Is it possble to Adjust the Red Channel on a G9?

Hi people,

I am struggling to take a reasonable image of a Deep RED or Dark Red flower.  I have been using Panasonic Lumix & Olympus EMx cameras since they were first available.  Currently I have GX7, GX8, GX9 and G9 bodies and they all have the same problem.

Generally I am very happy with the results of my photography using Panasonic Micro 4/3 with the following exception. Certain images I photograph have a deep or dark Red bloom or cluster of petals.  When taking shots of these colours, I cannot use the Panasonic/Lumix bodies, as the red is totally blown out and loses all definition and texture.  In the past with other cameras, I have been able to adjust the Red Channel slightly to compensate, but nothing I do will give me an acceptable result with the Lumix bodies.

While I can take these shots with a Sony body, it is difficult when doing a shoot to have to change to a different camera make and type.  For red shaded images I usually carry a Sony RX100M4, and the shots are usable with minimal tweaking from either JPG or RAW.

For example, this image is taken with a Lumix GX9, Lumix G 12-35 f/7.1 iso 500 shows totally blown out reds.

The same taken with a Sony RX100M4 requires minimal adjustment

To add insult to injury, this shot, was taken with a Samsung S7 two year old smartphone.... no adjustments!

Something is wrong... I even tried a shot from my trusty GX8, it did better than the GX9 and G9.

Any suggestions would be a big help.

Phil

Brightly colored flowers should be photographed in raw mode at low iso and paying attention to the histogram. Processing the image will give so much more latitude and can allow you to pull back blown highlights (if not too overexposed).

Bright flowers should be bright! I will let the bight colors clip a bit as long as it isn't too excessive and removes detail. I never understand why some people dial back the exposure so much to avoid any clipping that the image looks dull.

Red flowers are a b!tch, not just on G9s but on every camera.

This is pretty close to the red over-saturation edge

Shoot raw; often the over-saturation is in monitors not in the actual exposure. Raw will give you more leeway in adjusting exposure or the red channel in PP to better suit the medium. (Or, I am scared of JPEG).

Underexpose. Bracket exposure. Don't bother with bracketing on the + side.

Back lighting. I've had success be evening the lighting by backlighting the petals with off camera flash.

Focus, smaller aperture/greater depth of field. As you can see in the above tulip, the less focused areas are the blotchy.

Newmatix wrote:

For example, this image is taken with a Lumix GX9, Lumix G 12-35 f/7.1 iso 500 shows totally blown out reds.

It looks like you have the camera saturation set too high.  I don't have the GX9 but I would suggest to turn down saturation.

I always dial in -1EV for deep reds on ANY cameras.

I know this problem with reds well from several different systems. The problem is that you are blowing out the red channel. Using a live histogram does not help much as it can look properly exposed but that measures luminosity, not channels. So basically use the RGB histogram to review the shot and look at the red channel. Then simply dial down exposure compensation until the red channel no longer shows a hard shoulder on the right side. That is the proper exposure for a red subject. Also, best to shoot in raw. Then,if the red is is not blown too much you can dial back exposure to recover details. Desaturating does not work well since detail is still lost. The detail can be recovered with lowering exposure. I have used this method for shooting flowers for over a decade with Nikon, Fuji and Olympus. Red is tricky, blue can also a bit tricky, green a little less so since the green histogram generally closely mimics the luminosity histogram, so if the live histogram looks okay, green is generally okay. Red often needs that extra attention, especially to save textures lost by over exposing the red channel

The direct answer is YES it is possible to adjust how JPEGs are developed, I have not done that so I encourage you to look it up in the manual, but I know that you can probably find adjustments that make you happy (or happier).

So why haven't I done that? I pretty much always shoot raw. I may be a control freak, but that is what makes ME happy.

Newmatix wrote:

Thanks Albert, all responders had the right idea, you summed it up for me, thanks. I had tried the earlier suggestions, all including your response were in the same vein.... I was just trying to find something that was not there, an adjustment or offset to the value, of the R channel, Now I have done it the correct way, a big help.

Never too old to learn eh?

Thanks to you and everyone who responded.

Phil
Photo-Matix Imagery

Another tip may could help a little is to use spot metering on the subject. Spot metering is also extremely useful for shooting the moon