White Balance and Colour
Limited dynamic range is often the cause of false and artificial-looking colours in images from compact cameras. In the EX1, colours are well serviced in shadow and highlight areas, so these problems do not occur.
There is such a choice of colour style that the camera can be easily tailored to suit your needs, but as a starting point the default mode provides natural-looking shades and tones. Red, which usually suffers most, is not oversaturated as is the popular style, but I found yellows aren’t always as accurately portrayed as they could be.
White balance is generally good, with the auto mode being able to deal well with most situations. Mixing daylight and artificial light shows up the minor faults with yellow rendition, but the best way out in all cases when an accurate balance is needed is the simple, quick custom white balance mode.
Image: I used a custom white balance, read from the man’s cuff, which has successfully rendered most colours well. Yellows in the dark tones are not perfect, though.
