WHY WHY WHY is it when i snap a picture, that the camera (ANY camera) doesn't record the ACTUAL color of the subject??????

here is what i mean:

this is what i see ( i had to retouch the photo to get the actual colors i saw here)
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this is what the camera sees and records: camera was on FACTORY DEFAULT AUTO settings
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why does the camera not record what i am seeing in person? I have extremely good vision, excellent color rendering etc....yet i always have to saturate my photos after i take them...its EXTREMELY rare that i dont.....

thoughts? would really appreciate Evolute chiming in here

You would do well to get a grey card and get the white balance and exposure correct first. Most of the pro level cameras I use expect you to edit the image later. They can all use some sharpening in my experience. Most cameras have settings to give a more saturated look(landscape) or a less saturated look(portrait) or various settings in between. I usually set mine to give me a fairly neutral image and then pump up the color, contrast, and sharpness in Aperture.

This reminds me of a great story about how Fujifilm's Velvia came about. Kodak had run a survey to see what kind of color people wanted and they overwhelmingly replied they wanted a neutral, true to life color in their photos. So Kodak made a film as neutral as they could. Fuji also did a survey, but in their survey they showed people a landscape photo. Then they showed them swatches of colors and asked them to pick the ones that matched the blue of the sky, the green of the grass, etc. After they processed the results they determined that people really wanted/remembered more saturated colors than reality, so they came up with Velvia. Probably one of the greatest landscape films ever and it was very saturated compared to other films or even reality.

See these links for setting white balance and exposure. There are many different ways to do it, but I prefer grey cards. Almost all cameras allow you to do it this way. Read your camera manual.

Grey Card Nikon

Canon White Balance

Youtube search results

Tedwca, thanks for the Fuji history, very interesting.

That appears too bright to be what you see but remember everyone's eyes see things differently and the camera does as well. Many digital cameras are known for dulling down colors or artificially brightening them. That's why I (and many others) believe it is imperative to post-process all of your photos and shoot in raw format when possible. What I see above seems to be more a brightness/lighting issue rather than a color difference. Just what I see in those pics.

Color management is also a biggie here...not just what you see but how does your monitor, camera and printer interpret colors? Doubtfully all the same without some calibrating and tweaking and correctly setting each one. I've already gone through all of this and it can be a pain. Make sure, at a minimum, that you have your camera and other devices set to the same color space.

Hope that helps.

good points......i have the same pic on three different computer screens and its different on EACH one............god knows how it shows on everyone elses monitors..

is there a happy medium? i would love to share photos but would like EVERYONE to see the same thing, colorwise, brightness wise etc etc etc etc.

I'm not the photography expert in my house, that title goes to my wife, but I would say that using the AUTO setting is where the problem begins. This is going to use the camera's logic to set white balance, exposure, etc. which may not be what you are looking for. What kind of equipment are you using? If you are using a simple point and shoot there may not be a lot you can do except continue to spend a lot of time post processing. If you are using a DSLR with quality glass then you have a lot more options.

Hi!

Simple camera's don't usually have much options. Auto is pretty good. More expensive camera's have several good settings. Landscape is one of the most common one and very useful.

I own Nikon D-60 and my habbit is when I go outside I take first snap shot of area that has alot colors. Snow in winter, green grass during summer. Then I adjust the colors via menu to match up the colors. My Nikon has pretty good white balances and works really well in auto aswell, except when it comes to flouriscent lamps.

Now main reason for is camera's sensor is sevearly limited when compearing human eye. Human eye can see Moon, its ocean's and clouds front of it all well in town. However camera cannot capture that in one picture due limitation's of sensor and when it comes to general light balance. Human eye can balance various spots easily to match best possible result. Camera cannot do that. Camera can only use one exposure to capture image, when human eye continously render the image, changes the exposure. Your brain does all the work, color balancing, adjusting and such in microseconds and reacts way camera sensor cannot. Camera sensor's are designed to get best average result. DSLR's often give a lot customization when it comes to white blaance and color balance.

One way to bring out the greens is to use Circular Polarizer Lense. That will fit most SuperZoom's and DSLR's. Not unfortunately most pocket camera's without cumberstome adapters.

Now photographer's doesn't to take pictures that exactly reprisent what you see, but rather share your vision.

If you have DSLR, I suggest you spend some time with manual and read about white balances and color balancing section and how to adjust those. Then go outdoors and start adjusting them. It doesn't take much with modern DSLR's to get balances you want.

When it comes to monitor's: Each monitor has different settings default. Each manufacturer use different materials and assembly differs as differs their settings in default. If you want 100% color reproduction, you will need to go 2 price range up from mainstream monitors into professional section. Eizo has made some really good TFT's in color reproduction but they cost $1000+ and then get image calibration device which is attached to monitor and used to get exact color reproduction.

TFT is not that good with high contrast and actual color production due technology. We're having soon OLED monitors ( ORganic LIght Emmition Diode) which should improve greatly the color. Old CRT's were really good in color and contrast production.

sorry for long winded post.

Yours truely,
Jani