Difficult Reds

Hi Greg:

I have the D70 also and this is normal. I also have a difficult time with so-called "hot" pinks as well. I usually end up using PS7 and using the hue/saturation adjustment and decreasing the saturation in the reds and then adjusting the lightness slider either to the right or left, depending on what I think the color should be. I can usually recover detail without a problem. :smile:

Cool image, BTW  

 

I have problem with reds too. I shot some burgundy snap dragons that turned out much too red when I downloaded them. Then some reds I shot turned out hot pink!!

 

Reds are really difficult to handle - the brighter the more difficult. Can anyone share a simple remedy? Either in camera or PP?

Love the picture - amazingly clear and you have tamed the redd.

 

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:

 

Red is always tricky for any camera, and I think you have done very well with this one. Especially the part of the hopper in the shade is well exposed and you can still see the details.

I find experimenting with different WB (temperature), like cloudy or shade, +/- a couple of steps, etc. may help sometimes, depending on the actual lighting condition and the surrounding colours. Also where the metering is targeted and the coverage (spot, center weight, matrix) makes a difference too.

Regards,
Jonathan

 

David hit the nail right on the head. When you have a scene with more red than green, you need to compensate by under-exposing per the metering by at least a 3rd of a stop.

Nice hopper BTW. I think you got pretty close on the exposure one this shot, and since your primary subject is well exposed, I wouldn't be real torn up about slight loss of details in the red flower. :wink:

 

Frank has give you some good advise. You did fairly well to hold the red as well as you did.

 

Reds Look Fine

Reds look fine to me. Nice composition. With hard lighting, I like to use a diffuser to even the exposure. Maybe a 3 foot or so pop open diffuser (not reflector). Although, you can use both for some applications. Once the lighting is evened out then, you may need to re-evaluate the red pblm.

 

The red are very difficult to reproduce and the camera are optimised for green because of the human eye see the green better than the red. Here two examples of the same red begonia I took a couple of days ago with the PC85 f2.8 micro.

Picture taken with the light coming from the back/side light



Picture of the same flower, the same direction for the light but that one reflected off a mirror on the front/left of camera.



If I had waited for the flower to mature more it would had been a little more red/black color.