My Canon has colors grounded in deep blackberry tones with shades of lemon, anise and cherry ... with a back pallet of oakiness. It is low in tannin producing a smooth silky quality to the final image reminiscent of under-exposed Kodachrome ...

I dont consider myself a photographer, i consider myself a gear acquirer

The experts are the intermediates, and the intermediates are experts. The dunning kruger effect!

This is one of the best videos you have ever made. It's an older one and just by accident came back to rewatch it but independent of the topic and result of this video I just love the overall approach you take on gear in general. You just test, observe, throw the unfiltered information out there and always provide feedback on what you believe should be improved upon/changed. Very few youtube channels handle topics in this way.

A blind test is correct. People are blinded by brand loyalty.

This is a great video, really shows that people are loyal to the brand, not the colour!

As a Fuji user i dont hate other camera brands. Heck , i love to use other brands too, learning their system and using them is a great learning curve for me. Also you should add the fact that many camera users can't buy many cameras because of this reason like me stick to one camera and fell in love with our only camera.

The design of your study is brilliant. My field-epidemiology-is all about structuring studies to ascertain risk factors and causes of diseases. You think like an epidemiologist! This is really, really good science. Congratulations on a superb, first class scientific study.

I told my Nikon he didn't win. He's really upset about it. Now I need to remove Dramatic Abberation also.

You should get an award for this research.

My takeaway from this video: If you put the Peak Design red/black thingy on top of a Sony, it looks like a Nikon if you squint!

“Color is like wine” - so true, individual taste is the ultimate decider.

This experiment/poll is absolute GOLD!

Mental note: Don't go round for dinner at Tony's. "Would you like a glass of wine?" … "Thanks, that would be lovely … Come on, Tony, put the blindfold away."

I agree with your conclusions 100%. I have owned and used canon professionally for 10 years. I’m currently in the process of transitioning to Nikon. While I don’t use Sony or Fuji cameras I know some amateurs who do and their instagram acts have beautiful color accurate color. I will say that my 12 yr old Leaf 75s produces more accurate color than any of the 35mm cameras I’ve used. The one thing I think this video doesn’t address is lens coatings. I think a color test should be done using adapters to use the same lens.

When you're trying to do a poll about color science and you accidentally make a psychology study

Wow! So good Tony! I was shocked by the results just like you. I’ll be doing a video recording version of this. 👍👊

Most photographers are humble. -Moose Peterson “hold my beer”

I hadn't watched Tony in a while and my gawd his rational mind is refreshing.

This is so interesting. My first camera was a Nikon. I loved the images it produced. Moved to Olympus this year and I love it more. I'm not sure why. I hate over saturated images and go for a more natural edit. Olympus makes it so easy. So does Nikon.

As a scientist I have one thing to say: I love you Tony! Lol well done!

I will be thinking about this and coming up with another test to add data. Thank you Tony

You nailed it. I’ve always wondered how accurate “color science” is. Even, what it is really. Now I know we talk about it from a perceived point of view. We are not even really talking about accuracy. Accuracy would be how the close the camera reproduces the color compared to the actual color. But it looks like people are rating how the manufacturers interpret color. And, by the way, it doesn’t even matter because most photographers adjust colors anyway. Love it.

Tony, thank you so much for the scientific test! However, I would be very interested to know which color science (brand) was chosen as best by the 8% of people that were consistent in choosing the best photo. Because those are the experts that I would love to know their opinion!! Please share that piece of information!!

Perhaps another valuable test would be to survey 1,500 NON-photographers to see which pictures they liked. No camera brands would be mentioned, because it wouldn't matter to consumers.

16:23 100% of participants believe they are in the 8%.

Great Tony, thanks. As a full time commercial photographer and Nikon shooter I have no choice but to carry a colour checker grey card for a test shot. Maybe old school but I would do that with all model cameras. Clients pay a lot of money for their branding and the colour must be perfect. I had a run with the Fuji X T3 with a 50-140 and loved it. Merry Christmas from OZ.

"Fujifilm has the best color science" "Let me tell you about Acros" ;)

I use Fuji just because the camera looks good🤷🏻‍♂️ and the dials bring me fun during shooting

You have done some great videos before but this one is an amazing work! Great insights, almost like a scientific dissertation! Congrats!

