Help please- Fuji X10 and red flowers

[Bowlsman]

I am very happy with the Fuji X10 in almost every way. However, I have recently taken some shots of red flowers in full bloom. For some reason, the reds tend to merge and the detail is lost. I have tried various auto and manual modes, played with white balance, but all to no avail. I am attaching (hopefully) an example and any thoughts and comments will be appreciated. This problem does not appear with other colours. Many thanks in advance.

[xpatUSA]

If you are shooting JPEG, sRGB or Adobe RGB, it is likely that the camera firmware is color-clipping the highly saturated reds of the flower. You could try shooting with a neutral scene mode and turning down the saturation if your camera has that option. Then pretty up the reds in post-processing.

My tuppence-worth.

[DanK]

Even if you are shooting raw, you may be clipping the reds. This is a common problem with digital shots of red flowers. If your camera will do this, set it to show the histogram a for all thee color channels, and reduce exposure to avoid clipping the reds.

Beyond that my advice is first to shoot raw, to have more ability to deal with clipping and to avoid in-camera processing that may make the problem worse. A more advanced step is to do luminance-only contrast adjustment, to avoid boosting the reds. This last requires working with levels. Hopefully, the first two steps will take care of the problem, and you won't need to do the third.

[Ken MT]

I suggest that you underexpose by 1-2 stops, and/or take it in RAW. That way you are less likely to blow out the red channel.