Newbie Photography??

If we are speaking about colours here, than I'd make colour temperature a bit warmer:

 

Hey!! I got it right!!

 

Yeah, Cris and Anton are right; the photo was too blue as a consequence of the camera's white balance.

 

Thanks guys! The white balance certainly seems to have do with it. However...

Here is an original picture:



Here is the same one with the color temperature much higher:




The area of saturated colors now is even larger.

And here is the same picture with the color temperature lower:



The picture gets more blue, but the areas with saturated colors are the same...

 

I'm not sure what you mean Mark? That second picture is absolutely gorgeous!! If there is a problem I can't see it?

 

And all of them are still blue.
edit: second pic refreshed and now is much warmer; too warm as Cris noted.

 

The second one looks possibly even a little too warm to me? But that seems right for the subject. The first and third are absolutely blue, at least on my monitor.

 

For the problem, look at the tomatoes. For example both tomatoes on the middle row. Half the skin is very red (which is what I meant by saturated) and the other half is orange-ish. There is a very clear line between these two areas of color that looks very unnatural to me.

 

I do not see any sort of a hard line...the colors look very natural. The overall feel, for me...is very pleasant.

I think your camera is just picking up on the natural color of the tomatoes in the light. You may not be seeing that color with your naked eye, but I believe digital cameras pick up on colors that we don't (thus the whole 'office paper white balance' debate). I've seen the tops of tomatoes in bright light look very orange though, while the shadowed sides are quite red. Almost like the light is reflecting off of a deeper layer of tissue.

 

Maybe it's just me getting crazy. Or simply being an inexperienced photographer. Probably both .

I indicated the "red" and "orange" areas and the "sharp line" in the picture below.



To me it's not as if the camera picks up the natural color of the tomatoes and picks up colors that we don't. To me it looks the opposite: as if the camera doesn't pick up a lot of color nuances that I personally would pick up. It is almost as if the tomato on the photograph only has two colors (I'm exaggerating a bit): very red and very yellow. I'd think that when I saw it with the naked eye, I'd pick up more color nuances.

Or am I mistaken about the naked eye?

 

That 'pretty sharp' line...to me, looks like a reflection line. I can almost see a horizon line in the tomato...the reflection of a house on the right perhaps? Some trees?...and it's exacerbated by the shape of the tomato perhaps?

In addition, that orange color is exactly the color I mean that I've seen in some tomatoes....and in addition to that you have the reflection of the orange pepper to contend with. Look at the top left corner of the pepper on the right and you see more orange reflections.

 

Thanks a lot for your help, Cris! If this weren't such serious matter , I'd laugh about myself. (Or about you, I'm not sure yet .)

I'll give it one more try to describe what I find odd. If I look at the "red area" in the picture above, I see only one shade of red. If I'd use a photo-editing program like Photoshop it'd probably indicate almost exactly the same RGB-code for every pixel in that area. Isn't that odd? Wouldn't the human eye be able to distinguish many more color nuances in that are?

 

Nope, not true

 

Hmmm....I'm thinking it might be your monitor. I see quite a bit of nuance in the 'red' areas!! I just dropped it in photoshop CS5 to verify, and the color picker varies the shade dramatically.

 

I think we're seeing a very different picture than you are Mark. The picture I'm looking at is very well composed with very smooth color transitions and excellent light/shadow contrast, without looking unnatural.

 

Wow, even a video! Again thanks for your efforts, guys!

I tried fiddling with my monitor controls (different temperature settings, etc.) to see whether it is that, but this doesn't change the lack of nuances in the red area I (don't) see.

And the weird thing is... Anton's video clearly shows the differences in HSL values. I cannot make a video, but I can show you what Photoshop says about the red area in the picture. In the entire area, the R-value varies between about 67 and 144. The G- and B-values are 0 in the entire red area. See the pictures below, where the arrow shows where about I measured the RGB-value.



How can this be explained? I must really be looking at a different picture than you guys. Or not?

[Edit]. I now took a close look at Anton's video. The RGB-values I see in the first part of the vid, when the cursor moves from right to left over the "red area" seem to be as follows.
R: 78 - 124
G: 0 - 4
B: 3 - 8

This is a bit different than my results, but this could be explained by posting a JPEG. All in all this is pretty similar to my results: R varies a bit (100 minus 30 or plus 4) and G and B are both 0 or close to 0.

 

With that mix of light and dark objects plus the glare the camera had a tough time determining how to expose the shot. In a case like that it is usually best to underexpose (so it's on the darker side) and then lighten in post-processing if possible. You lose detail if the pic was overexposed/ blown out -- even when shooting RAW -- but if you underexpose you can usually pull details out by lightening the darker parts.

 

Sometimes a good night's sleep helps. I almost couldn't sleep last night, because I didn't understand what was going on.

But... this morning I looked at KKF on my phone and guess what... the pictures looked ok! No oversaturation at all. So I took out an old laptop and... the same. So I guess that after all the problem is my monitor.

To show you I'm not crazy, here is a picture of what I see on my monitor. Perhaps now you'll see why I thought all details went lost in the red area, where everything looks oversaturated on my monitor.



Sorry for bothering you guys with a monitor problem last night, so it seems . And many thanks for your quick reactions! I've learned about colors and white balance a lot more.

(One remaining question. David, you write that you advise to underexpose shots like this, because I lose detail when the pic is overexposed. But I always thought overexposure showed by reflections/too light colors. The area that appeared blown out here is not the lighter part, but the darker part. Can that somehow be overexposed, too?)

 

I kinda figured this is what was going on . The pictures really rather beautiful my friend, no blown out anything on my screen!