Nikon D40 red/pink color help please!

jenna16

Hi,

I recently purchased a Nikon D40, which I love. However, I am an amateur, and I have been using it on auto. it can't seem to handle bright red or hot pink in either shade or sun. please see examples. Any advice on how to handle this would be most appreciated. Should i just do color correction on my computer? I'd like the photo to come out well in the first place....

http://greenstein.smugmug.com/photos/142898791-M.jpg (shade)
http://greenstein.smugmug.com/photos/139031982-M.jpg (bright sun)

Thanks for any insights.

Jenna

Harryb

Hi Jenna,

First question is what color space are you using? The default Nikon settings tend to be a tad high in saturation.. AdobeRGB will give you the most accurate color.

You will also get better results if you get away from the P mode and use either shutter or aperture priority (I normally use aperture priority). These modes with EV adjustments and using the histogram review will get you the best results.

pathfinder

Welcome to dgrin, Jenna!

What Harry said - He is the Nikon shooter.

Bright saurated colors frequently are overexposed in one channel of the image - It is very easy to overexpose the Red channel with highly saturated subjects. Red flowers are notorious for this. YOu need to use some - exposure compensation ( it is in your manual)

Look at the histogram in Photoshop and check the red, the blue and the green channel looking for a spike off to the right end of the histogram. If you see a spike to the far right, the channel in blown, overexposed, has no details.

Does the D40 allow you to see all three channels of the histogram on the camera's LCD? Probably not ( I shoot Canon so what do I know:D)

Learn to shoot in Av, Tv or Manual. Your images will improve greatly.

Mike02

jenna16 wrote:

Hi,

I recently purchased a Nikon D40, which I love. However, I am an amateur, and I have been using it on auto. it can't seem to handle bright red or hot pink in either shade or sun. please see examples. Any advice on how to handle this would be most appreciated. Should i just do color correction on my computer? I'd like the photo to come out well in the first place....

http://greenstein.smugmug.com/photos/142898791-M.jpg (shade)
http://greenstein.smugmug.com/photos/139031982-M.jpg (bright sun)

Thanks for any insights.

Jenna

In addition to what those guys said, you may also want to check out your custom settings, because you can turn the saturation down if its too high.