Nikon Owners, a little help?

[wenrob]

I sold my D40 and went and picked up the D90. I've had no time to really play with the settings and I have a tomb to read, lol.
My problem is the color. Youngest DD's red hair looks pinkish. (I'm viewing in PSP if that makes a difference) This particular shot was taken in Vivid w/sRGB, however I did test pics or her in Neutral, standard and /sRGB and w/Adobe color value. Is there something I'm missing on the ginormous menu?
The EXIF data should be attached but if it can't be seen I'll come back and post it. (I wish I could figure out how to make the pics bigger on flikr)

 

[ukcatfan]

That is probably a WB issue. Are all the shots inside by any chance? You could also try RAW.

 

[wenrob]

Yes, they're inside. Honestly, I don't have the patience for RAW at the moment. I'll get there but from what I've tried it's a lot of work. I think this one was auto WB but I shot several different variations(except custom) of WB and all a pink tint. All the other colors seem pretty spot on, her chair and tshirt.

 

[YEKCIM]

You might want to dial back the saturation a notch or two and see if that helps. On my D50 and D80, the menu is called the "Optimize Image" menu, but I think that has been changed. I believe it is called "Picture Controls" now.

Good luck.

~Ed

 

[handicap18]

Yes, they're inside. Honestly, I don't have the patience for RAW at the moment. I'll get there but from what I've tried it's a lot of work. I think this one was auto WB but I shot several different variations(except custom) of WB and all a pink tint. All the other colors seem pretty spot on, her chair and tshirt.

If you shoot in RAW and use the free software from Nikon: ViewNX, it is a VERY EASY fix for white balance, picture control and/or exposure compensation. Then it is 1 click to covert to JPEG.



Have you tried taking pictures of other colorful subjects and see how it does. It could be off lighting or just getting used to how it handles color. With my D50 I shot in VIVID for a long time, but then ended up changing to STANDARD and in ViewNX would switch the RAW file to Neutral before converting to JPEG. With my D300 I just shoot in NEUTRAL. I came to realized that for me, VIVID was to over saturated for my tastes.

There are a lot of fine tuning settings you can set yourself in camera or just do them to the RAW file in PP. Personally I find it better to shoot 1 image in RAW and adjust that 10 different ways in CaptureNX or ViewNX rather than taking 10 different jpeg images and adjust it before each shot to find what I like best.

 

[wenrob]

Thanks for the help guys, I really appreciate it. I've only had the camera for less then a day so I'm sure it will take some time to get used to. This lens seems to have much more contrast then my 18-200 so that may throwing me as well. I put it back to standard and it seems a little better, more orange versus pink. Her coloring makes her such a difficult subject.
I will install the View NX and give it a try. It took me hours to get a couple of pics done last time and then I felt my kids skin tones still looked gray and I have no idea the amount of sharpening to use. That was the one question that I couldn't seem to get an answer too. It just felt like so much work at the time.

 

[GrillMouster]

Is your monitor calibrated?

 

[handicap18]

When I first got my D50 I would add a lot of sharpening, but after a while I didn't like it. It didn't look right so I stopped adding any sharpeneing in PP. Now I just try to get sharpness using the lens and good auto focus.

 

[wenrob]

When I first got my D50 I would add a lot of sharpening, but after a while I didn't like it. It didn't look right so I stopped adding any sharpeneing in PP. Now I just try to get sharpness using the lens and good auto focus.

See, I've read different things, yes, no, you shouldn't, you should. Scott Kelby says it considered a part of basic processing. It's so confusing, lol.
Grill Mouster-No, however I didn't have issue w/color w/the D40 on my screen or in print. I think most likely Kyle is right and I need to find my niche in settings once I get used to it.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

Congratulations on your new purchase, Wendy. Why did you make the switch?

 

[wenrob]

Congratulations on your new purchase, Wendy. Why did you make the switch?

NAS I suppose, lol! I loved my D40 but once the D90 came out it seems like that's all I could think about. I wanted something with more options and felt I was ready to move up. I just didn't realize how much I was moving up, I'm a little overwhelmed at the moment. I'm sure once I read the manual five or six times it'll be old hat.
Thanks for the congrats, I'm very excited about it. I just got my Hubby where he felt comfortable using the D40 if I asked him too but I tried to hand him the D90 last night and he wouldn't touch it!

