Why do the colors on water scenes not come out right on my otherwise excellent digital camera?

Question

I have a top on the line (non-SLR) digcam that takes excellent pictures in almost all situations except water scenes. For some reason it just can't seem to get the colors right. My crappy point and shoot digcam somehow captures more accurate pictures of the water color. The more "tropical" blue the water, the further off my camera is. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

The multiple reflections in the water are throwing the sensor off! Purples and blues can be inaccurate especially when printing them out. Check your screen on your camera, then monitor, then printer. Your printer is probably the culprit!

Answer 2

Color is digitally created out of sensor data using a template that interprets the intensity of certain signals as color. When looking at a 3 dimensional scene like water, the leaves on a tree, a distant mountain top, the sky, etc., the color we perceive is an amalgam of light from several different depths of field, often bent through the medium of air to make color. But a digitized image is 2 dimensional and sometimes has difficulty blending more than one depth of field because it is optimized to focus in on a relatively narrow range. Some cameras have different templates that are better at doing this than others. The best cameras have more than one. For example, I have a Sony DSC-R1. I have 3 modes of color reproduction to choose from, the standard, Adobe RGB (optimized for printing on color printers), and VIVID. The last does alot better job with the color in scenes like you are describing. Look in your manual and see if there is an alternate mode of color reproduction, better suited to the task.

Answer 3

Thats just one of the cons of going digital. Digital is great but digital is not perfect.

Answer 4

its the angle of the focus point and lighting