i just thought that i might put in a post to see if anyone else has suffered this problem before. when i am filming something that is deep in color like purple of orange and red i have problems with oversaturated colors. apart from this the colors on this camera are dead accurate and beautiful. the camera seems to do it more when the sun is bright possibly from under exposure but even when i open it up i can get the right color but the highlights and shadows are not correct and the background becomes over exposed. if anyone has some help on this matter i would appreciate ur advice. if you want info on this camera feel free to ask also. just a suggestion could it be the inbuilt ND filters doing this and if so can they be turned off. Thanks
Justin

Welcome, Justin.

2 things to try:

1) keep the sun directly over, behind or off to one side.
2) set exposure correctly with your subject matter.

Have you tried adjusting color in post or in-camera under the advanced features?

Over saturation is one of my gripes when the MX500 arrived in October 2002.

It's funny that the PV-DV953 doesn't seem to suffer from this. Must be those extra PAL pixels. ;)

Thanks for all your help guys. but no luck. i had tried these. the only i hadn't tried is shooting away from the sun. wouldn't make any difference as middle of summer in Australia and the sun is right over head burning us all. i don't know the fix for the problem perhaps a polarizing fillter. any ideas guys

Justin

With lots of natural lighting, I think this rich color saturation is normal with miniDV cams.

<<the camera seems to do it more when the sun is bright possibly from under exposure but even when i open it up i can get the right color but the highlights and shadows are not correct and the background becomes over exposed.>>

Justin, this cams are using CCDs. That are small devices which are not perfect by no means. You can't expect everything to be perfect. Even in photography you blow the highlights if you want correct exposure of the main object. After all your audience will more likely to look on the important stuff rather than searching if the shadows were correct.

In bright sun the use of ND4 or even 8 filter is always a help.

How would a ND filter cut down on color saturation? Just curious.

I don't mention the ND filter will reduce the saturation.
It'll help for a better exposure and maintaining better brightness/contrast ratio.

I also notice a rich color saturation with film, stills and motion, when shot in sunny conditions. So this richness, I think, is normal.

i just got a website up and running and you will see the oversaturation in the orange flower photo. that photo was a frameshot taken on manual with the aperture open more then on auto with no "bright" light on the object. You may now see what i mean
i might later put on a photo in full sunlight on auto and show you what i mean.

http://www.geocities.com/sniper_y2k2000/photo_album.html