Red colors shift to Orange

lamorg · May 2014

Hey @moose

I won't ask about the 35mm cheat sheets, although that baby I was expecting is nearly 3 months old now haha.

Anyway, I've been taking lots and lots of pictures of the little man, but there's one thing I'm really struggling with. I've used your settings for low light portraits and it has been great, but the problem I'm having is with the red colors being off and going orange basically.

I'm aware it's user error and I'm guessing it has to do with my white balance settings which I normally leave on Auto. I'd imagine my images are probably slightly over exposed which is making things worse too.

So in a nutshell, how can I make my reds look how they should as in red and not orange? I've tried reducing the exposure post processing which can correct these orangey reds, but then the whole image is dark and underexposed.

Secondly, I know I can google this, but how can I tell if a shot I'm about to take is under/overexposed? How do I get the balance right?

Cheers,
Lee

PBked · May 2014

Hi Lee,
I am going to jump in ahead of Moose. I think you are correct in assuming that the shift in colors is due to white balance setting. Experiment with the other options or create a white balance for the environment you are shooting in.
For your 2nd question, use the histogram function on your camera. In a properly exposed picture the histogram should look like a hump-backed bridge. If the histogram is weighted to the left and looks like a supaslide in profile, then your picture will be underexposed. If it is weighted to the right, then it will be overexposed. This is when you need to use your exposure compensation button (- numbers darken and + numbers lighten). Adjust your compensation until you get something closer to the hump-backed bridge shape.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
PBked

lamorg · May 2014

@PBked

Cheers for the info! I was having a play last night and reducing the exposure seemed to help as did setting the white balance to the Flash/Cloud preset, but it still wasn't the true red I was after. It was a lot better, I just think it's me being overly critical now more than anything, and it's nothing I can't fix in Lightroom. I actually think I'm trying to blame the body so I can justify buying the D7100, but I want to master this first before I do.

On the exposure front, I do look at the histogram afterwards but what I was after was a way of seeing if the exposure was going to be under/over while taking the shot. After reading, I can see you have something like this in the viewfinder -|I I | I I 0 I I | I I | +. When I adjust the exposure to try and get it close to 0 in the middle (I could be dropping the exposure compensation to as low as -4.0 if not more) it'll still report it as being 2+ stops underexposed (this is indoors with low lighting).

It's all a learning curve though, and I'm sure I'll figure it out. In the meantime, any advice is appreciated.

Cheers,
Lee

Red colors shift to Orange

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