What went wrong here?

[Jack Dawe]

These Oriental poppies are a uniform red colour, so why did the patches caught by the sun come out orange and how could I have avoided this?

[LeuceDeuce]

Shade them. The sun is way too harsh to shoot nice flowers. If you don't have anything with you to shade the flowers use your own body. Get between the sun and throw your shadow over those flowers before you shoot them.

[Flo]

Yep^, and red is a hard color to get in the sun..

[snyderman]

Strangely enough, my 30D reproduced reds superbly. My 50D likes to turn everything orange! Have yet to sort out settings to correct the issue.

Plus, the sun (as others stated) washed out your color.

dave

[KenVP]

Not sure but i have that issue is real bright sun before............

[LeuceDeuce]

Again, bright sun. The image has been overexposed, and the dynamic range is too much for her to handle. You've blown the red channel, and clipped the blue and green. See above for a solution :)

[Jack Dawe]

Thanks, everyone, for your advice. Now you put it like that, the answer seems obvious. I really should have thought of that. I guess the lesson is that while bright sun raises the spirits it's not necessarily the photographer's friend!

[tonydee]

Chris has pointed out the issue, but if you're interested in exactly why the colour changed, and how to recognise the symptoms of channel-specific overexposure, there was a discussion of that back in this thread (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=681266) where I tried to give a thorough explanation. Bit of a long read.

Cheers, Tony

[LeuceDeuce]

On your 40D you can show the colour channels on the histogram as well as the luminance histogram when you review the image. So many times in this situation if you're just looking at the luminance histogram you will think that it's exposed properly when, in fact, you've blown a channel causing a colour shift.

[Jack Dawe]

Chris has pointed out the issue, but if you're interested in exactly why the colour changed, and how to recognise the symptoms of channel-specific overexposure, there was a discussion of that back in this thread (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=681266) where I tried to give a thorough explanation. Bit of a long read.

Cheers, Tony
Wow, that's really interesting. I get the gist OK and it's really helpful, but I'll need to digest your colour wheel explanation at leisure since it's a lot to get my head around at once! :smile:

On your 40D you can show the colour channels on the histogram as well as the luminance histogram when you review the image. So many times in this situation if you're just looking at the luminance histogram you will think that it's exposed properly when, in fact, you've blown a channel causing a colour shift.
Thanks. Right! Found it! I didn't realise before that you could check the individual colour channels. Not that I would have known how to interpret them - but now it's been explained that's going to be very helpful. At the moment I only have a rudimentary understanding of histograms. Clearly I need to do some homework! :D

[LeuceDeuce]

At the moment I only have a rudimentary understanding of histograms. Clearly I need to do some homework! :D

This should help clear the mud away: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/understanding-histograms.shtml

[Jack Dawe]

This should help clear the mud away: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/understanding-histograms.shtml
Thanks again. It certainly has! This is what I love about this forum. The people here are just fantastic! :grin: