I think part of the reason that we all have difficulty with brilliant reds in pictures is that our cameras are optimized for greens. There's a lot of science behind this that I won't go into right now, but I've read enough to understand and believe that the overall design of sensors that feature a bayer pattern of cells will be more accurate in green hues than reds. And partially because of this, we are more likely to blow-out the reds when shooting scenes with high red content (red flowers that dominate the scene, red rocks, etc.). When the red channel is blown in areas, a color shift will occur (frequently to orange-yellow) in areas that are the hotspots.
What to do about it? When shooting scenes of this type, try under-exposing a bit to give yourself some safety margin for highlights, then carefully post-process to bring up the lighter areas to maximum levels before clipping (watch the red channel especially closely).
Of course, you could also get a D2x, which shows individual color channel histograms when shooting as well. But that's not likely to be quite as feasible. :smile: