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New D810 - not happy with colors

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foodiepics2012

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just started shooting in P mode , everything else set to standard and not happy with the colors. Too much red ,not enough black and with other shots the colors just seem to be off

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foodiepics2012 said:
just started shooting in P mode , everything else set to standard and not happy with the colors.
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If you stop and think about it, what you are actually doing is taking one of the most capable cameras on the market and using it as a point-and-shoot :) Please don't think me rude or flippant, but I don't believe you are looking at a camera failure. Rather, I think that an advanced camera requires a more advanced technique.

Many cellphone cameras make wonderful out-of-camera images because their designers expect the images to be used straight out-of-camera. High end DSLR designers anticipate the user applying a certain level of image processing after the images have been downloaded to a computer and the in-camera files are therefore created accordingly.

I'm guessing you have little interest in learning something like Photoshop, a great many people just want to make the photograph and be done with it. That's a perfectly valid goal and lots of people do just fine with it. However, with professional equipment, in order to achieve the level of image I suspect you want, additional processing may be mandatory.

In my view, the best workflow is to shoot raw and apply additional processing afterward.

Think about learning custom white balance with a gray card or something similar.

Having said that, lots of professional users, because of the nature of their specific work, are required to produce excellent OOC images and are well served with jpegs from the D810. If you prefer to avoid Photoshop or Lightroom or those sorts of things I suggest you do some research investigating the in-camera function of Picture Controls as a very basic minimal sort of customization.

Picture Controls can be as simple as selecting one of the presets to modifying in camera one of the furnished presets to suit your taste to generating a completely new preset based on your own requirements. While still not a point-and-shoot, this will be relatively less technical geeky stuff and has the potential to significantly improve your results.

Incidentally, the BMW image may be giving you trouble because it appears to me it's illuminated by at least two different types of light source, one from the top right and one from the lower left.
 
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More examples preferably with a range of colors would be helpful. It's hard to tell much from a subject that is mainly gray.

Check the camera setting in Picture Control. The Neutral setting is where I set my camera because the colors are as neutral as they can be in-camera. (There are other picture controls that can be downloaded.) During post-processing I edit the image to match what I previsualized. It can be as simple as batch-processing an entire shoot or carefully working on individual images. Turn off Auto White Balance because it doesn't do a great job, particularly under artificial light. Make an image with a gray card to facilitate post-processing. I like the WhiBal Pocket Kit for its portability and ease of use.

I highly recommend Thom Hogan's Nikon D810 Guide for getting the most out of your new DSLR. I've been using Nikon gear for going on 40 years and I always learn new things from Hogan's ebooks.
 
If you just good enough jpg photos right out of the camera, try using the vivid mode located in Set Picture Control. Increase the contrast and sharpness to your liking.
 
foodiepics2012 said:
just started shooting in P mode , everything else set to standard and not happy with the colors. Too much red ,not enough black and with other shots the colors just seem to be off

d52091315db640ef90c6839d537a690d.jpg
Click to expand...
Well I'm just going to assume since your experimenting in P mode that your also shooting jpeg with whatever default settings Nikon set them at which as other forum members have already said you bought a very expensive point & shoot ,may I suggest you at least try Manual mode w/ Auto ISO its really very simple to learn to use just pick your shutter speed needed with one dial the aperture with another and the Auto ISO does the rest.

AS far as colors go I think it has a lot to do with how you process your images and in what software, I use LR and shoot in raw and I can easily see a difference in the files in all three Nikon bodies I have . So maybe it's just not what your use to getting from your old camera but I'm positive if you stick with it you'll figure things out. LR has a free 30 day trial or you can try Nikon's horrid software NX-D which is a complete waste of time .

--

Lickity Split | Flickr

www.flickr.com www.flickr.com
 
foodiepics2012 said:
just started shooting in P mode , everything else set to standard and not happy with the colors. Too much red ,not enough black and with other shots the colors just seem to be off
Click to expand...
Your post is lacking in details. What do you mean you "just started shooting in P mode"? That suggests that you were previously using other modes (A, S, or manual) and were happy with the color. P mode has absolutely nothing to do with color except to the extent that exposure can affect the saturation to some extent.

Both the BMW photo and your other chicken and noodles photo are poor examples to make your point. There is nothing we can learn from the BMW steering wheel. It is warm colored on the sunny side of the wheel and it is cold (blue) on the shade side. What are we to learn from this. You have sunlight shining through auto glass (which almost always has a tint) and bouncing around the interior.

The food picture is not good either. It has, to my eyes, improper color balance. Once I download and open in ACR and fix the white balance setting by shifting to the blue side and adding green tint the colors look perfectly fine. Not sure what colors you are looking for but this photo does not strike me as a good example of "bad color". Incorrect white balance does not mean your D810 has bad color.
 
Sorry.... its only available in black !
 
My goodness, I'm a big complainer of colors (although I sort of accept all color profiles except Sony ACR).

But realize when you shoot in P mode of a subject that is mostly black, it will expose to the right and give you a 'brighter' picture than what your eyes see? So basically it is overbrightened (not over exposed....it is exposed correctly for highlight retention assuming it didn't blow out the whites in the center) and you would want to apply compensation in post and dial the brightness down.

In essence all you or anyone is looking at is the sensors ability to see depths of color that your human eye would not have seen because your brain would not have 'dialed up the brightness' as the camera did.

Anyhow it is obvious you need more experience shooting if you didn't realize shooting auto mode of very dark tones means the camera will want to lower shutter speed, open up apertures, or ramp up ISO to compensate.

Since exposure compensation is just about step 1 in any post-processing workflow, it wouldn't be a reach that you haven't even touched steps 2-10.

If learning any steps sounds unappealing, get a Google smartphone. It will attempt to use image recognition for what you shot, match it to an online repository of best liked images of the same subject, and then try to best match its tone mapping and color science! Cloud Photography...don't bother post processing it yourself use the cloud to do it for you.
 
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foodiepics2012 said:
just started shooting in P mode , everything else set to standard and not happy with the colors. Too much red ,not enough black and with other shots the colors just seem to be off
Click to expand...
You need to educate yourself in two subjects; exposure and colour.

Your camera is set to expose most of the frame to mid grey. It has done this rather well. Unfortunately most of the frame should be black. You need to compensate exposure or chnange metering mode. Ansel Adam's book "The Negative" is still the reference in understanding exposure in my view. Borrow a copy from your local library for a couple of months and work your way through it. That is my recommendation.

With respect to colour, there is warm reflected light shining on the steering wheel. This as well as other ambient light is determining the colours of your image. Bruce Fraser's book on Real World Colour Management is highly recommended to understand this subject. If colour photography is something you enjoy then it is well worth investing some time to understand colour properly. It is very difficult to get this understanding from a forum thread.
 
Modes on cameras such as P mode have nothing to do with colours. Did you think that by buying a top grade camera you would suddenly become a better photographer and that the camera would guess the colour signatures that you prefer?
 
A Owens said:
foodiepics2012 said:
just started shooting in P mode , everything else set to standard and not happy with the colors. Too much red ,not enough black and with other shots the colors just seem to be off
Click to expand...
You need to educate yourself in two subjects; exposure and colour.

Your camera is set to expose most of the frame to mid grey. It has done this rather well. Unfortunately most of the frame should be black. You need to compensate exposure or chnange metering mode. Ansel Adam's book "The Negative" is still the reference in understanding exposure in my view. Borrow a copy from your local library for a couple of months and work your way through it. That is my recommendation.

With respect to colour, there is warm reflected light shining on the steering wheel. This as well as other ambient light is determining the colours of your image. Bruce Fraser's book on Real World Colour Management is highly recommended to understand this subject. If colour photography is something you enjoy then it is well worth investing some time to understand colour properly. It is very difficult to get this understanding from a forum thread.

--
Alistair Owens
http://www.alistairowens.net
http://www.500px.com/AlistairOwens
https://plus.google.com/+AlistairOwensgooglePlus/posts
Click to expand...
Nice catch. It's about a stop over-exposed..perhaps a little more. Nice shot actually. Their other example in the locked thread about color was at ISO8000! And it looked great for ISO8000.

4afee47037a441b18b113d4527c0fb0a.jpg
 
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I though P stood for Puce?
 
The food shot looked good to me (given the apparent circumstances), and this one is just a bit overexposed because of the dark subject matter. I don't see a major issue here. Is your monitor calibrated?
 
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