The behavioral psychology fits right in with studies in many other fields. There's so little objectively associated with human perception and everything is so colored by our social perception filters. It's simply the way our brains work and it's how we define what we consider to be important. Thanks for the lovely explanation.

Amazing video! Thanks for making this!

Plot twist. These were all iphone pics with diffrent filters

Summary: Color Science is an intensely personal, psychologically driven preference.

Tbh I actually really loved my Pentax K20D’s colour ; it can record RGBY for every single pixel (Y being luminosity ☺️) I moved to Canon 5D3 / then 5D4 ... I often get complements on colour and the Pentax photos still stand up well on my website!

Loved the video, I'm not a photographer, but wanted to add something. Depending on the screen that the viewer is looking at those pictures (Quality, OLED, LCD, etc) as well as the platform it's been shared (insta, twitter, .. ) the colors are different. Keep this up please

This is an award winning review. Thanks alot Tony.

Plot twist: Yashica Y35 is the best.

What interests me most is the ability of the sensor to gather the greatest EV range without bracketing or HDR. I was a Zone VI guy, and we used to shoot for a particular value (zone 8 on zone 8, for example), then adjust development for the anticipated contrast. Something I used to do was to take two exact same exposures on each si< de of a 4x5 film holder. I would then develop one, see the results, and fine tune development on the other one. Doing this, I found I rarely had to burn or dodge when printing.

I feel like its hard to judge color science without seeing the real colors in person

Some people just like to watch the world burn. And Tony is just sitting back and laughing by showing the end results. Great video!

Actual 'LOL' when Sony was on top and Canon on the bottom. As a Sony shooter, I often see people say they'd switch to Sony but hate the Sony colour science and love the Canon. I'm looking forward to reading the rage in the comments over the next few days.

By "cleaning" your test results you do a more professional "journalist" job then most and I mean almost every journalist on this planet. Brilliant!

Thanks for the debunking, when people ask me about which cameras are the "best" I have always said what camera fits "your" ergonomics- can you reach the switches when holding the camera because you are more likely to enjoy using it. As for your images you can fix those in post.

Tony & Chelsea - social psychology Professor here - nice litttle study you did there ! Color has been studied by psychologists for some time and it can have effects on us without us ever realising it. Research shows, for example, that the colors used around the border of a web page can influence the way we perceive goods advertised on that web page. You label your video "color science" but really you are looking at "color perception". Perhaps what DXO measure when they look at sensors is closer to what we might call "color science". The brand effects are interesting but not surprising to me - we are tribal beings and will get tribal about all manner of things - brands, politics, foods, video games - things that to some seem trivial, can create tribalism amongst those heavily psychologically invested in them. Why the hate for Fuji? Perhaps Fuji represents some kind of psychological threat to traditiional DSLR users, who I imagine, are represented by your Canon and Nikon participants. Fuji represents non-traditional, it represents mirrorless. We tend to react to threats to our belief systems negatively. This is one of the things that drives prejudice.

It doesn't really matter because we adjust the color and change it anyway. It's not like we're color scientists in a lab, lol. It wouldn't matter which camera I used, I would still adjust it to what pleases my eye, with little regard to what is perfectly accurate color. Idk, maybe I'm doing it wrong, haha.

Colour science is how the Algoritms in the RAW processor of your camera, translate a scene into a pleasing one: the "right" colours and tones, especially in challenging situation. You take a picture of the sky in the blue hour and some camera turn blue into cyan, pink into magenta, everything gets a tonal dominance. Here, Canon, despite not having the most "Accurate" colour rendition gives you the most eye pleasing results, mostly on skin, sky, reds. Nikon is fine but conservative, Sony often gets muddy and any green or blue gives a big dominance to the overall palette. Not every camera model is alike even within brands because algorithms and processors keep messing things up with each model. My preferred Canon colours come form the 5DMkI and the Canon 6DMkII. My preferred Nikon colours come from the DF, may be the Z6? The late Sony A7MkIV does a very good job. I don't like the Canon R and RP colours much, the Nikon D750 is bad with over reddened skins and anything from Sony before the A7MkIII is straight up unwatchable IMO. Olympus is very balanced but has often too much punch in the cool tones, Panasonic was BAAAAD untille the release of the GX9 which is opleasing to my eye. Fuji can be nice but is pluri-polar due to the number of film simulation that get backed into the RAW. So what is Colour Science? it is how you look at the file when you took a picture and see it's as you see the scene in front of you, may be more pleasing too, requiring minimum effort to edit it into something final. Colour is subjective: most of us have their own perception of colour and some are even partially colour blind without knowing. Beware: Lenses play a BIG role on how a certain scene is being rendered on your sensor, giving colour punch, dominances, or smoothness. I'm Brand agnostic: I don't care what I'm shooting as far as the result pleases me, and I'm very lazy with editing, so the less the better!

