New Digital SLR, colors seem off.... help??

[GraveyardMistress]

I just bought a Canon XSI, and I've been taking some shots around the house with it to get used to it - it's my first digital SLR (I've used a film SLR before, though). One thing I noticed right off is the colors seem pretty off - I took some pictures of my flowers outside, deep fuchsia/purple petunias, and on the picture they came out a funny muted hot pinkish color. I tried taking a few more, then took one of my boyfriend who was wearing a darkish-red tank top, and that looked a reddish-orange in the pic.

I tried using the full auto setting, switched to manual, played around with the different white balances, and nothing changed. Even the color on my Canon Powershot looks more true-to-life.... Am I doing something wrong?

[mwfanelli2]

I just bought a Canon XSI, and I've been taking some shots around the house with it to get used to it - it's my first digital SLR (I've used a film SLR before, though). One thing I noticed right off is the colors seem pretty off - I took some pictures of my flowers outside, deep fuchsia/purple petunias, and on the picture they came out a funny muted hot pinkish color. I tried taking a few more, then took one of my boyfriend who was wearing a darkish-red tank top, and that looked a reddish-orange in the pic.

I tried using the full auto setting, switched to manual, played around with the different white balances, and nothing changed. Even the color on my Canon Powershot looks more true-to-life.... Am I doing something wrong?

Have you color-calibrated your monitor? If not, it might be way off giving you the bad colors. If you are using the LCD on the camera itself, note that the LCD is not very good for looking at colors. Move the files to a computer and look again. The other possibility that comes to mind, the last one that should be considered, is that you have a bad camera. Take it back to the store and try another one. Compare the results.

[GraveyardMistress]

That is what was worrying me, that the camera might be bad. I haven't checked them on my computer yet, just the LCD screen. I didn't realize the colors could be so off on that... I'll put them on my computer and see how they look. Thanks!

[Medley]

Canons also have an annoying (IMO) ability to shoot in sRGB color mode. Look through the menus on your camera. Somewhere in them, you will find a "Color Space" setting. Make sure it is set on Adobe RGB and not sRGB. sRGB is the color space used by the web, and contains a lot fewer color possibilities than Adobe RGB, so many of the colors are "converted" to their sRGB equivalents. Adobe RGB gives much truer color reproduction.

However, I would look into Michael's suggestion first. If the monitor colors are off, nothing you do will fix the problem.

- Joe U.

[another view]

It could be either of those things, but I'd put those a long ways down the list before eliminating other more common problems. How is your white balance set? If it's in auto, try a custom white balance for the light that you're specifically in at the moment**. Or easier yet, shoot a picture leaving it on auto white balance with the flash. Take a picture of someone at about 6'-8' away with the built-in flash. That should look just fine, although not worrying about the background here - only things lit by the flash itself. If this doesn't look good, then there's another direction to head...

**White balance isn't as complicated as it sounds, but IME the farther you go away from daylight color temperature (same as flash) the worse auto white balance will be. Take a shot indoors and everything will be orange (not as bad as using slide film, but close). Take a shot in the shade or in heavy overcast and everything will be blue (again not as bad as slide film, but close). Noon on a sunny day should get the colors really close to accurate, but of course this isn't a great time to be shooting.

**Custom white balance is a good skill to learn, maybe more for understanding WB than something to really use however. If you're outside and set the custom WB while the sun is behind a cloud, it'll be wrong when the cloud moves and the sun comes out. If you're in the shade and move out of it into the sun, it'll be wrong again. Etc... But setting the white balance is like using manual exposure mode; it'll show you where the problem is.

[deckcadet]

For what it's worth, the XSi uses the same 3.0" 230,000 dot screen found in the Canon Mark IIIs and 40D. In my experience, this LCD has extraordinarily poor color rendition, and makes some colors in particular look much worse than they do on the computer.

Of course, some cameras have additional issues when shooting certain shades of purple found in nature, which might be causing some additional problems there.

[fx101]

For what it's worth, the XSi uses the same 3.0" 230,000 dot screen found in the Canon Mark IIIs and 40D. In my experience, this LCD has extraordinarily poor color rendition, and makes some colors in particular look much worse than they do on the computer.

Of course, some cameras have additional issues when shooting certain shades of purple found in nature, which might be causing some additional problems there.

The Nikon's have better LCD's but still, I haven't found a camera LCD that I would use to proof colours from.