Color cast and crappy pictures...whats going on?

Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2008 1:48 pm

I took a series of pictures in our living room. Whenever i set it to JPEG, the pictures looked like hell, they were dark, or light, most had a very unnatural color cast, and they just generally looked like crap. However, during that series of pics, i flicked it to RAW.....those pictures turned out absolutely perfect...contrast was good, no color cast, colors were 'right', not to bright, not too dark.

Is this a camera issue or something im not doing right? These were also with and without the SB600 flash.

Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 5:28 pm

jed1154 wrote:

I took a series of pictures in our living room. Whenever i set it to JPEG, the pictures looked like hell, they were dark, or light, most had a very unnatural color cast, and they just generally looked like crap. However, during that series of pics, i flicked it to RAW.....those pictures turned out absolutely perfect...contrast was good, no color cast, colors were 'right', not to bright, not too dark.

Is this a camera issue or something im not doing right? These were also with and without the SB600 flash.

With out seeing the pictures it is a little hard to say what was / is wrong, however the main reason for colour cast is the incorrect white balance. You can see the results by taking a photo of the same subject in the same light using different white balance settings, there will be green, blue and orange casts depending on the white balance settings, post an image or two so we can see what you have experienced.

As a side note, I have a SB-800 that came with two filters to fit over the flash, which balanced the flash output to ambient light, which can make a huge difference!

All the best.