 

[Quicklabs]

Congrats on the new camera! Your daughter is a little doll....

 

[wenrob]

Congrats on the new camera! Your daughter is a little doll....

Thank you!

 

[J3nn78]

I got a D90 a couple weeks ago and just started playing with it this weekend. Loving the video! although it takes some practice to hit the focus fast enough. I gave it to a buddy to shoot some bicycle racing with it the day after I got it, but other than that it's sat in my bag. Definatly need a VR or really wide lens for vid, the 70-200 worked well, as did the 10.5FE.

Anyway, Im finding the camera in JPG Vivid is not as saturated as I get with the D3, but still a little too much contrast & saturation to leave it set to that for everything.

Watch out with NEF files from the D90, all but the very latest converters won't have the right support to convert them. I use lightroom and 2.0 won't read the raw files, but the beta 2.1 can, although I haven't upgraded yet. D90 set to standard picture control thus far, Ill amp up saturation a bit in lightroom if I feel it needs.

But really, the color settings are only something that you can fix correctly after you calibrate your monitor. Judging a tint error on an uncalibrated monitor is akin to sticking your hand in your oven with it set to 300* and trying to judge how far the temp knob is off. That hair might look magenta tinted to you, but green to someone else depending on how wrong yours/thiers monitor profile is.

 

[wenrob]

But really, the color settings are only something that you can fix correctly after you calibrate your monitor. Judging a tint error on an uncalibrated monitor is akin to sticking your hand in your oven with it set to 300* and trying to judge how far the temp knob is off. That hair might look magenta tinted to you, but green to someone else depending on how wrong yours/thiers monitor profile is.

I get what you're saying but I don't see how my monitor could be that off in one day? Pictures taken on the D40 look fine and are near perfect in print. (And to me the D90's look pinkish on the camera's screen as well.) Unless you are saying the monitor needs to be calibrated to the D90. If that's what you mean how do I go about doing that?

 

[J3nn78]

I get what you're saying but I don't see how my monitor could be that off in one day? Pictures taken on the D40 look fine and are near perfect in print. (And to me they look pinkish on the camera's screen as well.) Unless you are saying the monitor needs to be calibrated to the D90. If that's what you mean how do I go about doing that?

What Im saying is you can't "measure" or judge color with any accuracy without knowing that what you are looking at is correct.

If you D40 was putting out files that were good and your print lab was spot on, but your D90 is printing magenta, then it's likely the D90 files are the issue.

But then again, you don't know if your D40 was horrendously tinted green and your lab was printing tinted magenta and it was just balancing out, and now the D90 is correct but printing magenta. Unlikely, but you just don't know.

If you were to get a hardware monitor calibration setup, you would KNOW where the problem lies (in the camera, in the processing, or in the printing).

The monitor doesn't need to be calibrated to your camera. But if you want to have real control over your color, a hardware calibration tool will measure the colors your monitor outputs and figure out where it deviates from a known standard. The software makes a profile that the computer uses to "fix" the error in the monitor. Basicly, it sets the color up so that white is really neutral white, grey is grey, and all your colors are displayed correctly.

Then if after the monitor is known correct and your pictures look magenta...you KNOW it's the camera settings.

Assuming your printer is profiled correctly or your lab is profiled right...your prints should match what you see on the monitor EXACTLY.

The basic point is: your using your computer to judge the camera, but you don't know the computer is correct any more than you know the camera is correct.

The basic monitor calibration devices are stupid cheap now, under $100. Ones that can make a profile for your printer are about $500.

 

[wenrob]

Again, I understand where you're coming from and I know that calibrating my monitor is essential. I get it, I do. That said, considering her hair is pinkish in camera, I use a mix of cameras, two home printers, three different labs (depending on who's having a sale) and am adamant that all color correction be turned off I just don't see calibration as my current issue. When I use the words "near perfect" it's because I'm not one to call anything perfect. I do appreciate your taking the time to try and help and when my bank account recovers from this purchase I will look into calibration.

Looking through the menus that YKEM pointed me to and digging through the manual it looks like I may need to adjust my Hue. I will let you all know how it goes.
Thanks again everybody!