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Nikon Coolpix 4500 Pink Cast |
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In dpreivew.com Nikon Talk forum, there was a wide-spread discussion about Nikon Coolpix 4500 giving
a pink cast in indoor scenarios as well as outdoors.
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While trying to get to the bottom of the issue, I have set up a simple test shot which seems to
suggest there is indeed some problem with the Nikon native White Balance settings under incandescent lighting.
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The object of the photography is an art set of pencils and marker pens. The pencils have yellow bodies, and the marker
sets are yellow with blue. Using predominantly yellow colored objects under yellow incandescent lamps brings out the worst
possible behaviour as far as White Balance is concerned.
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Nikon COOLPIX4500
JPEG (8-bit) Fine
Image Size: 1024 x 768
Color
ConverterLens: None
Focal length: 7.8mm
Exposure Mode: Aperture Priority
Metering Mode: Multi-Pattern
1/60 sec - f/2.6
Exposure Comp: +0.3 EV
Sensitivity: ISO 100
White Balance: Flash
AF Mode: AF-S
Tone Comp: Auto
Flash Sync Mode: Front Curtain
Digital Zoom Ratio: 1.00
Saturation comp: 0
Sharpening: Auto
Noise Reduction: OFF |
| A set of yellow pencils at the top, and yellow-blue markers below |
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This seems to be the best of the three shots, with minimum color cast. Notice the orange marker
pen at the bottom left row has a blue band around the yellow body. This blue color gradually fade towards white
across the bottom row. The reason is probably due to the flash firing off when taking this photo, and the built-in
flash of the Nikon Coolpix 4500 is roughly located in the center of the picture which would be where the bottom green maker gets
the greatest dose of flash power, bleaching the blue color of the marker to a near white..
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Nikon COOLPIX4500
JPEG (8-bit) Fine
Image Size: 1024 x 768
Color
ConverterLens: None
Focal length: 14.2mm
Exposure Mode: Aperture Priority
Metering Mode: Multi-Pattern
1.11 sec - f/3.3
Exposure Comp: +0.7 EV
Sensitivity: ISO 100
White Balance: Incandescent
AF Mode: AF-S
Tone Comp: Auto
Flash Sync Mode: Not Attached
Digital Zoom Ratio: 1.00
Saturation comp: 0
Sharpening: Auto
Noise Reduction: OFF |
| Without flash, Incandescent White Balance struggles with yellow |
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The problem seems to become acute when flash is disabled. The shots are taken with the Nikon CP 4500 mounted on a tripod
A weak attempt to over-compensate the pink cast by increasing the Exposure compensation to +0.7 EV merely results
in yellow bleaching.
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Nikon COOLPIX4500
JPEG (8-bit) Fine
Image Size: 1024 x 768
Color
ConverterLens: None
Focal length: 14.6mm
Exposure Mode: Aperture Priority
Metering Mode: Multi-Pattern
1 sec - f/3.8
Exposure Comp: 0 EV
Sensitivity: ISO 100
White Balance: Fluorescent
AF Mode: AF-S
Tone Comp: Auto
Flash Sync Mode: Not Attached
Digital Zoom Ratio: 1.00
Saturation comp: 0
Sharpening: Auto
Noise Reduction: OFF |
| Without flash, Florescent White Balance with strong color cast |
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It seems to be annoyingly easy to create the warm color cast simply by not using flash. Any of the
White Balance settings, (with the exception of Manual White Balance preset, which was not tested here),
even if used with White Balance fine tuning, via the Command dial, does not
seem to solve the problem. While Cloudy White Balance setting seems to be the best under this situation, yet
the strong color cast cannot be removed.
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Images created with 
Copyright by lasm ©2002
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