color shift with flowers

[keiserk]

I am an amateur gardner and and amateur photographer. My garden provides me with lots of good subject matter. I have no problems with the reds, greens, oranges etc...but every purple flower turns out blue, even thru the viewfinder. I just fiddle with a little point and shoot (Casio Exilim) I like playing with it and it has held up well.
Thanks Katy Keiser

[OsmosisStudios]

Your casio doesnt have a viewfinder: it has a viewing screen.

Purple is one of the hardest colours for a digital device to properly capture. It's notoriously difficult to tweak purples too, as it's only got a tiny portion of the RGB colour space.

[keiserk]

guess that dates me, huh? old habits die hard. I will continue to work on the purple part....
kk

[OsmosisStudios]

Not a problem. Here's a slightly more technical explanation:

If we look at the image below, it shows the RGB colour space that is used by the vast majority of digital devices, from cameras to monitors and so on.

Every colour we see on a computer monitor or that is captured by the camera exists within this space, but there are colours outside of it. The human eye can see those colours, but monitors cant display them and cameras cant capture them.

If you look to the bottom left of the triangle, you see the blue-to-purple transition. As you can imagine, there is a fair bit of colour beyond that corner that isnt being shown, specifically between the deep purple and fucshia colours. Those, unfortunately, are colours that are often seen in nature (like flowers) and are, therefore, impossible to represent 100% accurately.

If you shoot RAW, most recent converters have HSL sliders (Hue/Saturation/Lightness) that allow you to change the specific colours in those three areas. It makes the colours very easy to control.

Looking at the image, you can also see that the orange area is limited, as are blues and the reddish-pinks. Green is hard to get properly for certain shades, but is still fairly versatile. Yellow is almost as difficult to nail as oranges.

What this means is that you'll often have a hard time shooting flowers with digital, purely from a technical standpoint. I've taken to using film whenever possible, as Kodak Portra 160VC has a GREAT colour gamut.