lack of color

[richardallen]

i have been using my D200 for a while and the color is not what i think it should/could be. i have made proper adjustment and nothing to improve it. can you provide any tricks/tips please.

R:mad:ick Merriss

[genevh]

I think we're going to need a few more details on this one in order to try and zero in on the problem. For instance, what do you mean the colors aren't what they should be?

What are you getting compared to what you are expecting? Has it always been like that?

Where are you seeing the differences, in the camera on the LCD or once you've downloaded them onto your PC/MAC?

What settings are you using and what changes have you made to try to correct your photos?

And any other details you can give......:D

[TonyW]

Gene's right - hard to tell what the problem is without more detail. But take a look at Ken Rockwell's D200 User Guide.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d200/users-guide/index.htm

He likes lots of color and as you'll see the default camera settings won't give you that.

Tony

[Whiplash-GT]

Ken Rockwell will suggest you add some vibrance and saturation :)

me, i'd suggest you try that (don't expect to see much difference tho on a 3" screen) AND shoot RAW and alter the image more to your liking thru Adobe's Camera RAW or Nikon's Capture NX ;)

[Byron Gale]

Ken Rockwell will suggest you add some vibrance and saturation :)

me, i'd suggest you try that...AND shoot RAW and alter the image more to your liking thru Adobe's Camera RAW or Nikon's Capture NX ;)Hmmm... this brings up something which I've not completely understood... do all of those saturation and color mode settings still apply when shooting in RAW?

[TonyW]

Byron: That's a sort of yes and no question :D. At least in the case of Nikon the RAW file contains all the custom settings you've used in camera but they are stored separately from the actual RAW image. So the software you use to open it can choose to use them or not. In the case of the Nikon software (Capture NX) you can use them but you can also change them. The Adobe Camera RAW editor I suspect doesn't use them but applies it's own specific defaults to the RAW image which you can change (and save new camera RAW defaults if you want). JPEG files on the other hand have the custom settings applied in camera so once it's done it's done and they can't be undone although you can of course change things like saturation after the fact in Elements - but that's not the same thing as making changes to the RAW file which are completely reversible.

Capture NX is useful because you can see what all the custom settings do to the image - so helps you decide which custom settings you want to use for shooting jpegs.

Tony

[Whiplash-GT]

guess i should have also stated, if i'm not mistaken Ken shoots jpeg so yes, the change to those settings in-camera will make a difference

as does NX with RAW

[Byron Gale]

Tony,

Thanks for the comments. I understand that all of the settings affect the in-camera JPG processing -- it was whether they had an effect on the NEF image that had me puzzled.

So I guess the answer is "it depends". I think I'll have to read up on this, now that I've allowed it into the front of my brain. ;)

Byron

[TonyW]

Byron: Sorry to mess with your brain :D. It was playing with Capture NX that convinced me that shooting RAW was the way to go. Open a RAW file and I could change all the in camera settings and noticed that different images worked best with different settings - in some cases the difference was quite dramatic especially the color modes (Nikon has several different sRGB modes as well as Adobe RGB) and saturation. Open a JPEG shot at the same time and I was stuck with whatever settings I was using at the time. So to get back to the OP's question the in-camera settings can make a huge difference to the way colors look.

Tony

[lexcell]

Great advice Tony,
You are right on about Capture vs say Adobe Camera RAW when processing some of the picture controls in a Nikon Camera.
If you set the controls in the camera and shoot RAW, you can change those settings as Tony mentions or you can simply process the files as shot and the settings will stay with the image in Capture NX. You can save some of these settings in ACR if you change the preferences away from Automatic.
Most images require some post work to bring out the vibrant colors. The capture device has limitations from the low pass filter...often a simple Black Point/White Point adjustment will make an image pop more...and will remove any color cast that our cameras capture.

[Mark1]

Jpegs are just a Cliff Notes of what the camera sees when the image is taken. Its is far from the whole story! It can get you by, but there is not enuf info in a jpeg to do a lot of editing after the fact. Raw is named that because it is raw data straight off the sensor. It has about 2 stops of info in either direction. ( more or less depending on the camera) it is also NON processed so nothing is missing as in a jpeg. With all the info you are able to do drastic editing without losing anything. A very poor and over used example is the negative/print comparison. Raw is like a negative.... you can do as you wish with it. Jpeg is a print... its finished and there is not much you can do with it without degrading it.

So.. if you had shot in raw you can push the color vibrency a lot farther and get a shot that pops!

However if you shoot raw, you lock yourself into doing post processing. Keep that in mind!

All that said, a jpeg shot spot-on and not needing any editing is 100% fine.