Does the d7000 have a problem with green tones?

Question

I recently went on a two week long trip to Italy, where I had the opportunity to extensively use a nikon d7000 (along with a 18-105mm travel lens).

Now, after finishing sorting and development of the several hundred very different RAW images, I have the impression that green tones are often overly saturated. In most images that included any kind of vegetation, grass, trees and so on, I noticed a very strong, almost unrealistic saturation, which I wasn't able to correct with custom white balance and lightrooms global saturation slider only. For many shots I had to manually reduce saturation on the greens and also a bit of yellow.

Is this a known problem of nikons, of d7000s, maybe of this single camera? Or is it just my perception?

Also, how big can differences in color reproduction between different camera models be in general (assuming the same developing process from RAW)? Until now I haven't had that many different cameras in use...

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EDIT:

For clarification and to answer questions from the (already good) answers: No, sadly I don't work on a properly calibrated monitor. This is quite a subjective observation I made.

What I was describing is just the colors I see when looking at a RAW file straight from camera, in Lightroom, without any corrections done (white balance "as shot"), and this compared to the same from other cameras I have worked with.

As found in one answer, Nikon really tends to have strong green saturation in the from-camera jpgs, so the camera-selected white balance (especially magenta/green tint) might be part of the answer.

And yes, sure, I can correct any color tint or white balance problem in Lightroom when developing RAW, that is actually what I did. But I didn't think of camera calibration profiles! That might make developing easier and more consistent for me in the future. Thanks! :)

Answer 1

Try to set different camera calibration profiles in lightroom and observe the effect.

Color reproduction is a function of the profile, so it cannot be a problem of the camera.

It is possible that the default adobe profile is not to your liking, but since you shot raw, you still have all options open to you.

Answer 2

In terms of JPEGs generated in camera, it is fairly well known that Nikons tend to saturate the greens for vivid landscapes while Canons tend to emphasize the pinks and reds for vibrant skin tones.

In terms of raw developing in Lightroom, though, most of the in camera settings and jpeg development engines aren't really applicable unless you are viewing the jpeg preview image rather than Lightroom's rendering of the raw data based on Lightroom's (not your camera's) default settings. Lightroom does normally use the color temperature (blue/purple←→red/yellow axis) embedded into the EXIF when the shot was taken, but usually does not apply any additional White Balance correction along the green←→magenta axis that was dialed in when the shot was taken. It also seems to ignore any Picture Control (Nikon) or Picture Style (Canon) settings selected when the shot was made.

Assuming your monitor is properly calibrated and profiled so that you are seeing the same colors the computer's graphics adapter is sending to your monitor, you probably need to adjust your default LR profile for opening images from your camera to compensate for the bias you are describing. Keep in mind that color temperature is adjustment along only one axis of the total color wheel of white balance. The green←→magenta axis is roughly perpendicular to the blue←→amber axis. If you find you are having to apply the same green←→magenta bias to most of the images from your D7000 to get the results you want, save a profile that includes that adjustment to use as the default profile used by LR to open the images from your D7000.

Answer 3

Hopefully you are working on a calibrated monitor with a decent color gamut.

All Nikon DSLRs offer several Picture Control modes which are each customizable. These don't affect RAW data but serve as default development settings for RAW conversion, although you are free to do the conversion differently. If you want to have good defaults, then you need to calibrate Picture Control settings in-camera. To obtain pleasant colors, use a Neutral or Standard style and shift the Hue control a notch down. I found that reds were still too warm but the rest was reasonable.

Now since you have shot RAW, you are free to render colors as you please. You can calibrate many RAW conversion software using a color chart which will let your Nikon D7000 produce colors close to reality. There are even patches on some charts to cheat a little and render things slightly warmer or cooler.