2 replies to this topic

[molliejane]

Question for my professional photography friends. Why are my indoor tungsten lit or pretty much any indoor artificially lit pictures doing this? Can you see in the first picture (taken with my D800), I lose so much color (especially in lips). It's noticeable in camera and in my Raw images, but it gets so much worse in jpeg (I'm thinking because of the compression). I have played with every option for white balance (I think) and the improvement is minimal using Kelvin. In the 2nd picture (taken with my Canon SX 50), it is with our point and shoot with the flash pointed right at him and the color looks so much better and it is driving me bonkers. I really want to improve this but I don't know how. I have tried to search the internet and I don't even know how to ask the question.

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[Adam]

It doesn't look like white balance is the issue here, but rather the jpeg color profile (and possibly flash intensity).  This has nothing to do with compression, but rather the way each individual camera treats different colors.

 

You'll always get the best results by shooting in raw and tweaking the colors later, but if you don't want to do that, change the Picture Control settings in the camera until you start seeing the colors you want.  All the info can be found on pages 163-173 of the manual.

 

There is no one "best" picture control setting; in difficult lighting you will either have to switch profiles or shoot in raw in order to be guaranteed a good capture.

 

With that said, the D800 photo looks really good.  The camera goes for neutral tones by default and that's what you're seeing

[Merco_61]

What ISO did you use? It seems like the flash just couldn't go low enough, which points to a wide aperture and high ISO. I think the WB is pretty much spot-on, but the flash has given that pasty, washed-out skin tone.