Bright, OFFCOLOR PICS

[kdcon]

Hi, I just joined, looked like a good place to get some real answers. Bought my Wife a Olympus D-490 ZOOM a few years ago. Any pics taken during daylite, inside or out have bright spots and a greenish color to the bright spots. She has tried and tried w/ Olympus support and gone nowhere. Dumped it on My desk last nite and asked me to look into the prob. I read the book , put in and formatted a fresh card ( sandisc brand ) checked all the settings , WB - AUTO , ISO - AUTO. Took several pics last nite inside and they all came out great. Today , inside ( Sunny Day, Bright inside ) the pics had bright spots tinted green no matter which direction I faced or settings I used. Impssible to take an outside shot during daylite as same happens. Can anyone give me any input on this, as I am not a Pro and just want to point and shoot. THANKS kdcon

[JCW3]

Welcome to the group!

As for your problem its alot of things its could be. I would say its a simple problem with exposure or WB.

That little Olmpus is very capable of take some nice P&S photos, but sometimes the auto setting just dont cut it.

But before alot of time is gone into trouble shooting problems that dont exist, maybe you can post a few examples of the problem shots in your gallery. This will allow use to pin point the problem alot faster.

If possible leave the exif data with the photo, that way we can also look at all the processing the camera is doing. If you dont know what this is, then just post a photo and we will work from there.

[kdcon]

Just put 2 pics in kdcon gallery. Hope I did it right. Thanks for the fast reply. The carpet on the inside pic is lite brown. Does not matter where the lite/ sun is coming from the results are the same. Any lite source does this, but away from any natural lite it is great. Please let me know if you need any more info or if I sent what you wanted wrong. kdcon PS. The outside shot was on snow covered ground, but a like pic in summer came out same.

[JCW3]

Well I can sure see why you and your wife would be unhappy, just not to natural looking is it.

I actually looked at both pics for a while and seems a few things are going on here and a few more that I have yet to figure out.

The first photo of the German indoors is not as bad. There is a problem here with your WB. Seems the auto white balance is seeing the lighting coming through the window and also seeing the lighting of the room and is trying to balance them out, which is not working. There is also some ODD blown lines your your highlights. Seems for some reason its really BLOWING your highlights bad. I have yet to figure out why, it may be a CCD issue or something...

I would recommend getting that WB off auto. Try to manually set it to something like incudecent for indoors or what ever the lighting is. I tried to do a search on that camera, but I found little on the WB controls. Seems you can change it to a few presets, but I am not sure.

The second photo has WB issue also, but seems there was some CCD problems going on here also.

If its under warrenty, I would say send it off for a try to see what they can do. I have own a few Olympus camears over the years and have found them to be very good to work with. If you dont have a warrenty on it, well, well, well.... Well thats just not.

I looked at the EXIF data and I am not seeing anything that is not normal. I mean I could WB issues and I could see why it could happen, but there is still something odd going on here.

I would first work with that WB issue and see if you can get that fixed that may help alot. WB should improve your shots, but still something does not seem right. But give that WB settings a few turns and see what happens. I know it can do crazy things to a CCD.

[setiprime]

I have to agree with JCW3 - something is really out of whack!

Any chance the camera suffered from an accident without your knowing?

That severe magenta shift on the indoor shot and the green blooming on the outdoor indicates a firmware problem of some sort.

Your EXIF data looks fine but that is a different function of the software and records the information the camera sends, which when everything functions properly, is accurate.

Your shutter speeds are a little slow but that still would not account for the gross color shift.

Were back to JCW3's assesment of WB.

Fresh batteries I assume??

[kdcon]

Thanks for the info. I tried different settings, up and down for EV and WB. Made a very slight difference. Well now my wife is going to start the battle with Olympus. I went out and bought a HP 735. I don't need high end , just something to take a decent pic with. Seems ok and has a clear easy menu. Thanks again for the input. This forum seems to really have its act together. When told to download the pics the other nite , I figured I would screw that up for sure, but your site made it very easy. Thanks once more for the fast replies and great input. kdcon

[JCW3]

Originally posted by kdcon
I went out and bought a HP 735. I don't need high end , just something to take a decent pic with. Seems ok and has a clear easy menu.

You will be happy with that little camera. I know I had a friend that was looking at that camera the other day and I gave it a test run and did a little checking up on it.

I dont know where you got it, but I know Circuit City has that camera with 4X6 photo printer and a 64mb card for around $250. Over all a good deal considering the printer and card.

I found that little camera to handle outdoor lighting very good and even did decent macros for a P&S camera. The indoor flash was a little weak, but thats the case will all cameras in this class.

I am sure you will really like the 735, its a nice little camera for the money right now. I found it fairly easy to use as well.

Good luck with Olympus, I have found the to be a great company in the past to work with, sure hope they are good for you and your camera.

[RTaylor]

How about the white balance color adjustments section.
Probably set to more red which could be why your color is off?
I never accidently set that where my pics were off color like yours, but I did very recently have my set to incadecant outside which gave me blue pics lol.
JC knows about that one
I do remember taking pics of fog last year where I kept changing the white balance, some were normal color, some were bluish and others pinkish. So I bet that is what it could be.
When I took pics recently, I put it on cloudy for indoor shots and iso 200 with a flash and it seemed to work nicely