My Olympus OMD E-M5 Gives me Better Color than my Nikon D800E

Mt. Rushmore, South Dakota, USA
This is straight out of the E-M5 with no color corrections applied.

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The wonderful world of color, except when it is not.  ProPhoto RGB, Adobe RGB, sRGB, lots of color spaces to consider when making, editing and printing images. 

I have come to notice that when I am in Lightroom 5 ( as well as when in Lightroom 4), I almost never have to correct the color balance of the images I make with the Olympus OMD E-M5, but almost everyone made with the big Nikon D800E and D700 has to be adjusted a bit.  Hmmmm.

Using RAW and mainly photographing outdoors, I normally have the Olympus set to auto white balance because the color is so accurate.  With the Nikon, I normally use daylight white balance.  Of course, when using RAW, a color balance is not assigned to the file, the camera and software just displays the white balance of the imbedded JPEG within the raw file.

I have never shot JPEGs with the Nikons, except when traveling for quick posts on the road, and I have never shot JPEGs with the Olympus so I can't comment on how the color looks in that file format.  But, reading reviews on the web, the reviewers seem to like the Olympus JPEGS right out of the camera.

I have and use the ColorChecker Passport and, when looking at the changes made by Lightroom when invoking it, the Olympus changes a bit less than the Nikons.

I believe Olympus has nailed the color thing.  I really like the color.

Thanks for looking.  Enjoy!

Dennis Mook


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