Any photographers?

[alien13]

I have a Kodak Z1012 IS. I'm more of just a hobby photographer, which is why I haven't gotten a better camera.

Anyway, some of the cars I sponsor have fluorescent colors, and for some reason, they don't show up correctly. Matter of fact, they show up better with my iPhone 3Gs camera!

For example: http://www.widirtracin.com/LentzRacing/

The car in that top pic is supposed to be blaze orange on black.

http://www.widirtracin.com/BierhalsRacing/

That one is supposed to be fluorescent yellow in the lettering.

Any advice? I've tried sunny days, cloudy days, and there seems to be no difference.

 

[HPIguy]

Hey alien, I do a little photography. Accurate colors comes down to two big things really, the CCD sensor itself, the format you shoot in (i.e. RAW, TIFF, JPEG, etc), and the processing engine on board handling the metering. Generally, lower end cameras (even some of the low end DSLR's) get poor marks in accurate color representation. Some of what you are seeing is more than likely the loss that occurs in JPEG compression, by default the processing engine makes it's best guess as to what it can safely discard from the RAW image from the sensor when compressing to a JPEG image. This also has the side effect to creating color noise in the resulting image as well. Most cameras on the market handle color one of two ways; they either bump all the levels a bit, and make everything look oversaturated, or they simply pick a middle ground, leading to the washed out shots like you posted.

If you're going to be doing a lot of photography, I highly recommend at least a P&S with RAW support and manual controls. Better yet, an entry level DSLR would serve you much, much better. Plus, it's something that will grow with you as you learn with all the lenses, filters, etc that are available to you.

I know it's a long post, hope it helps though.

 

[DreamState]

1) Shoot in manual mode with a raw format not jpg.

2) If your camera has the capability to set a manual white balance do that, if not try a couple of the different auto ones.

3) Use a good calibrated monitor and photoshop to fix the rest and touch-up.

N/M, I looked up the info for your camera http://www.dpreview.com/products/kodak/compacts/kodak_z1012is

You don't have a custom white balance and it does not shoot in RAW.

Your best bet is to shoot in good natural light but not glaring direct sunlight, then process the photo using photoshop to fix the colors.