Problem with the color tone in my D550 T2i any advice ?

Mzeid wrote:

Hey guys

i got my 550 for 1.5 years, and i am facing an issue in the shots they are ok but the color tone i feel it's not correct, and it seems that all the photos taken are overexposed even when apply short exposure the result is more exposure than what should be .
unfortunately i don't have other camera to upload samples to compare.
i tried to change the exposure metering, photo mode ( standard, neutral ..... etc ), white balance and HTP
any advice's guys ?

Hello, getting color (and to some extend) exposure completely right is not that trivial. It would require a completely calibrated series of equipment (monitors, printers (if you print), etc.). Getting color right can be tedious, and most people don't bother. You simply can choose different pictures styles, or adjust the color balance in the camera. However, if the monitor you are looking at is also off with respect to color, you may find then that in the future, with a new monitor, all your old pictures now suddenly look wrong. And you can adjust monitors as well of course. So, perhaps you need to take some pictures, and also look at them on another computer (friend, shop, etc.) and find some decent compromise how you want the color to look.

Exposure is best monitored by looking at the histogram, best on the computer, because on the LCD it's quite small. You want to see if there is clipping of the highlights (data points on the histogram that are at the very right edge), see tutorials here:

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/histograms1.htm

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/histograms2.htm

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/yrgb.htm

If your images are a overexposed, you can "dial in" exposure correction in your camera, the "move" the histogram more to the left, so that you have less overexposure. Many people dial in an exposure correction of for example "-1" for day light scenes.

However, having said that, I had maybe a similar problem with my 550D. The images (compared to my older 400D) looked overexposed - and as consequence washed out. Clearly, in standard situations, when there shouldn't really have been any overexposure (clipping, based on histogram), I did have some.

In fact, it was bad enough from me that I sent in the camera during warranty, and Canon fixed it, i.e. they recalibrated the camera. In addition, my 550D had a serious misalignment of the center for exposure metering, most obvious with spot metering and central weight metering. It caused big inconsistencies in metering. See my whole thread here:

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3058780

So, the lesson is, the exposure meter in a camera can be improperly calibrated, and it should be fixed by Canon if it is bad enough (though in your case it is beyond warranty, I guess). As solution, one can dial in the exposure compensation using the Av(+/-) button.

Now a last point. Your color issue could be related to the exposure issue. When the exposure is not right, the color can also look off. Here I have two examples with different exposures (one overexposed), showing the change in color balance that can result. The first overexposed pictures looks more bluish than the second (where I dialed in an exposure compensation)