Sunrise colour issues

I have great sunrises off my back porch and every time I try to get the gorgeous pink/orange colours, the images always look yellow, the good colours are washed out or absent. I am using a Nikon D300, 70-200VR, white balance is auto, matrix metering and no exposure compensation. I am shooting wide open. What am I doing wrong?

Most likely it is the auto white balance setting. In this mode the camera tries to neutralize color casts which often results in dull or overly yellow images. Use Daylight setting instead, which will likely improve the in-camera results or, better yet, capture images in raw and adjust the color to where it needs to be in the conversion process.

Guy

My guess is the white balance. If you are shooting RAW, you can adjsut it during RAW conversion, using presets or by adjusting the sliders to taste. If you shoot JPEG, try using a different white balance setting for sunrisaes/sunsets, eg, daylight, cloudy, or shade.

Hi Lindy, it's ironic you bring this up. I got up yesterday morning at 5:30 to catch a sunrise off a point in Lake Ontario in south Mississauga. I took a bunch of shots with AWB and then I switched to CLOUDY, which is the setting I use most of the time. As expected, the shots with the AWB setting are quite neutral with a grey sky and dark water. The reds, orange and yellows of the sun are there, but the surrounding area is colourless. The shots with a CLOUDY setting, are significantly cooler and the smooth blues of the sky and water add a very pleasing tone, and the sun and retains the reds and yellows although not as pronounced. If I had shot some images using DAYLIGHT, I would probably retain more of the reds and oranges. Bottom line is, it's always the white balance. Yes you can change it later if you're shooting RAW, but I try get the settings right in the first place. It's a good exercise to teach me to read the light, which comes in handy in so many other situations.

Garry

"the good colours are washed out or absent... white balance is auto, matrix metering and no exposure compensation"

In addition to white balance you might be over exposing the scene.

Post some examples ... it may help clarify and confirm what has been said! :)

Assuming it is not suffering from a case of the "blinkies", I would bet on white balance.
Here are some good starting points:
Sunrise/set: 3000-4000
Sunny mid day: 5000-6500
Overcast: 6500-8000
Shade or heavy overcast: 9000-1000

Also check your camera's manual, it should have a WB table specifically for your camera.

If processing RAW in ACR, make sure camera calibration is set to landscape or vivid.

Thanks for all the feedback. I pitched most of the offendiing images but this is an image of the same scene on the D200 with an 18-70. It does have a little better colour. My understanding is that if I am shooting in RAW, then setting the camera to vivid or sharp etc is not doing anything - I thought it was only for Jpeg. in one manual I read that the "picture control tells the EXPEED imaging system (capture NX) how to fine tune the image." Since I don't have Capture NX, I assumed that the picture controls when shooting in Raw are ineffective. Do I have that wrong?

There are no "blinkies" in the image and I will practice with the temperatures as described above. Thanks for the input and thought. Hopefully tomorrow morning will yield better results!! Thanks

You're correct Lindy - the camera settings are saved, but don't directly apply to your RAW file. However, Capture NX will read those settings to use as a default set for your image. Other RAW software probably will not. So you should be able to change everything nicely while developing the RAW file.

Correct: the image "quality" settings don't get applied to the raw file by the camera, but do get applied by the NX application. Photoshop should ignore them. Be sure you have turned off all the automatic settings in Photoshop and ACR so that it doesn't try to "fix" your raw file when ACR opens it.