In April last year, I went out with my friend Andy, the Rockman, to a spot in Hazelbrook to photograph a waterfall. We found a few ghost fungi (Omphalotus nidiformis) and thought we would hang about until dark and get some of the nice green glow shots at night, which you can obtain by using a long exposure with your camera. This blog post – CLICK HERE – will give you some tips on photographing these stunning fungi in the wild.
Having photographed them countless times over the past twenty or so years, I was expecting the green glow once I made the exposures to be showing on my LCD when I am reviewing the images. Nothing happened. I barely got a faint white glow, which is what they appear to the naked eye when seen in the dark of the night forest. I simply concluded that the ghosties we found near this waterfall have seen better days and just moved on with the exploration.
When we arrived back to Rockman’s place, just a few minutes drive up the road, he showed me the big clump of ghosties right in his front yard! What an amazing thing to have this right at your door step! But when I photographed this clump, I was getting the same white images as before, when we were at the waterfall. This was starting to be really odd, as I know what I am doing with my gear. I was truly baffled with the results. When I saw Rockman’s pics and they were glowing green on the LCD of his camera, I was wanting to throw my camera on the ground, as all I could think was that it failed me big time.
My Samsung phone was producing the green glow as well, so I was completely blown away and also confused as hell!
When I sent my camera into the repair center at OM Digital Solutions, they assessed and the technician said my camera was throwing a sensor fault code, so they would replace the sensor under warranty. Interesting, I thought, but that explained my issues perfectly, or so I had thought.
I did not get to photograph ghost fungi again until March this year, and you can read about that, and some photography tips in this blog post right here. Just CLICK THIS link.
Netra and I were photographing and both of us were getting the white glow, not green glow. That was on night one. Even after processing, I was flabbergasted as I had hardly been able to pull out the green glow that should be so simple to capture and I was seeing this magenta cast in the images. Thinking there is a sensor issue, again, I went back the following night with my OM-D E-M1 MkII camera to take comparison images.
And guess what? The OM-D E-M1 MkII produced green glow straight out of the camera. So I was particularly confused. Then the following day, Netra called me and mentioned the tint slider in ACR (ACR = Adobe Camera Raw) – is all the way up to around 137 points. When she pulled it back towards zero, the green glow appeared on the screen. What the actual hell?
Further testing came back with the same results. But using an older camera to take the same shots (OM-D E-M1MkII) came back with the expected results, that is all green once the exposure was made. It’s only the new, stacked, sensor in the OM-1, that was making everything so magenta.
I have now reached the conclusion, that maybe it’s simply the new sensor in the OM-1 that tries to make the images look as natural as they can be when the RAW file is captured? As to the human eye a strong aurora, or the ghost mushrooms, glow white! Not green! that all our northern lights images will need reprocessing, as we (especially I) had the same kind of excessive magenta in all my images, especially when we had the big storm on the 23rd of December while we were in Abisko.
In any case, it appears the sensors are fine. But that does not explain why my camera then needed a replacement sensor under warranty a year ago.
It is truly amazing that a small difference in the capture technology of a RAW file can cause such havoc in my post processing. I must say a huge thanks to Netra for picking up on the tint slider.
Happy shooting!