My D500 has fallen in love with magenta

My D500 does a great job at capturing information and I have never worked with a better camera. However, it does seem to have a preference for things magenta. I have played with the picture controls and make changes now in Lightroom when processing. Has anyone else experienced anything similar? If so, what did you do about it?

I would guess you are still in warranty or I'd hesitate to say this. Don't know why, but a Canon Digital Elph I had a couple of years ago started to shade magenta before it went down. It was out of warranty and I couldn't find a place to repair it, so I have no idea what went wrong. Best of luck with it, by all reports a great camera.

Basics first: Have you confirmed that you are using a correct white balance setting?

Could you upload an example?

This has been converted to a .jpg.

 

Basics first: Have you confirmed that you are using a correct white balance setting?

White balance is set to auto -- I hadn't checked previously -- good tip, but unfortunately not the fix.

My d7000 was the same way. I just adjusted best I could in PP...

 

FWIW I think it works in your attachment...

Sorry, but I don't understand what the problem is; the attached image is supposed to show what exactly (looks OK to me)?

Is your monitor properly calibrated?

Dieter, I guess I'm comparing to the subject outside my office and the magenta in the image is much more saturated. Ben, I haven't calibrated it lately, but is seems fine on images from my older D7000.

Dieter, I guess I'm comparing to the subject outside my office and the magenta in the image is much more saturated. Ben, I haven't calibrated it lately, but is seems fine on images from my older D7000.

 

A monitor, especially an older one, should be calibrated regularly. Most calibration software will remind you about once a month. I usually ignore the reminders and recalibrate about once every rhree months.

One monitor is new, the other about three years old. However, the monitor cannot account for the difference in images taken with different cameras.

There are differences in color rendition between cameras. It is possible to calibrate out these differences using e.g. X-Rite ColorChecker and compatible software (e.g Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom). I think the posted image looks ok.

Oversensitivity to red (admittedly not magenta) is pretty common in sensors. I don't see much wrong with your image either, but having a too strong color is not all that unusual: all you need to do is to decrease the saturation or the luminance of the magenta channel. I find I usually dial down reds and any flourescent color in post if they occupy a large part of the image as these tend to be too strong for my taste (when imported using standard color settings).

Did you accidentally manually fine tune your white balance? I know I did--once! Or if you haven't, maybe you should.

I appreciate all the suggestions. I have not made any effort to customize how LR of PS handles either camera. I also have not manually adjusted the white balance and rely on Nikon's auto software. My concern was that this was a potential issue with the sensor. I have been able to handle any and all issues in post.

Not all that different from the days of film, when Ektachrome gave brilliant blues, Fujichrome was more sensitive to green, and Kodachrome was king of red. I don't see any problems in your sample image.

IF you are not happy with the way a Nikon (recent) DSLR handels colours , sharpness etc. you can also construct your own (flat if neccesary) picture control using the picture control utility and upload your preferences towards the camera...

 

More on this from Nikon ( it is a loooong story.. :) ) :

1) : Picture Controls Step-by-Step from Nikon

2) : Nikon | PICTURE CONTROL SYSTEM

3) : Technical Solutions | Nikon Professional Services

Edited May 2, 2017 by c.p.m._van_het_kaar

Thanks C.P.M. BINGO - the Hue setting was slightly favoring red -- I have changed that and will see what happens.

I just purchased a D500 too. Be sure you do not make an processing choices in the menu settings. Leave white balance on auto, shoot RAW, and choose standard rather than vivid or anything else for the color selection. I can't remember which menu standard is in. Good luck with resolving the problem.

Leave white balance on auto, shoot RAW, and choose standard rather than vivid or anything else for the color selection.

MMM When shooting in raw, white balance and color selection do not realy matter , do they, its all in the post processing .. :rolleyes:

I'm coming in really late on this one, but have a suggestion. Switch from Auto WB to Daylight, and see whether the magenta bias hasn't decreased. In my experience Auto WB over-compensates for the green in leaves when shooting scenes like your sample..