Oh man, you had me freaking out for a while! lol. I'm gonna have to pay you back for that somehow! I feel a little better knowing that it's not just my unit.
Not sure what part of the world you're in, but I'm in the southeast U.S. where it's a mostly tropical environment and we start hitting spring by February. Sounds like you're at a higher latitude if you're just getting into the spring colors..For my area in the winter/early spring when before the leaves came out (and when they first started coming out) I used a day profile of Red: 26, Blue: 30 (only one value different on each than your using)...The past couple weeks now that it's almost summer-like here, lots of green, hazy skies and frequent puffy clouds, that setting has started looking a little too florescent and I've had to bump up the red a few notches and the blue down a few notches to maintain the same look I had earlier. Depending on your location, you may need to do the same at some point in the weeks ahead as you get into a more summer environment; especially if you have hazy, tropical summers with stagnant air (Subtropical high pressure ridge that we call the "bermuda high" around here, or the "death ridge" as they call it in the southern plains of the U.S.) It definitely alters sky and sunlight color, which in turn alters the color temp for any object receiving sunlight and thus requires a different white balance setting to compensate. I also keep the WDR on 10.
I usually flip white balance to "auto" when I'm looking at something on the ground or when I'm watching the sunrise/sunset and then back to "manual" when I'm looking skyward....Unless it's a cloudy day, then I keep it on auto even looking skyward....Not to mention the different night settings I use depending on moon phase....lol...Confusing and lots of work, but like you, there's enough positives about this cam to offset the negatives to make it worth hanging on to...Hopefully a future firmware will fix some of the errors or either another low-light cam eventually comes along offering everything this has plus more.
