PLEASE HELP - Should the colors from my new Canon 10D be this bad??

[ivanskavinsky]

Richard, I'm with Alan on the colour space angle and Brian on the exposures.

 

My 1st thought was that you were shooting in Adobe 1998 space (unadjusted the

pictures will always look a little flat...) If you're shooting in sRGB space then

something else is going on.

 

A lot of the loss in saturation though, is from the overexposure (0.5-1 stop to my

eye)

 

FWIW I've done around 5k exposures on my 10D and have had no problems with the

colour. I've always shot in the Adobe colour space mainly for it's extended tonal range

over the sRGB space, though it does entail extra processing in Photoshop.

 

Hope it works out for you.

[fran_ois_dugas]

(sorry for my english---):Your eyes don't exactly work like a camera, in your field of vision, only a small area is really focused and clear. You iris is adjusting the amount of light every time you change you sight direction so everything you look at seems properly ''exposed'' and with natural colors, EVEN AT NOON, but not a camera... A camera is trying to get everything in the image properly exposed at the same time (so we have spot, evaluative, center-weighted average, etc...metering) It is always hard to do but really hard in the middle of a sunny day (there is almost no shadows in your picts). I think they are right for the conditions of ambiant light. Everything people said about fixing them in PS is true but to me, with an excellent camera as the incredible 10D, you should'nt really have to (or not often). If you monitor is okay, they should almost always appear with great colors if you increase saturation and contrast by 1 step (maybe 2 for saturation) with the in-camera settings. Also, try to set the auto-exposure pointing near the sky (when possible) so it is darkened a bit (pointing too low the camera will try to get objects lighter but the sky will be washed out) and recenter you composition after (or shoot completely manual, when you get familiar with correct exposure values). Also, get a polasizer and learn how to use it properly (i.e. sun's position). I have a brand new Canon Rebel Digital (300D) with the same cmsos sensor but less settings and I get wonderfull images almost every time. See my small portfolio and you'll see some colorfull outdoor photos from the 300D. (I never manipulate my images, byt the way, even if I know PS a lot)

[richard_arthur]

To everyone who said that the problem with the first picture is just that it is overexposed, you're right. I knew that the white sky was overexposed, but I did not look at the picture closely enough to realize that there are no black shadows among the trees. (I guess I would have seen this if I had looked at the histogram as suggested.) If I just adjust the levels and drag the input shadow slider and the brightness slider each a little to the right and boost the saturation by 20%, I get something that looks good to my eye. (Actually it looks very similar to the picture that Brian posted above.)

 

I don't really understand yet what caused the trees to be overexposed instead of just the sky, but I know that this camera has different metering modes, etc., so I will figure it out as I learn how it works.

 

Like I said, I've got a lot of learning to do with this camera (and with Photoshop). I am looking forward to it. :-)

[brian_tao]

Richard,

 

If you like to see more colour "pop" right out of the camera on your 10D JPEG files, try going into the Parameters menu and setting it to use Contrast -2 and Saturation +2. As someone else pointed out earlier, higher contrast images tend to wash out colours. You also squeeze in a bit more dynamic range by telling the camera not to increase contrast at all.

[sandy.]

Richard,

 

Here is a picture I took yesterday. I am posting it straight from the camera without ANY PS manipulation - no sharpening, no saturation + / -, Nothing !, Maybe you should check the setting of your camera...<div></div>

[kelly_flanigan1]

Sandy; wow! your photo looks mighty fine here too! what lens did you use?

[sandy.]

Kelly, it's the 24-70 f/2.8L USM. Amazing isn't it? So sharp and the color saturation...I don't know where to begin even if I wanted to manipulate this picture.;-)))

[sandy.]

Richard, I re-read the whole thread again and take a second look at your picture. IMHO, I think your photo is over exposed. I took the liberty to reduce the brightness and increase the contrast a tad on your picture and here is the comparo results. The top one is your original picture and the one below, obviously, is with the adjustments. Please be your own judge about your 10D. Hope this helps.<div></div>

[ant_nio_ferreira]

Here is another try using levels, saturation selective color and a degradé effects.

[jeremy_smith]

Richard, by now you've either figured out how to use the 10D to your satisfaction or smashed it with a bat, but I'll chip in here a bit anyway... I've had a 10D for about 6 months now, but I'm not a PS expert and I've only spent about 10 minutes with the manual, to be honest. I've found that unless I'm trying to achieve some special effect, all I do with the images after uploading is use the auto-contrast (and OCCASIONALLY the auto-levels) on the PS version that came with the camera (Elements). The white balance, saturation, etc. on the camera are at the default settings. The auto-contrast often makes a big difference, especially if the lighting was not ideal to begin with.