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What Colour are Rose Hips?

09 August 2009 Alex (5)

I have been using a Nikon D300 now for six months, and one of the characteristics I have had to get to grips with is its default colour handling: out of the camera the colours can be a touch “zingy” to my eyes – in an effort to replicate the classic Fuji Velvia look, the colours processing gives very rich yellows, but this has the side effect of making reds somewhat orangey.

Here is a picture of some rose hips:

Rose Hips #1

In real life to my eye it seemed that the central rose hip had no orangeyness to its red; the upper rose hip had just a touch of orange. But, out-of-the camera, the colour rendition here differs from what I saw: the tints are much more orange.

One solution to this lies in the dark art of RAW conversion. Many photographers roll their eyes at this business – it can require a lot of time farting around with post processing software rather than taking more photos. However, I quite like farting around with software, so am quite happy to experiment.

For RAW conversion I use the fabulous DxO Optics Pro package. This offers a host of options for converting the RAW image into a JPEG, and it has to be said that some of these (such as chromatic aberration fixing) are now finding their ways into camera bodies. However, this software still offers quite a bit more flexibility and, in particular, will fix lens distortion for certain camera/lens bodies which have been analysed.

Another useful feature is the ability to control colour rendering. Want to give your Nikon D300 pictures the look of a Canon 40D? No problem – just specify it.

For Nikon users, a DxO user by the name of Andy_F has developed some RAW conversion presets specifically targeted at correcting the colour conversion of recent Nikon bodies. The result of using one of these to process the original RAW file give this result:

Rose Hips #2

Which is much closer to what I think I saw.

Even better though is Andy_F’s “landscape” preset, which attempts some detail recovery from the image:

Rose Hips #3

Comments (5) -

  • Dave Pawson

    8/9/2009 7:12:36 PM |

    Middle one for me... but How to compare with what you saw?
    That's down to you Alex?

    They are quite naturally orange... more so when berries are younger?

    regards DaveP

  • Alex

    8/9/2009 7:18:49 PM |

    @Dave

    I suppose ultimately one can buy equipment to measure colour - but I'm happy to stick with what "looks right" to me for now Smile

    In the case of these rose hips, I reckoned the central one here had no orangey tint ...

  • John

    8/13/2009 7:51:29 PM |

    Hey Dave,

    Were you using glasses or contacts when you took the pictures. Many glass lenses have built in uv and polarization filters that might affect the colors of what you see. I know this from personal experience where sometimes - especially with glare or colors - I notice something is lost if I remove them and look from close (because I'm near sighted). Just curious though since you mention what you saw.

  • Camera Product Reviews

    8/24/2009 12:22:48 PM |

    I guess the middle one please my eyes. Maybe because it is more saturated than other two? The other two looks a bit orangey to me.

  • Alan Bell

    9/7/2009 5:34:45 AM |

    Nice pictures all. I am very impressed by your HDR photos, but always thought it should be something that could be done with a single exposure with the camera polling the CCD three times, and indeed with the open source camera (which is basically an R&D platform rather than a real camera at the moment) that would appear to be the approach, lets hope nobody has a patent on it. On another topic altogether I have been thinking about the i4i patent and putting aside for a moment the question of whether or not it will or should succeed in whatever they are trying to do with it, I think some interesting points remain.

    Section 2.14.2 of the ISO/IEC directives Part 1 Procedures for the Technical Work oblige the originator of a document to draw the attention of the committee to any patent rights of which the originator is aware and considers to cover any item of the proposal. Now for all I know Microsoft may have declared the i4i claim at that point and had it brushed under the carpet by the committee. If they didn't then they were being a bit naughty. Lets leave that to one side and move on to 2.14.3

    "Should it be revealed after publication of a document that licences under patent rights, which appear to cover items included in the document, cannot be obtained under reasonable and non-discriminatory terms and conditions, the document shall be referred back to the relevant committee for further consideration."

    Now to my mind the i4i situation was revealed after publication. It would appear to cover items included in the document (I am not saying it does or doesn't, but I am saying that the existence of a court case and an appealed ruling in favour of i4i gives an appearance that the claims cover items in the document). The fact that there is litigation and dollar amounts that look like telephone numbers gives the appearance that i4i are not providing patent licenses on RAND terms. Thus back to committee we go.

    Now the questions I have are, "am I right so far?", "what does referred back to committee mean?" and "when does this happen?" I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

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