D200 shooting blue. Help!

[KerrKid]

My D200 just started shooting everything with a blue tint. It was fine yesterday. Beautiful accurate color.

I had it on a custom program and can’t figure out how to go in and edit the settings. The white balance is way off now in that program for some reason.

I chose another program and the blue tint went away. In that new program I just set the white balance to Auto.

Any ideas how to change the settings in the custom program and why it just started shooting everything with a blue tint?

Thanks!

 

[reddesert]

You already said the answer - the white balance changed, probably you inadvertently pressed some buttons that changed it. Maybe it's on Incandescent.

Read the manual for how to change the white balance settings. Briefly, they are in the menu under Shooting Menu, not Custom Settings. Go to shooting menu then set a program A,B,C, or D. Then scroll down in the Shooting Menu until you reach white balance (it's on the second screen), select it, and set it to Auto. Then go back up to choose the other programs B,C,D and set each of them to Auto WB too.

It is also possible to change the WB setting by holding the WB button on top of the camera and rotating the rear command wheel, which might be how you inadvertently changed it.

 

[MattKing]

It is a digital camera - it has been possessed by the devil!
And even worse, the cure has to be found in the camera menus!
The horror!

reddesert has it right about white balance.
Unless of course you forgot and left a tungsten to daylight colour correction filter on the lens.

 

[KerrKid]

You already said the answer - the white balance changed, probably you inadvertently pressed some buttons that changed it. Maybe it's on Incandescent.

Read the manual for how to change the white balance settings. Briefly, they are in the menu under Shooting Menu, not Custom Settings. Go to shooting menu then set a program A,B,C, or D. Then scroll down in the Shooting Menu until you reach white balance (it's on the second screen), select it, and set it to Auto. Then go back up to choose the other programs B,C,D and set each of them to Auto WB too.

It is also possible to change the WB setting by holding the WB button on top of the camera and rotating the rear command wheel, which might be how you inadvertently changed it.

Thank you for your response!

Program A is a custom program. I could have overridden the white balance in that program, I just don’t know how. When I saw the blue tint I tried the WB button and rear command wheel but those changes either made it worse or didn’t help much. White balance options don’t show up in Program A. I need to figure out how to get into that program and fix it.

I just selected Program B in the menu, went to the White Balance options and selected Auto, and made a few other changes. The shots I took with Program B turned out fine.

I adjusted the colors of the photos in Photoshop. Note that I didn’t say “corrected” since that would suggest I did it correctly. All the more reason to take the picture correctly in the first place.

 

[Bronson Dugnutt]

Such white balance adjustments only apply to the jpeg image saved by the camera. RAW is preferable if you have time to spend in post-processing and want to get the most out of the sensor data.

 

[KerrKid]

It is a digital camera - it has been possessed by the devil!
And even worse, the cure has to be found in the camera menus!
The horror!

reddesert has it right about white balance.
Unless of course you forgot and left a tungsten to daylight colour correction filter on the lens.

Well it sure has a lot of details, so the Devil must be in it.

I know...menus. Plus the buttons, levers, and wheels. All employed to get the camera to do things automatically. I had to read an inch-thick book to figure the thing out and obviously didn’t remember much.

Today, I described to my wife how to take a picture with My SRT 101 in a couple of minutes. Not a Devil in sight.

I can’t wait for my Ricoh rangefinders to get here.

Tungsten to daylight colour filter...you know for sure that didn’t happen! Lol.

What’s “colour” anyway?

 

[KerrKid]

Such white balance adjustments only apply to the jpeg image saved by the camera. RAW is preferable if you have time to spend in post-processing and want to get the most out of the sensor data.

I could shoot RAW or both RAW and jpeg, but figured that jpeg is fine for blog pictures. I use the highest quality settings for the jpegs.

 

[MattKing]

What’s “colour” anyway?

I think you folks down south abbreviate it to "color".

 

[Bronson Dugnutt]

I could shoot RAW or both RAW and jpeg, but figured that jpeg is fine for blog pictures. I use the highest quality settings for the jpegs.

OOC jpegs are generally fine, but if you err and choose the wrong white balance, botch exposure, or worst yet use a monochrome mode while expecting color via the prism, you'll have less recourse. Conversely, tiny jpgs are fun to use in high-speed burst modes just for gif potential.