Not surprised by this at all. I do a lot of Real Estate photo shoots so color fidelity is important but I've never had a client say a picture is too warm or cool or even complain about mixed color temps! I struggle with selecting just the right "feel" myself so I can imagine the difficulty the average person would have.

What’s funny is I already had a canon Eos r and Nikon Z7 on the way to my house to do something similar (not this good) about “color science” and if anyone could tell the difference

Man, my shouts into the void saying this exact thin have finally been answered by a concrete test. thank you.

Accuracy color is most important. You can retouch later but the color that captured from camera is wrong is how can you fix it ?

I shoot Sony and Fuji. I do not like the Sony color out of camera. I like the Fuji color much better! However, I shoot with the Sony more often for all the great capability of the full frame sensor and how the photos turn out after editing. The Fuji I love for the dials and less color editing needed.

"You picked Sony!!!" The honesty shock and disgust from Tony is just funny.

LOL this was a brilliant test. Bait everyone with a Color Test, then it was actually a Fanboyism test xD

These photo comparisons is the equivalent of driving a Honda and a Lamborghini around a crowded parking garage and then reporting that the both have comparable speeds. Take these cameras to golden hour or a landscape sunset and you will see a big difference.

Color science is more important that any other part of any camera.

Color Science = Canon's only imaginary feature they still have that is competitive.

Composition is everything. Color science is overrated.

If I could just see all of the Sony Haters faces right now as they're looking at this video.... LMBO

When I want to be entertained I watch that Peter or Matt channel but when I want to learn something I always come to Tony and Chelsea's channel. Thanks for taking the time to publish great content and not just 10 minutes of B roll footage.

Sean Tucker did a really interesting portrait colour science experiment a couple of weeks ago; Canon vs Sony - do check it out.

just so we're clear the odds of randomly choosing right are 6.25%. so colour science is somewhere in that 2% discrepancy

Fantastic! A good reminder that we need to keep going back to first principles: For non-scientific photography the only thing that matters is how the target audience likes the final result.

I have both Sony and Fuji. Both my wife and I prefer fuji color. We usually can tell which camera the photo comes from. I believe what you said is very truth, the AWB on fuji is very good. Also my wife doesn't like the extra details that produced by Sony, haha. It is too sharp she says. I pretty much use the Sony for landscaping and Fuji for everything else.

The results are not surprising. 75% of people believe they are higher than average!

Love it... Best perceived color was Sony. That data point alone speaks volumes about our entire industry and how full of fan boys (myself included) it is.

You can see I use Fuji. For years I used Nikon, last Nikon 610s. Dumped them. went to Fuji XT3s, now I can stand up again. If I wanted a full-frame I would go to Sony! But the reality is this If I wanted a larger format I would jump over full frame and go for a Fuji 50s. But enough of equipment, what you really need is to get the soul of an artist. Have a look at, Saraya Cortaville Photography.

My theory is that most people’s homes have warm colored light bulbs and so they’re use to being in that environment. Since my house switched to daylight light bulbs, I tend to prefer neutral color or slightly cooler colors. Warm colors tend to make us look to orangey.

Sony user here, honestly sony default profiles (not Sony color capability, Sony default profiles) are terrible for video until you tweak the settings and the colors aren’t flattering because they are too realistic. The reason canon people love their colors is because they’re lazy when it comes to color correction. I’ll be honest myself, I don’t have time to color correct for hours like photographers; I need that time for everything else in the editing. So I get the need for in-camera color, I’m lazy too haha. But it’s funny, I feel after using Sony for the last year and a half my eyes have gotten use to Sony colors and I really don’t like the new generation of canon cameras that are boosting so much red. Canon’s colors have been getting worse over time because of moving the default color temp position to more magenta tint.

now, i will make a t-shirt "I SHOT JPEG WITH SONY!"

