Nikon D70 colour problems

The British Journal reported problems with the D70 rendering purple hues
accurately recently. Today a horocultural photographer I deal with (Ian
Gowland, almost entirely shoots with Fuji and they use a lot of his pix
as samples for reps) told me - very much secondhand info this - that a
contact of his at Jessop, in talking about colour repro, said they had
been getting D70s returned (3 units to date) because of problems with
purples, and problems with saturated reds. I assume he was talking about
the same field of work - flower and plant photography. The average user
would presumably be happy with the normal colour rendering of the D70.

I've not yet used ANY digital camera which really handles sunlit
saturated red flowers especially well.

Any feedback on this for others - users?

David

David Kilpatrick wrote:

The British Journal reported problems with the D70 rendering purple hues
accurately recently. Today a horocultural photographer I deal with (Ian
Gowland, almost entirely shoots with Fuji and they use a lot of his pix
as samples for reps) told me - very much secondhand info this - that a
contact of his at Jessop, in talking about colour repro, said they had
been getting D70s returned (3 units to date) because of problems with
purples, and problems with saturated reds. I assume he was talking about
the same field of work - flower and plant photography. The average user
would presumably be happy with the normal colour rendering of the D70.

I've not yet used ANY digital camera which really handles sunlit
saturated red flowers especially well.

Any feedback on this for others - users?

David

This is a well known feature of all digital sensors and is easily
handled my simply underexposing to ensure that the red channel is not
saturated. You can use the histogram to assist with that, although note
that this shows luminance data not individual r,g,b data, so you have to
learn by experience how much to underexpose. Not really an issue and
certainly nothing worth returning the camera for.

The issue with purple hues (on flowers) is because of the gamut
supported by digital cameras (see
http://www.bergencountycamera.com/le...tal_gamut.html). This is
again a common issue with digital sensors and nothing specific to the
D70. You can adjust for this in Photoshop.

Incidentally, this is also an issue with film - see
http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-...?msg_id=003WuH for instance.

If the staff in Jessops actually knew anything about photography I'm
sure they wouldn't be accepting returns in the basis of these observations.


Paul

"David Kilpatrick" wrote in message
...
[]
I've not yet used ANY digital camera which really handles sunlit
saturated red flowers especially well.

Any feedback on this for others - users?

David

I've seen substantial colour differences, although on purple fabrics IIRC.
My guess is that the differences are caused by extended spectral response
of the camera at the red or blue end of the spectrum compared to the eye.
Would this perhaps be what you are seeing?

Cheers,
David

In article , iconmags3
@btconnect.com says...
I've not yet used ANY digital camera which really handles sunlit
saturated red flowers especially well.

Any feedback on this for others - users?

I find shooting switching to Adobe RGB useful for those shots. I have
one picture of a red rose taken at high noon during the summer. When I
first converted the .RAW file, I used sRGB as it tends to work better
with my printer. I found the reds too saturated on the screen and, of
course, on the print. I did a second round using the Adobe RGB color
space and had much better results.

David Kilpatrick wrote:
The British Journal reported problems with the D70 rendering purple hues
accurately recently. Today a horocultural photographer


sorry guys - gawd knows where that typo came from - horticultural...

looks mair like a Freudian slip ti me DK

have yi seen thone fotis abuv?

ah posted sum links masel an ahm wundering if thir digital or filum based

aniwye - ah mite hiv ti cawe on yir eksperteez soon

das B

"David Kilpatrick" wrote in message
...


David Kilpatrick wrote:
The British Journal reported problems with the D70 rendering purple hues
accurately recently. Today a horocultural photographer


sorry guys - gawd knows where that typo came from - horticultural...

David Kilpatrick wrote:

The British Journal reported problems with the D70 rendering purple
hues accurately recently. Today a horocultural photographer I deal
with (Ian Gowland, almost entirely shoots with Fuji and they use a
lot of his pix as samples for reps) told me - very much secondhand
info this - that a contact of his at Jessop, in talking about colour
repro, said they had been getting D70s returned (3 units to date)
because of problems with purples, and problems with saturated
reds.

I wonder. I suspect the real problem is at the point where the sensor
data is rendered into a standard colour space. If done internally in
the camera, there is very little control over how the rendering is
done. However, if a suitably large space is chosen at the point of
raw conversion there shouldn't be any problems. That doesn't mean it
will be possible to print (or even display) the resulting image.

I assume he was talking about the same field of work - flower and
plant photography. The average user would presumably be happy with
the normal colour rendering of the D70.

I've not yet used ANY digital camera which really handles sunlit
saturated red flowers especially well.

It's possible that there really is a problem with the camera, but my
money would be on the lack of a properly colour managed workflow or
the wrong choice of colour space. To investigate this properly
requires a measurement of the colour spectrum of the light and the
colour spectrum of the flower. This isn't very hard to do and doesn't
require particularly exotic equipment.

Andrew.

David Kilpatrick wrote:

The British Journal reported problems with the D70 rendering purple
hues accurately recently. Today a horocultural photographer I deal
with (Ian Gowland, almost entirely shoots with Fuji and they use a
lot of his pix as samples for reps) told me - very much secondhand
info this - that a contact of his at Jessop, in talking about colour
repro, said they had been getting D70s returned (3 units to date)
because of problems with purples, and problems with saturated
reds.

I wonder. I suspect the real problem is at the point where the sensor
data is rendered into a standard colour space. If done internally in
the camera, there is very little control over how the rendering is
done. However, if a suitably large space is chosen at the point of
raw conversion there shouldn't be any problems. That doesn't mean it
will be possible to print (or even display) the resulting image.

I assume he was talking about the same field of work - flower and
plant photography. The average user would presumably be happy with
the normal colour rendering of the D70.

I've not yet used ANY digital camera which really handles sunlit
saturated red flowers especially well.

It's possible that there really is a problem with the camera, but my
money would be on the lack of a properly colour managed workflow or
the wrong choice of colour space. To investigate this properly
requires a measurement of the colour spectrum of the light and the
colour spectrum of the flower. This isn't very hard to do and doesn't
require particularly exotic equipment.

Andrew.