White balance and colour
Image: The X1 is small and discrete, making it a good choice for street photography. This colour original was almost monochrome, and I converted it to black & white post-capture using Adobe Photoshop CS4.
I primarily used the X1’s automatic white balance setting during this test and it performed well on most occasions. There were only a couple of times when it didn’t produce the result I was looking for. When shooting under mixed artificial and natural light, for example, I set the custom white balance manually.
Also, when shooting a scene that contained lots of leafy green foliage and mossy tree trunks on a sunny day, the automatic setting produced a rather yellow series of images. Had I been able to tell this at the time – the screen was difficult to see because of the bright ambient light – I would have switched to the daylight setting. Fortunately, I was shooting simultaneous DNG and JPEG files so I have raw images that are easy to adjust.
In its Standard Preset Film setting, the X1 can produce JPEG images that look very different from the raw files. Whereas the raw files usually have quite natural colours, on some occasions the simultaneously recorded JPEG files look artificial with higher contrast and greater saturation.
Pale-blue skies are a particular concern as they are often rendered an unnatural cyan tone, and green grass looks much too vibrant. The effect is most noticeable in overexposed areas as the X1 attempts to darken them to bring out hidden detail.
