed meant to be a finished image. Some guys get together at Microsoft, or Sony, or Canon, and decide how they think a finished image should look. They program the camera to generate that for you. In most cases they do pretty well, but there's never been a case when a jpeg looks better to me than a properly processed RAW file.

When you open a file with a RAW decoder it's a rough version of your image. It's only something to get you started. It's not meant to be finished, although depending on the software some are more finished looking than others. I use Darktable and Affinity, and I can tell you Affinity does a much better job on a RAW file upon opening than Darktable. But, the Darktable designers do that on purpose. They mess with the image only enough to get you started. You can't adjust what you can't see. Sometimes I open an Affinity file and don't need to do much of anything, whereas I almost always have to do something in DT.

With RAW, in most cases you can change things that you could never change with a jpeg. For instance, you could never actually change the exposure value in a jpeg image. Ok, the software may tell you that you can, but you can't. With RAW, you can. Same with a lot of other things. White Balance, blackpoint, etc. When you change them in RAW, it's 'almost' as if you've re-made the image. When you adjust those in a jpeg, you aren't really changing them in the same manner, and are destructively editing the image.

A RAW image is almost always going to look worse than a jpeg when first opened, for the exact reasons described above. However, a RAW image will almost always end up looking better than a camera generated jpeg. I am not surprised your white balance isn't perfect in RAW for a sunset. What's interesting is that different software may indeed show you the colors you expected right off the bat.

Time in front of the computer is as important as time behind the camera. I can't tell you how many images I posted with halos from over correcting a blown-out sky because I didn't know how to approach it. I came to grips with my own deficiencies when it came to processing early on and vowed at the time to process every single image from RAW, at least until I sorted it all out. I still do to this day, with the exception of an odd shot here or there from a phone or something. The HEIF images I posted from the Clear Image Zoom testing were a rare exception. If that feature were available in RAW, I'd shoot that way.

Typical mistakes people make when first starting are 'over' correcting Contrast, Saturation, Sharpening. And while not directly related to RAW processing, over copping. One way to test your processing is to shoot both RAW and jpeg, process the RAW, then compare them side by side. What did you get right? What did you get wrong? Does the image look cartoonish or over processed? Was the water really that blue? What don't you like about the jpeg that you can improve with the RAW file?

Don't dwell on how your RAW file looks out of the camera, focus on the outcome.

I kind of understand. I shoot raw and heif together (except for clear image zoom).

My workflow is drag the raw onto ssd, filter out the ones I like using photomechanic, import into Apple photos.

Let Apple auto-adjust- all of the raw images. (The heif, as you say, are already pre-processed so this step is not necessary) Then I edit either type from within Apple photos if necessary using Lightroom or luminar neo.

If I’m shooting RAW, what’s the point of being able to adjust white balance in camera? If it does nothing, it should be greyed out?

Gaz

 

[Brownie]

I kind of understand. I shoot raw and heif together (except for clear image zoom).

My workflow is drag the raw onto ssd, filter out the ones I like using photomechanic, import into Apple photos.

Let Apple auto-adjust- all of the raw images. (The heif, as you say, are already pre-processed so this step is not necessary) Then I edit either type from within Apple photos if necessary using Lightroom or luminar neo.

If I’m shooting RAW, what’s the point of being able to adjust white balance in camera? If it does nothing, it should be greyed out?

Gaz

Some still like it. Say for instance the software you're using is always interpreting too cool, you can adjust it to get closer from the git go. You could also just set up an automatic adjust in the software.

Hell, I'm still trying to figure out why my camera can shoot video!

 

[Gaz]

I shot this heif this morning. Straight out of camera to Apple photos. No edit.