A fall colours tip.

Colours not saturated enough? Like in this excuse for fall colours?

Then apart from setting the right white balance (“daylight” or “shade”; not “Auto), you have probably slightly overexposed it.

Expose a stop less (faster shutter, smaller aperture or lower ISO), and let’s see what happens:

Ah. Better.

What? A stop darker rurns orange into red? Really?

Yes. That is not a doctored image – it is real.

Saturated, you see, means “not mixed with white light”. If you mix with white lights, i.e. overexpose, then you will lose saturation, i.e. turn red into orange. To avoid this, avoid overexposing.

This is why I shoot in manual mode much of the time – I keep control.