Digital menu systems and shortcut ergonomics become second nature after a while and can be one of the major sources of vendor lock-in once you've established a preference.

 

[KerrKid]

OOC jpegs are generally fine, but if you err and choose the wrong white balance, botch exposure, or worst yet use a monochrome mode while expecting color via the prism, you'll have less recourse. Conversely, tiny jpgs are fun to use in high-speed burst modes just for gif potential.

Digital menu systems and shortcut ergonomics become second nature after a while and can be one of the major sources of vendor lock-in once you've established a preference.

Very good points. Some RAW files would have come in handy today.

Yes, the more I use the camera, the more I’ll get familiar with it. Vendor lock-in is real possibility.

 

[reddesert]

Few comments:

- read the manual for the white balance and how to set up the shooting banks. The first part of the manual is a good overview of how to control the camera. Memorizing it would be too much work, I just use the second part as a reference when I need to change something.

- second, a DSLR like this can be infernally complex, but if you set it on some basic defaults (metering, AF, ISO, WB, sRGB, etc) it will do something that is good to great 99% of the time. So, I personally don't rely on RAW unless I know I will have time to post-process.

- "Program A is a custom program." Shooting menu banks A-D are all equally custom or not. Again, this is the Shooting Menu (camera icon at left of menu), not the Custom Settings A-D. Go into the menu, select the camera icon for Shooting Menu, go to Shooting Menu Bank, select A. It will take you back to the Shooting Menu. Then scroll down to the second page where there are settings for image size, white balance, ISO, etc. Here you can change the white balance. I don't have all of these steps memorized, I'm literally looking at a D200 (although most Nikons are pretty similar).

- There are digital cameras where you can put the camera into auto-everything dummy or scene modes where it locks out many of the controls, but the D200 doesn't have that. The WB button plus rear dial should always be able to adjust the WB as seen on the top LCD. I don't know of a way to lock that out. There might be one, but I don't see it in the manual.

 

[KerrKid]

I think you folks down south abbreviate it to "color".

We do. We’re an impatient bunch and like to finish our words as soon as possible.

Here in Texas, we’ve even shortened “you all” to “y’all”. Saves a ton of time.

 

[KerrKid]

Few comments:

- read the manual for the white balance and how to set up the shooting banks. The first part of the manual is a good overview of how to control the camera. Memorizing it would be too much work, I just use the second part as a reference when I need to change something.

- second, a DSLR like this can be infernally complex, but if you set it on some basic defaults (metering, AF, ISO, WB, sRGB, etc) it will do something that is good to great 99% of the time. So, I personally don't rely on RAW unless I know I will have time to post-process.

- "Program A is a custom program." Shooting menu banks A-D are all equally custom or not. Again, this is the Shooting Menu (camera icon at left of menu), not the Custom Settings A-D. Go into the menu, select the camera icon for Shooting Menu, go to Shooting Menu Bank, select A. It will take you back to the Shooting Menu. Then scroll down to the second page where there are settings for image size, white balance, ISO, etc. Here you can change the white balance. I don't have all of these steps memorized, I'm literally looking at a D200 (although most Nikons are pretty similar).

- There are digital cameras where you can put the camera into auto-everything dummy or scene modes where it locks out many of the controls, but the D200 doesn't have that. The WB button plus rear dial should always be able to adjust the WB as seen on the top LCD. I don't know of a way to lock that out. There might be one, but I don't see it in the manual.

Thank you! Advice taken. I going back and reading the Magic Lantern Guide on the Nikon D200 that John Decker gave me. I have a D200 manual in pdf that I will look at, too.

Shooting Menu Bank A is a set of values that I got off the internet and named "Bold". I am using Shooting Menu Bank B until I can figure out what went wrong with Bank A - or determine if I accidentally overrode the white balance setting with a button/wheel.

I am using the More Vivid optimize color mode. I like saturated colors. Is this mode going to give me any problems that you can think of? Would I be better served with the Vivid mode?

 

[KerrKid]

You already said the answer - the white balance changed, probably you inadvertently pressed some buttons that changed it. Maybe it's on Incandescent.

We have a winner. I have no idea why I could not see the White Balance setting in Menu Bank A, but I checked again and there it was. Set to Incandescent! How the heck did that happen? I suppose I hit the WB button and turned the rear command wheel or something.