[font color=\'#000000\']Thanks, all, for your suggestions. I'm still left with the mystery of why the D70's default values produce such muddy-looking greens compared with scanned negative film (even when the color balance isn't bad, as in the second of my D70 examples); perhaps that's a color that the D70 just doesn't render as well as others. My soon-to-come experiments with the color checker chart will hopefully confirm whether or not that's the case. However, regardless of the cause, it appears that people have come up with reasonable methods for improving them, and some experimentation and practice on my part are needed (along, perhaps, with custom white balance work in the future - thanks for the Pringle's tip).
Comments to Alberio:
Interesting thread. With the limited goal of "un-muddying" the pictures without overt sharpening or levels work, here's what I could do.
An interesting exercise! I really liked your improvements to the first two. What did you do to get the greens to look so much better for the cliff-and-waterfall photo? For the first one (Half Dome), I would guess that it was a combination of increased saturation (a bit too unnatural compared with the original scene, but that's OK) and local contrast enhancement; is that right?
Maybe it's just me, but I found it difficult to judge the color using a browser because you saved the original JPEGs with Adobe RGB 1998 instead of sRGB. This may be the root of the white balance criticisms.
I don't *think* that's the problem, since I see the same issues in Epson prints of the images (and I'm reasonably certain that I have color management done right for those).
Was the hill picture taken in the Stanford foothills?
Nope! I wish. No rocks that interesting around here. That was taken in New Zealand (South Island, a place called something like Castle Ridge or Castle Hill).
P.S. Nice pictures at the site in your sig!
Thanks! It's nice to know that someone likes them...
Lisa[/font]