Photographing the colour red

[candidrachel]

My camera a canon 40d cannot cope with the colour red. If I take photos of red roses for example the colour always come out several shades lighter. Why does that happen? I always have to adjust the colour in pp.

Can anyone tell me? I know back and white subjects can cause problems but red always causes me the most headaches.

If this isn't the right place for this post please feel free to move it.

[sebthedog1]

Originally Posted by candidrachel

My camera a canon 40d cannot cope with the colour red. If I take photos of red roses for example the colour always come out several shades lighter. Why does that happen? I always have to adjust the colour in pp.

Can anyone tell me? I know back and white subjects can cause problems but red always causes me the most headaches.

If this isn't the right place for this post please feel free to move it.

Hi Rachel,

I found the same thing this week trying to take a picture of a very red valentine's day rose, I don't know the technically correct way to achieve deep red rather than light red (I'm a very novice snapper) but I deliberately underexposed to get the colour I wanted. The pic is called with love from me to you if you want to see the result. Hope that helps.

Mandy

[i speak in math]

Originally Posted by candidrachel

My camera a canon 40d cannot cope with the colour red. If I take photos of red roses for example the colour always come out several shades lighter. Why does that happen? I always have to adjust the colour in pp.

Can anyone tell me? I know back and white subjects can cause problems but red always causes me the most headaches.

If this isn't the right place for this post please feel free to move it.

do you shoot in raw? I ask because the histogram in raw images does not coorespond to the raw image, but the internal jpeg. Therefore, if you get the histogram perfect, the red channel might be blown out in the raw.

To improve your chances at getting the right exposure in raw, you can do several things:
1.) Turn your saturation down 1 or 2 steps in the jpeg color mode
2.) Turn your contrast all the way down
3.) Try a UniWB (google it)
4.) Check all the color channels for clipping issues. Usually this is done by showing a single histogram, then breaking it into a green, red and blue channel histogram

Doing these should result in a histogram (based off the internal jpeg) that more closely resembles the data in the raw image. And checking the histogram on each channel will ensure you don't clip one of the channels (namely, the red)

Also remember that the red and blue channels have half the information of the green channel so they are usually the ones that cause the problems.

[Doug Pardee]

Originally Posted by candidrachel

If I take photos of red roses for example the colour always come out several shades lighter. Why does that happen?

It's because Canon metering sensors (prior to the 7D and T2i/550D) don't see color. When what they're metering is mainly red, orange, or yellow, they'll tend to overexpose.

You need to check your RGB histograms and watch out for blow-out of the Red channel. (You'll probably never blow out the green or blue.)

Initial reports suggest that the two-color metering sensor on the 7D helps avoid this problem. The same can be expected of the T2i/550D and any later Canon DSLR with the new iFCL metering system.

[OsmosisStudios]

Red is also inherently difficult for sensors to capture properly

Both sRGB and Adobe RGB dont really get into the proper reds, so it's hard for them to show them properly.

[Raoul Isidro]

You can try doing this:
Press the picture style button to the right of the INFO button that's just beside the ON/OFF swith. If your STANDARD setting is 0,0,0,0 then use that, or if Neutral is 0,0,0,0 use that one instead. If both have settings set to other numbers, don't use them, scroll down to User Defined Standard 1 and set it to 0,0,0,0.
Use this for the Red shots.
Shoot in RAW if possible.
Bracket your shots by 1+ 1- EV.
Take 5 images at least.
One of the images should produce a good red.
Remember to set the Picture Style back to Standard, or whatever you were using before.
Cheers!

[OsmosisStudios]

Originally Posted by Raoul Isidro

You can try doing this:
Press the picture style button to the right of the INFO button that's just beside the ON/OFF swith. If your STANDARD setting is 0,0,0,0 then use that, or if Neutral is 0,0,0,0 use that one instead. If both have settings set to other numbers, don't use them, scroll down to User Defined Standard 1 and set it to 0,0,0,0.
Use this for the Red shots.
Shoot in RAW if possible.
Bracket your shots by 1+ 1- EV.
Take 5 images at least.
One of the images should produce a good red.
Remember to set the Picture Style back to Standard, or whatever you were using before.
Cheers!

Im confused as to how this would help. Capturing reds (pinks and purples too, for that matter) is a difficulty inherent in the technology. That's like saying "to make Velvia shoot great black and white images, just scan them and alter them digitally".

[candidrachel]

Thanks alot for you replies. Sorry its taken so long to reply.

[LoveDSLR]

You can profile your camera just as you do monitor calibration and profiling printers. Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) will use this profile upon loading your images.

[kencaleno]

If you shoot jpeg,make sure your color setting isn't on "vivid",but set saturation high.