Phil:
I looked at your pictures from Cybor's thread (Mexico) and they're beautiful! Thanks for sharing.

Do you find the color to be true? When I take photos of the sunrise, I get a lot more red than is really there. I get it in both the auto setting,and mode "P". What am I doing wrong? See:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=...&y=-zee8ay

Thanks for any help you can give me.

Cyn

This one may work better:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=...&y=-hp746l

Cyn

Hi, Cyn,

Thanks for the nice words on my Mexico images made with the FZ-30. It's a wonderful camera, but it does not make automatically make pictures with "true" color. No camera does. The photographer must adjust the color to his or her own taste or purpose. You adjust color in four ways. The first is in the camera itself. Go to the shooting menu on the FZ-30 and look under Pict. Adjustment. You can set your camera for vivid color by setting "Saturation" on "High" and get more natural colors by setting it on "Low". The second factor affecting color produced by the camera itself is the "White Balance" setting. If you use "Auto" white balance, you may or may not get "real color". You will get more accurate color of the sun by using "Daylight" white balance. I don't use either. I use "Cloudy" for all of my out door pictures, sunny or not, because it warms up the color, and I like warm color. Adjusting white balance is not hard. Think of each white balance setting as a color filter. Click on each one and look at the picture it makes for you. That will help you fine tune your color as well.

And that, Cyn, is just the beginning. The image that comes out of the camera is really only "half" a picture until you enhance it in an editing program such as Photoshop. And that is the third way you can adjust the nature of color to your own preferences -- in your computer. I always run every picture worth publishing on my site through Photoshop to fine tune the color according to my own "truth." Some people prefer delicate color. Other want colors to be as natural as possible. Some people even accept that bluish "digital" look. I don't. I warm my colors in the camera, and warm them again a bit in Photoshop, by adjusting the "color balance" sliders so that I add a touch of red and a touch of yellow to most images. It is just like using a "warming filter" on a film camera. (A touch means five "points" or less in the color balance numerical scale boxes. I never add over ten points.)

And lastly, there is a saturation control in photoshop as well, which I always use to add a touch of depth to my colors. Once again, no more than five points.

If you are getting more red than you want in your pictures, just change the saturation setting in your camera to low, play with your white balance settings, and, if need be, decrease the red a bit in the "color balance" setting in Photoshop.

Hope this helps, Cyn.

Phil

Cyn, it just occurred to me that one other control might be involved in your problem. The FZ-30 has a COLOR EFFECT option, (Page 91 of the manual), which offers you a choice of cool color, warm color, black and white, or sepia. I would suggest that this option be set to OFF. You should make such adjustments, if need be, later on in photoshop.

Phil

Phil:

Thanks for your thoughtful and informative replies. You are so kind to help!! The color effect on my fz30 is set to off, and I'm still getting some "interesting" colors. If you don't mind (and honestly, "just say no" and my feelings won't be hurt!!! ), would you look at these (again non-safari)pictures:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=...0&y=levn20

It's the same question - the color is so not what I'm seeing with my eyes. There are one or 2 photos where the ice is clear. The "clear" ones were taken later in the morning. The "golden" ice was right at sunrise, and there are some brown oak leaves in the background that I THINK i'm getting the gold from.
Cyn

Or is it just the color of sun?

ttt

Hello,

I'm not an expert photographer, but I do work with the human visual system, which may be the source of the problem here. Our brains automatically adjust to very subtle changes in light, which gives us enhanced colour perception and avoids the 'casts' you can sometimes get in photographs. Thus far, no one has invented a camera which can duplicate this sort of internal processing -- tinkering with colours in Photoshop is the next best thing. I have heard that Canon are working on a chip which will perform some of these adjustments, but it's going to be awhile (probably a long while) before we see anything commercially available.

Cheers,
Julian

Hi Julian,

I've noticed in past threads that you're a doctor, and now you've added that "I do work with the human visual system". Are you by chance an ophthalmologist?

Thanks,

Jack

Hi Julian:

Thanks for the reply. The "issue" I'm having is that I'm getting much more color with the camera than I'm seeing with my eyes. It looks kind of nice - the ice pictures I referenced above were a shock when I looked at them on the computer - but I really liked them. I just don't know how I'm getting these colors - and I might actually like to duplicate the effect if I could figure it out.

Oh well. 12 days to go....

Cyn

Hi Cyn,

Have you checked the Picture Adjustment settings? I think that the default settings in the FZ cameras tend to add a touch of saturation, which means they come out looking a bit more intense.

You might also want to check your white-balance settings. The 'clouds' setting makes things warmer (more red/gold).

Cheers,
Julian