color balance concern-purple

Scott J Buchanan · Nov 9, 2004

Just got my fz20 and have been experimenting. It can't capture the color purple- deep, rich purple- shows up blue in images,

even after changing the white balance, customizing the white balance, adjusting the white balance red/blue scale...
anyone else see this issue? any suggestions?
I can correct it in PS but this is a pain to do all the time.
maybe a color filter?
try taking a shot of something very purple and see what you get.
thanks, Scott B

paulw UK · Nov 9, 2004

Scott J Buchanan said:
Just got my fz20 and have been experimenting. It can't capture the
color purple- deep, rich purple- shows up blue in images,

Yes, I noticed this a while ago on a shot I took of a back-lit stained glass cat (not real stained glass, a home made effort using plastic "lead" and some sort of plastic paint that dries translucent).

I intended doing some tests and posting results here, taking the same shot with an SLR but haven't got round to it yet as the SLR has gathered dust since I got the FZ10!

The cat is purple and blue in real life but the FZ10 definitely shows it as all blue.

paulw uk

Scott J Buchanan · Nov 9, 2004

I noticed this on the fz10 I used to have also...
scott B

paulw UK said:
Scott J Buchanan said:

Just got my fz20 and have been experimenting. It can't capture the
color purple- deep, rich purple- shows up blue in images,

Click to expand...

Yes, I noticed this a while ago on a shot I took of a back-lit
stained glass cat (not real stained glass, a home made effort using
plastic "lead" and some sort of plastic paint that dries
translucent).

I intended doing some tests and posting results here, taking the
same shot with an SLR but haven't got round to it yet as the SLR
has gathered dust since I got the FZ10!

The cat is purple and blue in real life but the FZ10 definitely
shows it as all blue.

paulw uk

LaRee · Nov 9, 2004

Just yesterday I took photos of a purple flower and the color produced by the FZ20 was exactly as I saw it with my eye. I would post the photo but I'm still working on deciding where exactly to upload my photos to share. I've used Shutterfly to share with family and friends to this point, but want to start a gallery somewhere. Hopefully someone else will have the ability to share a photo of purple with you.
LaRee~
just happy to be

Scott J Buchanan said:
Just got my fz20 and have been experimenting. It can't capture the
color purple- deep, rich purple- shows up blue in images,
even after changing the white balance, customizing the white
balance, adjusting the white balance red/blue scale...
anyone else see this issue? any suggestions?
I can correct it in PS but this is a pain to do all the time.
maybe a color filter?
try taking a shot of something very purple and see what you get.
thanks, Scott B

--
~

Ove Sentlig · Nov 9, 2004

It may be linked to the cameras in cam reduction of purple fringing.

F

Scott J Buchanan said:
Just got my fz20 and have been experimenting. It can't capture the
color purple- deep, rich purple- shows up blue in images,
even after changing the white balance, customizing the white
balance, adjusting the white balance red/blue scale...
anyone else see this issue? any suggestions?
I can correct it in PS but this is a pain to do all the time.
maybe a color filter?
try taking a shot of something very purple and see what you get.
thanks, Scott B

Ove Sentlig · Nov 9, 2004

You can always mail pictures for me to upload to a server for you.

Fredrik

LaRee said:
Scott J Buchanan said:

Just got my fz20 and have been experimenting. It can't capture the
color purple- deep, rich purple- shows up blue in images,
even after changing the white balance, customizing the white
balance, adjusting the white balance red/blue scale...
anyone else see this issue? any suggestions?
I can correct it in PS but this is a pain to do all the time.
maybe a color filter?
try taking a shot of something very purple and see what you get.
thanks, Scott B

Click to expand...

--
~

Barrie R · Nov 9, 2004

These look ok to me
FZ10

Barrie
http://www.pbase.com/raikbar

Tels · Nov 9, 2004

Barrie R said:
These look ok to me
FZ10

They look quite bluish to me. However, I have no idea what the original color should be.

Cheers,

Tels

--
You will be offended by my photos*:

http://bloodgate.com/photos?c=bluegray&m=themes

If not, I'll refund your money and try again.

Tels · Nov 9, 2004

Scott J Buchanan said:
I noticed this on the fz10 I used to have also...
scott B

I also noticed this with my FZ2 on purple flowers. However, my Nikon 5000 doesn't get it right, either - it either turns it into blue or red.