Let's all keep in mind the "most accurate" color is not always the most PLEASING color. I happen to prefer the FUJI colors above all others, which kind of makes sense because Fuji has always been a film manufacturer, and understands something beyond just the "textbook" color science. But most dissatisfaction can be corrected anyhow with Photoshop and other utilities - - and using RAW. But if you're satisfied with just the average JPEG for your very own casual encounter personal photography, (rather than professional sales of your work), then I can't say no to FUJI. I have a Fuji, a Canon, and a Nikon. I rate my color preferences in the same order in which I listed my cameras - Meaning that Fuji reigns supreme, and Nikon is somewhat disappointing. Oh yes, and Canon is in the middle, duh? Fuji seriously knows color science! Great colors if you're a portrait photographer, whereas Nikon tends to make the skin of Caucasians look too red. But in the very final analysis, it's far more about personal opinion than it is about anything else, unless your specific purpose is to make it "scientific." Remember- I own cameras from all of the manufactures which I mentioned.

Hats off to you for taking time to design a survey that screens out emotion (e.g., brand loyalty), validates responses during, and yields objective results. I often don't finish surveys because they're so obviously poorly thought out (even if not slanted blatantly toward the desired results). Enjoyed the refreshing, concise presentation style. I usually skip videos of this length because they're so often padded with small talk, repetition and other poor use of time. Well done!

color science is only for people who shoot jpeg. everyone who edits their raw always manipulate's the skintone to their liking, in this case it doesn't really matter. Hell, some people even use presets that turn the person in the photo and background into a sandstorm tan color and brag about color science after. Look at video, the pros use flat color profiles then color grade after.

That's a really revealing investigation, Tony. Very interesting the results you got and the analysis you made. They show the whole nonsense of so many discussions and advertising slogans.

I loved the wine part. That was funny and true.

Thank you so much for this video (even though I’m getting to it very late). I have been letting the “canon colors” comments get in my head WAY too much because I started out with Sony. It’s the brand my husband uses so it’s what we had. BUT I will say this. I started out on the original A7 and had been going crazy trying to figure out why the colors were so hard to nail in editing. The skin was hard to work with, even with hours of trying to fix it. It was inconsistent, some parts of the face would be so yellow. Decided to try the A7iii after all this color science research I had been doing, and let me tell you, WORLD of difference. I really didn’t want to have to drop even more money to switch to canon and buy more lenses. With the newer generations from Sony, there really isn’t an argument now other than brand loyalty, like you said.

To me color science is what is the most pleasing. There is a youtuber, (gerald undone), who does an excellent job explaining the technical breakdown of color science. That with this video may get some to realize not to get hung up with who has the best color science incorporated into the camera and that you can pretty much tweak colors to your liking no matter what manufacturer you use.

i'm pretty surprised by the results. From what I have looked at Sony does tend to more realistic colours, but people do not usually like to see in their pictures realistic colour reproducibility. As you said earlier most people do like warmer pictures, especially of people. Much like you, it doesn't matter much to me since I change the colour balance of most pictures to match the "feeling" of the picture I want to convey. Since I use both Canon and Sony most of the time I do find that to get the same colour balance in shots from the same shoot I need to adjust both in different ways but it is just part of the RAW processing that I need to do. I liked you tests, and I think the biggest thing you did show was the bias towards what people wanted to see. Difficult thing is that everyone's monitor is likely not colour calibrated and what each of them saw on their computers was not consistent either. Almost impossible to get a test that reduces the variables to make an actual "scientific" conclusion.

Color is so subjective. Depends wether you have a calibrated or not monitor, the light in your surrounding while you watch the video, even the clothes you're wearing as it may reflect some color cast over the screen. If you print your pictures, again it depends on the printer, the paper, the calibration you're using. So for a real test I would use a PANTONE scale and see which cameras come closer, to a standard coloring measure.

I'm a humble photographer until another one tries to tell me how to shoot a shot. Then all hell breaks loose. Lmaooo

Taking everyone to school! I love this video so much!! The Northrups are Savage 🙌🏼🙌🏼🔥🔥

Funny thing's that a lot of Sony shooters (including me) think Canon has the best color science. I guess when something's repeated enough times, everybody just starts to take it as fact. Thanks for debunking this Tony!

Interesting. I have always heard Cannon was the winner in Color Science.

