My attempts to photograph my red tulips in daylight conditions using a Kodak DC290 digital camera have produced pictures that look terrible. The stems and leaves look okay, but the red petals come out as a single bright red blob with no definition. Adobe Photoshop could not fix this, so I am assuming the camera did not record the detail. Can I correct this using camera settings, or do I need to buy a cyan filter to filter out some of the red?

-- Brian Salsbery (salsbery@gte.net), April 26, 2000

Answers

try go to the white balance controls (override) and specify daylight. I don't think you can hold a white paper in front of the camera, and hold a button down to let the camera know that "this is white in these lighting conditions", like some other cameras. I'm guessing the camera is freaking out at all the red and doing some inappropriate color balancing. Speaking of which, another thing to try besides daylight override, is select white balance override to OFF instead of AUTO. Then again maybe you've got the right idea with a filter...

-- benoit (foo@bar.com), April 27, 2000.