Cheers,

Tels
--
You will be offended by my photos*:

http://bloodgate.com/photos?c=bluegray&m=themes

If not, I'll refund your money and try again.

PaulMcG · Nov 9, 2004

blue-ish? lol - i think that may be your eyes ;o)

the goggles are BLUE - the purples are purple or more mauve-ish - i've also had no problems with purple. (or any other colour for that matter :O)

chris4510 · Nov 9, 2004

PaulMcG said:
blue-ish? lol - i think that may be your eyes ;o)

the goggles are BLUE - the purples are purple or more mauve-ish -
i've also had no problems with purple. (or any other colour for
that matter :O)

Histogram can tell the true. Seems OK,

greets
--
Chris

Tels · Nov 9, 2004

PaulMcG said:
blue-ish? lol - i think that may be your eyes ;o)

sigh No, it is not my eyes. Use a color picker on the flowers, and you will see that they are:

between 50-60% red,
and 80..100% blue.

E.g. way more blue than red. I had the most difficult problems with colors were you either have equal amounts of red and blue, or even more red than blue. In these cases the camera(s) still seem to turn the purple into more bluish/blue and increasing the red parts only leads to orange grass (while the flowers still may not approach the original purple color).

The question here isn't whether the "purple" looks "good" or not, but whether it is the original color. I know that a lot of purple flowers I have photographed are much more blusih on the photo than in real life.

(Funny story is, one of my photos, with already blusih turned flowers due to camera-WB error was "autocorrected" by an online printer and after printing showed very bright blue flowers. Looked good, but wasn't even remoteely what the flowers looked in real life..)

Tels

--
You will be offended by my photos*:

http://bloodgate.com/photos?c=bluegray&m=themes

If not, I'll refund your money and try again.

Ruby Rod · Nov 9, 2004

Scott J Buchanan said:
Just got my fz20 and have been experimenting. It can't capture the
color purple- deep, rich purple- shows up blue in images,
even after changing the white balance, customizing the white
balance, adjusting the white balance red/blue scale...
anyone else see this issue? any suggestions?
I can correct it in PS but this is a pain to do all the time.
maybe a color filter?
try taking a shot of something very purple and see what you get.
thanks, Scott B

I hesitate to even make this post, as I don't have a standard of comparison. Color reproduction involves a compromise between the RG&B filters used on the CCD elements, the IR filter, and whatever you use to display the image. No digital camera gets it exactly right, and film cameras never did either. Anyway, I have a rather large lab diffraction grating, so I set it up in the sun (maximum blue and UV) to reflect on a white wall. The first photo is the general setup, the second is a closeup of the main (1st order) spectrum (there will be many others as you can see in the first photo). What it shows me (since you can't see the original spectrum- hint, take a CD into the sunlight and reflect a spectrum on a white wall, or better yet, a prism) is the FZ20 doesn't reproduce violet anything like you see it by eye. It's mostly blue. It doesn't bother me much, since I don't shoot many things that have a lot of violet. Caveat- my monitor is part of this chain, as is yours. If somebody could print these out and tell me what they really look like, that would be cool!

--
Ruby

Ruby Rod · Nov 9, 2004

Another thought- IMO, in a perfect world every camera review/test would include numeric values for noise, so a person could compare one against another, and a shot of a standard spectrum, just like films usually have their spectral sensitivity published in a data sheet. It would save a lot of arg.. er, "good natured discussion"

Ruby

jovos · Nov 9, 2004

According to this site there are many shades of purple.

http://www.toledo-bend.com/colorblind/PurpleChart.html

John

Ruby Rod said:
Another thought- IMO, in a perfect world every camera review/test
would include numeric values for noise, so a person could compare
one against another, and a shot of a standard spectrum, just like
films usually have their spectral sensitivity published in a data
sheet. It would save a lot of arg.. er, "good natured discussion"

Ruby

PaulMcG · Nov 9, 2004

lok ok, just jking ;o)

i honestly don't know about the 'blue' ish-ness of your purples, but I will run some tests with mine (if i can find anything purple in the house... i think theres a bottle in the bathroom (soap dispenser) which is purple glass - so that will be a good test

i'll post results soon

Tels said:
PaulMcG said:

blue-ish? lol - i think that may be your eyes ;o)

Click to expand...

sigh No, it is not my eyes. Use a color picker on the flowers,
and you will see that they are:

between 50-60% red,

and 80..100% blue.

