What is wrong with my new Canon 50d ?

[stevestuff]

I took this shot today with my new Canon 50d. It was in partial sunshine. It appears that the sensor interrupted the

sunshine as a real "yellow" color. Can someone please help me understand why this image came out this way. I

used two different lenses (16-35 mm and 135mm prime) which gave me the same results.

 

http://www.photo.net/photo/7958104

 

Regards,

 

Steve<div></div>

[bob_osullivan]

Seems fine to me. Nothing to reference it too.

 

WB setting maybe. Did you shoot Raw or Jpeg? What WB setting did you use? Time of day?

[stevestuff]

Hello Bob,

 

Thanks for your reply.

 

The WB was set to auto.

Time of day was 4:00 pm

I shot both RAW and Jpeg.

 

This issue that I have is that the flower is completely RED, with no yellow in it,

but the camera interrupted yellow color from the sun shining on the front portion of the flower.

 

Regards,

 

Steve

[allardk]

What do you think is wrong with the picture? From your description it sounds you think the white balance is off.

I can see you used auto white balance from the EXIF, but I can't find what settings were chosen by the camera.

Anyway, this looks to me like a shot that is difficult for auto white balance. There's nothing white or grey in

the frame, and the distribution of colors is not something one would expect in an everyday scene. Cameras are

smart these days, but not so smart they do not require input from the user. In fact, that (to me) is the whole

point of using an SLR instead of a point-and-shoot. You can tell it what to do.

<p> Do you know what white balance is, how to set it, what it does to how your image looks? If not, start reading

and experimenting.

<p> Is this more like what you expected?<div></div>

[allardk]

if you shot raw + jpeg open the raw and play with the white balance. You can use Digital Picture Professional that you got with the camera, for example. You may also want to check whether these yellow bits aren't overexposed. BTW, the image I posted is made starting from the JPEG you posted. That is not a good way to adjust white balance, so i can't get it back the way it should have been. Of course I do not know what it should have been. You should be able to get much better results from the raw.

[mark u]

Your image contains extremes of mixed lighting and high dynamic range. The exposure was 1/200th f/2.8 and 160 ISO, so the main part of the flower was in fairly deep shade (with a high colour temperature). The few petals that were in direct sunshine in late afternoon were lit by much warmer light. The camera has produced a "correct" white balance for the shady portion of the image, and applied it to the whole image. The sunlit petals were so overexposed (probably partly due to specular reflections) that but for the white balance adjustment they would have appeared white. A polariser might have helped at least by largely removing the specular reflections; alternatively, diffusing the sunlight would have also done this and reduced the dynamic range..

[bobatkins]

I very much doubt there's anything wrong with the camera. I'd say it's 95% likely user error due to exposure problems.

 

Flowers are also about the worst possible color test targets since many reflect strongly in the UV and that can cause some color issues. Purple flowers are notoriously difficult.

 

Run more tests on different subjects and see what happens.

[notraces]

I'd say there's nothing wrong with the camera.

[PuppyDigs]

I think Mark and Bob nailed the problem: mixed lighting (cool shade & warm sunlight) and extreme dynamic range. The

camera set WB for the largest part of the image--the darker shade--and let the ultra warm sunlight fall where it may.

 

Amazing our little brains filter and adjust WB instantly as we look at different parts of the scene. The camera records the

scene "as is." I often shoot late afternoon landscapes and see similar problems all the time. My solution is to shoot RAW,

convert one file for daylight and another for shade and selectively blending the two files in layers in PS. The result? Just like

the human eye sees it.

 

Incidentally, the same problem comes up when using fill flash with artificial lights in the background. Your eyes adjust for

the weird WB of incandescent while the camera uses WB for flash and renders the background a sick yellow. Same solution

as above.

[bill_muth]

I think this is more of a clipping issue than a WB issue. I opened your photo in a browser that displayed a RGB

histogram. The G and B channels looked OK, but the R channel highlights are clipped preetty good. Try dialing in

some negative exposure compensation, or altering the lighting to reduce contrast. Use the on-camera RGB

histogram to check as you go.

[mark u]

Bill is quite right. This is one of those occasions when a much maligned optical filter is a good way to get the right result. A strong blue cooling filter might be enough to tame the red channel highlights. Of course, you'd need to apply a suitable white balance correction to compensate in post processing.

[lester_wareham]

It could be colour temperature difference but it could also be desaturation due to clipping of the red channel if the yellow is where the sunlight was falling.

 

Check your RAW file in a RAW editor that will show a by channel clip warning.

[pmind]

I'd say there is actually nothing wrong with the camera, your result is very nice indeed. It's really a matter of what area of the flower (or any other object) reflects the most light. The part directly reflecting the sun is going to appear differently regardless of which w/b or exposure settings are used, or whether or not you shoot RAW; however RAW will of course give you more latitude later. I would consider using a small diffuser to reduce (even out) the effect, or if you are really ambitious, correct it in post; but I'd probably opt for the direct approach first. Good Luck.