Digital camera question on color balance

[Margaret Elvin]

Someone lent me a Sony DSC-S75 to play around with. I'm trying to photograph my w/c portraits and am having the darnedest time getting the colors to come close to what they should be. I have tried photographing them inside and outside, on all sides of the house, using both manual and automatic controls. In desperation I tried photographing a portrait in our finished basement which has white walls & carpet and an area of full spectrum fluorescent light. This came closest to actual paint colors, but still required adjustment with contrast/brightness/intensity on the Corel software. I've read good things about the Nikon Coolpix 995 in other threads, but wonder if I would still have these problems. There's a feature that controls 'white balance' (ISO?) that I'm suspecting to be part of the problem. No matter what adj's I make, there's either too much red, or too much blue. Also, as a test, I photographed plain white paper: it turned gray!

Printing is another nightmare altogether, but I'll save that for the computer corner at a later date.

Any ideas (or commiseration) would be very appreciated.

-Margaret

I received a coolpix 995 for my birthday (lucky me). I just love this camera. I have been along-time fan of Nikon and this digital camera has not disappointed me. It is a professional quality camera. I have used a few other, snapshot-type digitals and there really is no comparison. The white balance adjustment is by far one of the most amazing features. In fact, if you are unsure of the light source, you can "teach" the camera to read by using a grey card. Amazing. Then there is the exposure compensation, adjustable film speed, variable metering, pivoting lens (cool for interesting angles). blah blah. Do I sound like I love my camera? I did a lot of research before my husband "surprised" me for my birthday. Now... if he'd just surprise me with the camcorder I've been drooling over. Oh well, you only turn forty once.

[Margaret Elvin]

Heidi, thanks so much for your reply. Your enthusiasm told me just what I wanted to hear about the Coolpix 995. It's that one more vote that tips the scales in its favor. I especially like your description about 'teaching' the camera to read by using a grey card. Now, the Sony I'm using does have a white balance, but the only choices are 'inside', 'outside', 'auto' and 'one push.' For 'one push' you point the camera at a white piece of paper and then it uses that as a baseline of some sort for future pictures. None provided the results I wanted though. It sounds like the 995 has more control than that over the white balance.
I was wondering if you've tried it on any of your artwork and how you liked the results?
-Margaret

Hi Margaret

I have tried some shots of my artwork. The pictures look great. I must say, though, the first ones I took were before I knew any of the advanced controls and I thought, "Oh, no, another expensive, useless toy." Then I learned about the white balance, exposure, etc. and I must say I'm very pleased. What is really great, and this is a digital thing, is that you can have a quick look on the computer with the artwork right there and see the effect. I took some progress shots of a little still life under various lighting and with various settings, just to see what was best (and to learn more about the controls). The ones that looke the best were the ones taken using the manual white balance (with the 18% reflected grey card) and the GE reveal lightbulbs in my studio. The camera is also fabulous for taking reference photos to check composition, light and whatnot. I even take a picture, print it out in greyscale and use that as reference for my underpainting. Then I paint [the still life] from life. Best of both worlds.

[Margaret Elvin]

The controls sound perfect, Heidi. I need to be able to fiddle around 'cause I work in w/c a lot and the colors just don't seem to copy well. I think if I can adjust the white balance more that I'll be okay though,'cause it seems to control the amount of red and/or blue in the photo. I'll have to wait to see how the gray card ties in with everything, but that too sounds promising. I'm excited about getting the Coolpix. Other people on this forum raved about it. The Sony was nice - I was esp. impressed when I first started using it, but then grew frustrated when I ran up against its tweaking limitations. Thanks very much for your input. I'll let you know how it goes when I purchase it.
-Margaret

Oh yes, another thing. I haven't used this feature yet, but you can tweak the image too. There is a selection to make the image redder or bluer by incremental adjustments within the light balance itself. That means you take your shot, compare and say, "It could be a wee bit bluer," so you fiddle the knob (or push the button, donno) and voila. When I/we were doing the research on the camera, I really put the salesman through his paces. I did test shots, quizzed him. He was great; in fact, he owned a Coolpix 995 himself. This store sold everything and that's what he chose for himself. What I really wanted was to put the memory chip into a computer and see the effect. Unfortunately they were not set up for that, but if you push your store, maybe they'll do it for you.