How do you control colors produced by NIKON D700

[haring]

I have been a Canon shooter for a very long time. Canon colors tend to be subtle and natural looking. I like the vibrant colors which come from my new Nikon D700 however I have had hard time controlling Nikon colors. I mainly shoot weddings and people skin tones tend to be red and yellow. I have never had this problem with my Canon cameras.

The question: How do you control colors so they are vibrant yet people look natural....?

Thanks a LOT!

[kirbinster]

Well it depends if you shoot jpeg or raw. In jpeg there are settings for vibrance and saturation in the camera. There is also a map, like Canon, where you can adjust tint. In raw you just adjust it in your post processing. In either mode you probably have to adjust your white balance if you are having issues with skin tones.

[haring]

I shoot RAW. The problem that I cannot predict lighting situations during a wedding because it changes almost every minute... I do adjust the white balance during post processing but it takes a long time to do it and sometimes I have only moderate success. With Canon it was much easier to produce natural looking skin tones.
Do you have any method you use when you adjust the white balance?

[kirbinster]

Not sure why you are seeing the lighting change so frequently, but that is an entirely different story. If it is not possible to take a shot with a grey card, I find that the best bet in Lightroom is to place the eyedropped on the teeth or whites of the eyes and adjust the whitebalance to that. Its not a perfect method but it generally gets you fairly close.

[Vagebond]

I looked up the D700 on dpreview.com and found

Picture Control
• Standard
• Neutral
• Vivid
• Monochrome

Image parameters
• Sharpening: Auto, 10 levels
• Contrast: Auto, 6 levels, Custom tone curve
• Brightness: 3 levels
• Saturation: Auto, 7 levels
• Hue: 7 levels

Have you tried experimenting with any of those?

[RLucas]

Originally Posted by Vagebond

I looked up the D700 on dpreview.com and found

Picture Control
• Standard
• Neutral
• Vivid
• Monochrome

Image parameters
• Sharpening: Auto, 10 levels
• Contrast: Auto, 6 levels, Custom tone curve
• Brightness: 3 levels
• Saturation: Auto, 7 levels
• Hue: 7 levels

Have you tried experimenting with any of those?

Actually none of that matters when you shoot in RAW. Those in camera settings don't apply unless you set them in your RAW converter. The only thing that usually transfers is white balance.
I would suggest that if you have a few images to process that were shot in similar lighting, would be to set the first one the way you want it, and batch convert the rest with those settings applied.
What software are you using to convert your RAW images? Some of them you can change the default color profile to your liking.

[haring]

I use Lightroom most of the time. I adjust the white balance all the time when it is needed and copy the white balance setting to those images which were taken under the same lighting conditions.

I can't use grey card because I shoot in photojournalistic style and I don't always have time to set the grey card.

I have tried to use the picture control settings but they only apply to JPEGs.

I will definitely try the eyedrop tool on the teeth and whites of the eyes!!! Thanks for the advice!!!