Primary Colors

[beejoan]

When I try to take a picture of objects that are very red or very yellow (think bright flowers), my D80 will not capture the color as I see it. They either blow out the colors when it's yellow or change the colors entirely, especially the reds. Why is this?! It's so frustrating and yet I know it must be something that can be either fixed or compensated for since I see other shots with these rich colors. What am I missing?!

In these images you'll see the difficulty with yellow and the differing exposure is evident. The other two images should be showing a deep red, but instead it shows up magenta.

[OsmosisStudios]

Examples, I beg of thee!

[Doug Pardee]

Originally Posted by beejoan

When I try to take a picture of objects that are very red or very yellow (think bright flowers), my D80 will not capture the color as I see it. They either blow out the colors when it's yellow or change the colors entirely, especially the reds. Why is this?!

Without seeing the photos it's just a guess, but you're probably overexposing. With most digital cameras, the red channel is the easiest to "max out".

Using the Adobe RGB color space will make that tendency even more noticeable.

When taking pictures of red or yellow objects, use some negative Exposure Compensation to keep things under control.

[beejoan]

Here's an example of a blue flower.... It's a blownout purple!

[OsmosisStudios]

They all seem to be a white balance issue to me.

[Mojorisen]

Experiment with your Saturation and Color tone. Saturation could be too high. Some of the images did also look a little over exposed as well.