[dadipentak]

Without getting too technical (I'm an idiot about this stuff) can someone help me understand what's going on here and what--if anything I should do about it?

I take what I think is a nicely exposed shot but which contains a lot of yellow and when I bring it into ACR (this is ARC isn't it?) it tells me that the yellows are all blown out and, indeed--despite a pretty heavy dose of "Recovery" it does look like I've lost some detail in the processed shot. Any tips?

Attached Images

 

[Canada_Rockies]

Are you shooting straight JPEG? Have you moved the saturation sliders off neutral? What lighting was on the field. I can certainly see this if there was sodium lighting.

It is strange that the whites are not blown, while the yellows are.

[dadipentak]

Are you shooting straight JPEG? Have you moved the saturation sliders off neutral? What lighting was on the field. I can certainly see this if there was sodium lighting.

It is strange that the whites are not blown, while the yellows are.

No, I shoot raw: this was shot in daylight with AWB & neutral saturation (in pp.) I should say that this isn't a one-time phenomenon: I've encountered the same thing shooting sports when there's yellow in the uniforms.

[Canada_Rockies]

That's weird. I have no idea what is causing it. Wish I could help. What happens if you desaturate the yellow channel some?

[mickeyobe]

I too am no expert eithert so take this for what it's worth.

Is there not some way you can return your camera to all its original settings?
You might have inadvertently changed a setting that would have been better left alone.

Mickey

[Marc Sabatella]

What you describe is not uncommon at all - it occurs with highly saturated, brightly lit yellows as well as reds and oranges. it also occurs if the *lighting* is strongly red, orange, or yellow. The meter in the camera is exposing based on overall light levels, and it is trying to preserve highlights (avoid clipping) in that sense. But it can't tell if one or two individual color channels are clipping. And the red channel - red being one half of yellow - does often tend to clip long before other channels. So when shooting highly saturated reds, oranges, or yellows, or when shooting in light that is those colors - it is often better to deliberately underexpose (based on the "overall" exposure measured by the camera) to avoid clipping the red channel, and then try to fix it up in PP.

[dadipentak]

Thanks, Marc!

[stevebrot]

What Marc said...

Intense reds and yellows are problematic for most, if not all, digital cameras. It is extremely difficult to retain highlight detail with those colors since the sensor has very little "head room" at those wavelengths. "Recovery" in ACR or Lightroom is seldom effective because you can't recover what is not there. My approach has been to be aware of the issue and to bracket exposures downward with brightly lit yellow/red subjects regardless of what the camera histogram looks like.

Steve

[jeffkrol]

Thanks, Marc!

White Balance in Digital Cameras: Problems | LibRaw
Using Magenta Filter for Shooting With a dSLR Camera Under the Daylight | LibRaw
Flickr: Discussing Settings for D700 to use with uniWB *Warning : Its a long post in Nikon D700