I keep getting flat colours, when taking images of some flowers. Here is a prime example, the leaves look fine, but the bloom looks flat and unreal. I've tried using the close-up "flower" setting on the 550D and I've tried using different manual exposures. There are also red flowers and pink flowers where this happens.

I noticed it as well on the Ixus.

I've had a quick play with some of the settings in Lightroom 3, but couldn't find a way of bringing out any detail.

IMG_0683.jpg von wright_is auf Flickr

Wow what a strange effect. I wish I could offer something other than it just looks odd. I look forward to seeing what possible explanations come up.

Are you shooting straight to JPEG, Dave?

I ask as once the camera's processed the image and dumped it to the card, that's about it. No amount of tweaking in software later will be able to recover it.

My immediate thought is that if you're using Lightroom to process images, you may as well shoot in RAW, and then you get everything the camera sensor "saw". It uses more card space, but cards are cheap.

Secondary to that, have you changed the colour space the camera is set to? It is usually sRGB by default, which is okay for screen presentation generally. To get a slightly higher gamut, consider changing this to Adobe RGB.

Finally, some colours will simply be beyond what the sensor can actually capture. This is simply a limitation of the technology at the moment. If you're happy with manual control, try underexposing the image a little bit by dialling back the exposure value. That should help stop the bright colours blowing out like that.

Just a thought, but if you've been playing around with the camera settings a lot, then perhaps you have inadvertently left something in an abnormal way. I'm not sure with Canon but with Nikon you can press a combination of buttons to perform a reset to factory settings. Might be a starting point if no other suggestions or explanations come forth.

I am shooting jpeg + RAW. I'll have a look at the colour settings.

Matt, I haven't knowingly changed any settings that would affect coliur balance. It also affects 2 cameras, a compact and a dslr.

I think Heather might be right, that some colours just overload the sensor.

Hmm that is odd, you sometimes get this with bright flowers when they are overexposed. Try spot or partial metering on the flower itself, and manually set the white balance. Also set the picture style to Natural or Faithful rather than Standard or Landscape (obviously if you shoot in RAW you can made the changes at any time...

1) Turn off auto-lighting optimiser? 2) Check the histogram? 3) Check to make sure no exposure compensation has been left on?



From another website...



Quite a few websites suggesting some Canon cameras (550D included) have a tendency to overdo the reds.

Bit of an oddball suggestion this but...

... have you tried it on a different computer? Could it be your LR install buggering it up somehow?

Or does it look crap in the viewfinder when you take the photo?

Edit: Does it still happen if you zoom right in on a flower head?

No, the JPEG image, viewed externally is the same and I've tried it on my iMac, with Appeture and iPhoto as well.

Sounds like the oversaturation situation. I'll see if I can play around with it and I'll get back with some results, when I have a bit of time to do some tests...

Sorry, late to the thread here. That's definitely oversaturated red, and the blue is close too. Do you use Lightroom? If so, try using the 'Recovery' slider to recover detail in the clipped channels - that should help.

Brilliant. Thanks for that.

I actually changed "Tönung" (tone, tint, shading?) as well as recovery. The Tönung made the biggest difference (from +19 to -136). I'm still on the free trial of Lr and haven't really played much with it yet. Graphics and post are not my strong point. I think, apart from recaling images, I've actually done post-editing on maybe half a dozen images from the thousands I've taken. I have some learning to do.


20110522-IMG_0683 von wright_is auf Flickr

I've played around with the settings, chosing "Landscape" as the image type in manual mode has got some decent results. I'm still loading and processing the reel, I'll try and upload an image shortly.

Edit:

IMG_0823.jpg von wright_is auf Flickr

The 'Tint' slider is part of the white balance control, and adjusts the balance between green and magenta, which would seem to be perfect for that particular photo as it's made the grass more vibrant and the flowers less so! Anyway, happy to help. I always have my camera set to 'Neutral' preset with no adjustments to the colour balance.