“Cameras and lenses are simply tools to place our unique vision on film. Concentrate on equipment and you’ll take technically good photographs. Concentrate on seeing the light’s magic colors and your images will stir the soul.” - Jack Dykinga

Funniest results ever! Sony first and Canon last. Camera nerds heads are exploding all over the interwebs

Color science arguments only started to appear when Sony stepped up their game with the A7 series, funny thing is that I only hear mostly people who use canon rave about this. I never liked how canon over saturates and "over reds" everything, I remember a student of mine (who uses canon) editing a picture of a beautiful african girl taken on the studio with a black background, the background was completely yellow and the girl instead of having a beautiful brown color was yellow as well... I've edited photos from all "major" brands and each one has their tweaks, Canon over saturates and reds up everything, Nikon kicks in the yellows way to much sometimes, Fuji is quite unique more creative colors than "accurate ones", Sony seems more neutral of the bunch although sometimes I find a strange yellow cast on the skin tones when the person is in shade. In the end I have to edit all of them because designers and creative directors want certain types of tones (color grading) or want those perfect tones to clearly demonstrate the color of their clothes (grey card anyone?)

Awesome. Thanks, Tony! What might be worth mentioning too is that with custom camera profiles made with ColorChecker and just about any camera the results will be more or less equal (however, I don’t get quite the same results in LR with Fujifilm than with others even profiled, maybe because of the different demosaicing of the X-Trans RAWs).

Loved this thank you. Shot Canon for years, then Fuji, now Sony. To be honest, I loved the colors of the Fuji, but could not explain why. Years ago I learned the trick of warming the highlights in Lightroom and all bets were off. After I switched to Sony in 2015 my Canon friends queried the lack of lenses, being a toy, battery life, etc. Not any more.

Thanks Tony! Great video and the only one I’ve seen on colour science which is credible. I don’t get peoples attitudes towards colour science. It seems to imply one doesn’t edit their work.

Things I don’t care about (not that camera companies shouldn’t trying to improve upon them): color science, dynamic range, micro contrast, chromatic aberration, bits, rolling shutter, sharpness, to some extent...etc. Things I do care about: focus acquisition, battery life, back up sd card slot, button layout, flip out screen, better WiFi transferring/app....etc. The camera you have is much, MUCH better than all the masters of photography whose work that inspired you. The modern lenses have better sharpness, contrast, coating to reduce flare/CA than any lenses in the past...the money you want to spend on a brand new toy will be better spent on marketing...or a fun weekend in Vegas! 😂

The best color science is by Fuji, which has a damn good head start comprehending color science, having been a film manufacturer. It's not always about the science or statistics; it's about knowing what happens to be pleasing to the eye. And in that regard, Fuji WINS - Among the brands which I'm familiar with ... I rate Canon 2nd best for color rendition, and I rate Nikon 3rd.

Great topic! I have done similar test with amplifiers and speakers. People in general seems to have strong Idea of what is good according to the present talkabout rate. But when you do preform a blindtest people can't tell the differens.

I think it's best to have an accurate camera and then apply whatever color processing I want. Sometimes my goal is accuracy and only accuracy. Imaging Resource tests color accuracy but they use an inaccurate formula instead of Lab2000 so... I don't think those numbers mean much. Having watched people get defensive over a company they don't own is pretty funny. Brand loyalty was never really something I intuitively got behind. Tony, have you done a video describing the advantages or lack thereof for full frame when trying to achieve large depth of field like what is often achieved on smaller crop sensors?

Amazing work. Why I continue to love this channel. Keep up the great work!

I often use a leica and a nikon in the same shoot. The colors are quite different, but as soon as I match the white balance you can't really tell a difference anymore!

The nice thing about discussing color science is that it is so qualitative, as opposed to quantitative. We can express an opinion without having to back it up with numbers. As far as brand loyalty goes, to each their own.

Love your findings and what others comment but it seemed everyone is forgetting something important. The same brand camera may produce a different colour output when match with a different brand lenses. The coating on the lens will vary the colour. A more ideal test would be to use the same exact lenses, same controlled lighting conditions, same settings to get a more accurate results. I like the point where you mentioned CS is not relevant for RAW shooter, spot on.

Great video. I always thought the "color science" hype was worthless for the exact reasons you mention: most people alter the RAW colouring anyway.

I agree WB is more important than CS. Wrong WB can skew all of the colors. I only recently began to bring along an 18% grey card to set the WB. It works great.

Fuji still best from all systems I used. ( I spend Less time @ computer editing files, JPG's are amazing. Only when I need a raw file I go to the computer, More time for fun taking Photos