PBase

Hi,

I have a Nikon D200. I've recently noticed the camera cannot process the color PURPLE. Certain shades of Purple turn out to be BLUE on screen and monitor. I've tried every adjustment on camera, and still cannot get the right tone as the eye can see.

Best example is the purple stripe on Pete's Coffee cups (if you have this cafe close by, please check it out).

Any reason why?

Thank you much.

that sounds decidedly odd!

I don't know what you've tried but i'll offer a few suggestions in the hope that one of them might help:

Firstly - RAW or JPEG? And what converter? And regardless of the D200 screen (my Canon 5D has a definite green cast on it's own screen - it's horrible) is your monitor calibrated?

Have you tried fixing the white balance to match the light you're shooting in or is it on Auto? Have you shot in manual only and used the histogram to check exposure. Is it with flash, without flash or sometimes either?

AND have you tried using a different camera to see what that does? ( or a few different ones)

It could just be that that is what Nikon intended for such shades (of course now i've posted this a D200 owner will come along and tell you exactly what is going on! )

If it really isn't fixable then you may be able to create a photoshop action (if you use it) that corrects the purples to the right shade...

hope something in there turns out to be useful!

Thank you dharden,

Very helpful. Yes I have used every camera adjustment, except RAW. All taken with Jpeg. monitor is a MacBook Pro, but never adjusted, although same Blue color appears on Macbook as the D200's screen.

Tested with all variations of White Balance, Vivid, Manual, with & without Flash, etc... still Blue when it should be Purple. I am thinking about calling Nikon to inquire about this.

will try with a diff. camera to compare, (a Sony Point&Shoot).

sorry i couldn't be more use!

one advantage with RAW is that you can calibrate the conversion, so you may be able to get some settings that will make purples come out right without affecting other shades. you could then (slight pain though it is) use RAW for such images....

With JPEG, of course, you're at the mercy of Nikon's programmers and what you can achieve on the computer further down the line. Maybe giving them a call is a good idea. You might want to post on DPReview as well if you haven't already, although you can get quite a few opinionated responses there, from what i've seen, as opposed to objective.

Another camera is definitely worth trying. It gives you a sanity check at least!

Post all your findings eh? In case it helps others.....

You know ... I have noticed that also that for whatever reason purple does not come across correctly.

I shoot mostly raw and I have tweaked for this in my settings when it is important .

I had never noticed this so i just did a quick test. Sure enough on the D200 screen it looks very blue but on my monitors it looks purple how it should. I have colour calibrated monitors though. I would try checking your monitor profiles.

It happens with my D70 too. It has to do with the white balance setting.
I eventually figured out what white balance I needed to set it at to get the correct color in camera, but it was over a year ago and I forget already
In the beginning, i would just adjust the white balance post processing.
Red flowers the same thing happens.