Red Roses in photos

I have great difficulty getting the right shade of red to happen in my rose photos. The really vivid scarlet ones are OK, but purples and hot pinks and reds with any blue in them all look the same, a lightish pink. I've tried taking photos at different times of day, with and without flash, in shade and out. My camera has a colour setting which can be changed from normal to chrome, but that doesn't work. Has anyone any tips please ?
Val

Here's Blackberry Nip and Christian Dior. Very different coloured blooms although here they look similar, and not true to life at all.


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G'Day Val,

Your camera is a Fuji Finepix digital camera (I got this from the image you submitted in the rose gallery) and is what is generally called a point-and-shoot digital camera or a compact digital camera because most of its functions are automatic (as opposed to a digital SLR where you control more of the functions in manual modes like a normal film SLR). Red roses are THE hardest to photograph reliably, especially with one of the smaller compact cameras and the only way to really get around this is to use some of the manual settings. You can help by creating less contrasty scenes like shooting in full shade. My favourite time to shoot is in the afternoon on a cloudy day. Digital cameras don't cope very well with widely varying contrast so reducing colour contrast will help. Now... before getting into any of this, I can tell everything about your camera and settings from your image (camera=Fuji Finepix S5800 or S800, normal program mode, 1/140th second shutter speed, f3.5 aperture setting, ISO 64 pattered metering, one-chip colour sensing, exposure bias=0, etc) and can go through bit a time the different settings... but I would like to know first how much you know about photography and whether you know how to use the manual settings of the camera?

Hi TasV,
Thanks for all your trouble.
I don't know much about digital photography although I take thousands of photos! I can follow the instructions in the owner's manual, but don't know what the results would be if I changed settings.
You don't surprise me that it's because I have a point-and - shoot camera, I suspected that much!
I'd be glad of any help, it's very frustrating not getting a true photo of your favourite rose!

Hey Val,

Point-and-shoot cameras can give good results with minor changes to the settings. It's not so much that it's BECAUSE it's a point-and-shoot but because their automatic settings find it difficult to render colours like red, especially when the sun is shinning on it and a rose petal has such a luminscent texture to start with. The one I think you should look for in your manual first is the exposure bias. If you can adjust this down to a negative value while shooting you will start to see improvements.

Dont matter how haRD i TRY,CANT GET THE PERFECT PIC OF MY WHITE ICEBERG

I know why that is too TheE

Why

I'll start a new thread about it

Thanks again TasV, I have altered the exposure setting down really low. All I need is a bit of dry weather to go outside and try it. I'll let you know how it goes
Val

I've been able to take some photos with the low exposure setting but I can't see much difference. I'm getting a hood for the camera shortly, do you think this will help?
Val

The hood is designed to minimise glare. It reduces the amount of light entering the lens and so can also reduce exposure. Do you have any examples of you current attempts? I can see the details of the photograph and can take it from there to take the next step (the exposure bias is just the first step ). See... if everything else is on automatic you can adjust the bias all you like and the camera will attempt to compensate for this change to keep all things in balance according to its own sensors. The next thing I'd try if your cmaera can do it is called spot metering.

Oh well, hoods are no longer available for this camera apparently. I haven't had time to sort out my photos - you know - Christmas stuff, visitors, parties etc. As soon as I get a chance I'll post a couple

You can find anything on ebay

Oh! OK, lol!
Here's my latest failures -
Camp David
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Oklahoma
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Papa Meilland
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All lovely reds but not on my camera!!
Off to look at Ebay
Val

Latter I would like you to help me too Simon, as I take all my photos on automatic as well.

Hi O, I can hear your frustration in trying to get a perfect picture. I had a similar problem with my point and shoot. My problem was I could not get any detail into my red roses. They were just a red blur. White ones were difficult too.
So I saved up and bought a digital slr that takes RAW photos as well as jpgs Now I have a lot of fun when I put them into the puter because the editing software that came with the camera lets me fix every problem except poor focus. If the photo is too dark or light I can fix it by sliding a bar.I can changes colours from strong to weak and weak to strong. I can strengthen or weaken the contrast and on and on...
It was a great investment because I love to photograph flowers more than anything else (including people! ) and now I have a camera that will do all I want.

I think I'll end up doing that Dee, my camera is great but the reds just don't work. I've tried several different programmes to see if I could improve it but they all do everything but that. I recently downloaded a new one, Picasa 3 for mac, which is still in its early stages but is wonderful to use. Still no red joy though.
Val

you have to also aware that photographing in shade will give blue hues due to the light spectrum, as with photographing in the morning or late afternoon , you will get warmer tones of orange, its like photographing under tungsten light, it looks like white light but, when photograph anything they have a yellow/ orange hue.