I recently bought the HP C20, partly based on the review here, and find that I am disappointed in its ability to capture reds faithfully. True reds come out consistently as magenta. Blue-reds are dark. Orange-reds are somewhat better, but still not right. In addition to the color being off, there appears to be a saturation (under-saturation) problem with red tones.

Once I noticed the problem on my camera, I went back and looked at the test images on this site. Sure enough, the boxes that should be red on the color grids in the "Davebox" shots (based on a sampling of other cameras' images) are dark magenta for this camera.

Surely you noticed this when you were doing the review. What gives?

Joe Jordan jjordan@zebra.net

-- Joe Jordan (jjordan@zebra.net), October 23, 1998

Answers

Joe- Quite honestly, we didn't notice it, but you're absolutely right! I just went back and used the Comparometer to look at a few different cameras, and the HP's output for the red swatch looks duller and darker on my monitor. (At least on my monitor, it's still red though, rather than the magenta you describe.) It also shows up in the red flower in the outdoor portrait shot. Interestingly, it doesn't seem to affect warm pastel colors very much, such as flesh tones. - Looks like we need to pay more attention to our own test targets! :-( Thanks(!) for the note, sorry to have missed it - I've just updated our "Pictures" page for the C20 making note of the shortcoming in the commentary for the "davebox" picture, giving you credit for the catch. Thanks again!

-- Dave Etchells (web@imaging-resource.com), October 24, 1998.