I'm having trouble with red and pink (dark pink) flowers. When I open up the pictures on my computer, the colors almost always look smeared and "too bright". I only have this problem with those two colors. I don't have many examples to share because generally, I don't post those photos, but I do have a couple. In the photo with the bee, I increased the contrast because I really wanted the bee to stand out, but in the second photo, I had to decrease the contrast in order to make the shocking pink a bit less shocking. Not sure what I did with the photo of the red flower, as it's from a week or so ago, but whatever it was, I know that the red looks better than it did in the original and it still looks bad. Any ideas what causes these colors to come out so bright and how to prevent it?
I was told that camera sensors can't handle reds well. So instead of turning down the contrast, try turning down the saturation. If you don't want to turn it down on the whole pic, just do the red channel.
@catdudz I can't find a setting for color balance (there is a setting for "custom image", currently set to "bright", which I believe is the default), but in any case, I'm shooting in RAW -- would the RAW file contain this data?
@catdudz Excellent! First of all, I'm glad it's not only my problem. Second, there are some interesting suggestions on that page -- I will try that. Thanks! I noticed that the first reply is about Pentax exaggerating reds, which also might be part of my problem, as I'm using a Pentax K-x.
If you go far enough into the shooting menus, my camera (a Nikkon) has a place where you can adjust the saturation color by color. so the "bright" option, for example, could be modified for just one color. Maybe there is something similar in yours. (Maybe that's what @kali66 means by underexposing for reds)
If your shooting RAW then I don't think adjusting saturation or contrast in camera will "stick"... Underexposing might help, but otherwise I think you will need to address in post processing... In Lightroom you'd be able to turn down the luminance on a colour by colour basis which may help more than just adjusting saturation...
@northy This is what I think, as well, apart from underexposing, of course. The site that was suggested above said to spot meter on the red and then underexpose. That might work.
@quietpurplehaze HDR is disabled on my camera (it's one of the settings that I changed that disabled it and I can't remember what -- I could find it if I had to), but in any case, I would need to use a tripod to shoot in HDR, I think.
@hamora Thank you so much for this discussion! I checked out the link posted by @catdudz and I found an article here that helped: rmimaging.com/information/color_accurate_photography.pdf
While much of the technical info went over my head, I did find a practical application that helped me. I recently posted a photo of a red rhododendron and had struggled, aimlessly with the color. Here are 3 versions of the same image before and after this discussion.
Reds are traditionally hard to get right. However, use nuetral not vivid. Use cloudy white balance, use a negative exposure comp (auto ISO), if using flash use a negative flash comp setting.
@dmcoile Thanks. I will have a look at that article. @chapjohn I am going to try out your suggestions and those of the others who replied here tomorrow. Lots of red in my yard to experiment on. Thanks.
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While much of the technical info went over my head, I did find a practical application that helped me. I recently posted a photo of a red rhododendron and had struggled, aimlessly with the color. Here are 3 versions of the same image before and after this discussion.
@chapjohn I am going to try out your suggestions and those of the others who replied here tomorrow. Lots of red in my yard to experiment on. Thanks.