[Q] exposure settings and color richness

[StvShoop]

i believe i heard someone on here say that they got better richness of color with high f-stop and low shutterspeed (better than vice versa)

i experimented with it a little, and it seems like it might be true.

photos not edited except for resizing and compression, of course
f8.0, 1/200sec

f5.0 1/500sec

is this correct, or are the differently shaded skies caused by something else? i don't believe awb was responsible, i clicked it directly on the pole for both shots.
looking closely, it seems like the reds are brighter in the second pic, but maybe that's because the blues are dimmer?

 

[StvShoop]

thought i might tack on an extra question.

in photoshop, is there a way to get a different channel setup besides rgb, but one that doesn't lose color information (like cmyk does)? rgbcmykoplh perhaps? this would make using channels to mask a subject much more accurate and easy, if it's possible

i know there's the "select color range" thing, but the fuzziness slider often can't go fuzzy enough

 

[ksmattfish]

i believe i heard someone on here say that they got better richness of color with high f-stop and low shutterspeed (better than vice versa)

Color should not be significantly affected by any particular shutter speed or aperture setting. The exception to this would be shutter speeds longer than 1 sec or faster than 1/10,000 sec, or if you were getting diffraction issues at your smallest f/stop (which I've only ever heard/read discussion about this affecting sharpness, not color).

I'm on my way out the door, so I can't sit down and do the math on your exposure settings (1/200th sec and f/5.0 aren't standard settings so I can't do the math in my head), but it's more likely that one of these exposures is greater than the other. Guessing I'd say the 1st one is underexposed compared to the second.

Standard advice for increasing color saturation would be to under or over expose depending on what media you are using (neg film, pos film, or digital).