E.g. way more blue than red. I had the most difficult problems with
colors were you either have equal amounts of red and blue, or even
more red than blue. In these cases the camera(s) still seem to turn
the purple into more bluish/blue and increasing the red parts only
leads to orange grass (while the flowers still may not approach the
original purple color).

The question here isn't whether the "purple" looks "good" or not,
but whether it is the original color. I know that a lot of purple
flowers I have photographed are much more blusih on the photo than
in real life.

(Funny story is, one of my photos, with already blusih turned
flowers due to camera-WB error was "autocorrected" by an online
printer and after printing showed very bright blue flowers. Looked
good, but wasn't even remoteely what the flowers looked in real
life..)

Tels

--
You will be offended by my photos*:

http://bloodgate.com/photos?c=bluegray&m=themes

If not, I'll refund your money and try again.

Tels · Nov 9, 2004

Moin,

just did a test myself.

Put some purple color patches (red/blue equal, blusih and reddish) on my motor, snapped a picture with auto-WB (under not-so-white lighting conditions) and mounted them next to each other:

Results are bluish cast:

Note that this is not a FZ problem alone, my nikon has the same problems, and a friend of mine bought recently a Minolta Z3 and the first thing she asked me was why some of her purple/red balcony flowers were not exactly the colors they should be...

Another problem with my Nikon 5000 is that it is almost impossible to focus on bright red things, like red berries, red flowers etc. The panasonic does just fine, but the nikon takes forever to lock focus.

YMMV

Best wishes,

Tels

--
You will be offended by my photos*:

http://bloodgate.com/photos?c=bluegray&m=themes

If not, I'll refund your money and try again.

Tels · Nov 9, 2004

jovos said:
According to this site there are many shades of purple.

Yes, but when I see a flower in 800080 (the first one) and it looks like 6633cc (the third one), something is wrong

Anyway, please let this not become the "things my camera cannot do 100% right" issue of the week, likenoise, purple/red/green/rainbow fringing, focusing in blacknight etc etc.

Best wishes,

Tels

--
You will be offended by my photos*:

http://bloodgate.com/photos?c=bluegray&m=themes

If not, I'll refund your money and try again.

jovos · Nov 9, 2004

Printed out a few sheets of purple from Paint Shop. They were very close in color to the DVD label but darker. In the FZ20 photo (with flash) they come out more blue while the DVD label is still close to its original color.

John

Tels said:
Moin,

just did a test myself.

Put some purple color patches (red/blue equal, blusih and reddish)
on my motor, snapped a picture with auto-WB (under not-so-white
lighting conditions) and mounted them next to each other:

Results are bluish cast:

Note that this is not a FZ problem alone, my nikon has the same
problems, and a friend of mine bought recently a Minolta Z3 and the
first thing she asked me was why some of her purple/red balcony
flowers were not exactly the colors they should be...

Another problem with my Nikon 5000 is that it is almost impossible
to focus on bright red things, like red berries, red flowers etc.
The panasonic does just fine, but the nikon takes forever to lock
focus.

YMMV

Best wishes,

Tels

--
You will be offended by my photos*:

http://bloodgate.com/photos?c=bluegray&m=themes

If not, I'll refund your money and try again.

Martyn Welch · Nov 9, 2004

Tels said:
Note that this is not a FZ problem alone, my nikon has the same
problems, and a friend of mine bought recently a Minolta Z3 and the
first thing she asked me was why some of her purple/red balcony
flowers were not exactly the colors they should be...

I'm wondering if this is more of a serious digital problem than has been previously recognised. I shared a wedding photography session with a colleague; he used a Nikon D100 and I took my Pentax MZ5N film camera. The bride wore white with pink accessories and the bridesmaids wore a suitable pink with white to match. My film shots showed the pink accurately - his D100 shots all showed the pink shades as pale blue, and in all lighting conditions -sunny, overcast, indoors etc.

I just photographed a model locomotive painted in a medium blue (LNER Garter Blue for those interested in British stuff) using my little Canon G1 and all the shots showed the blue as a very pale colour - there was a definite absence of red in the mix that no amount of PSPro or Photoshop fiddling could overcome. They were shot in natural light on an overcast day and I used the cloudy white balance setting. I also tried AWB setting but this made no difference (ISO50, F7, Aperture Priority)

Whilst I often think digital shots oversaturate the red spectrum, this suggests a total absence of red under certain conditions, namely photographing red/blue or purples etc. I wonder what's the cause of this anomoly?

color balance concern-purple

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