Photo Help
- This topic has 8 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated Dec 9, 2009 at 4:53 am by
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Hi Grant,
That first shot is half a stop over exposed and that’s enough to suck the life out of the color & contrast.
IMO The key to getting good digital shots is to get things like exposure and white balance right at the time of shooting.A couple questions –
Are you shooting raw ?
Are you shooting in auto white balance ?
www.dsaphoto.com
A picture is thousand words that takes less than a second while a thousand words is a picture that takes a month.
…..and to add to the above; you might want to download a copy of Adobe’s beta of Lightroom 3.
I *think* you’ll find using it intuitive – and if not, there are loads of good tutorials out there.
A usefull place to start might be with your monitor- is it calibrated or close too and if so when you are doing image editing is the room lighting consistant/always the same? With both those taken care of – the above mentioned stuff about exposure/wb/post processing have a stable set of viewing conditions under which you could start making decisions on what to correct/adjust.
For what it is worth I just did a quick google on “Velvia look” and it seems like there are plugins and techniques that may get you where you wish to go in terms of post processing approaches.
hope that helps.
Will
Grant, I agree with the statements above; go completely full manual and you will learn the digital transition a lot faster, not just manual mode but in all of your settings.
The first picture is a bit over exposed but that is not what has created all of your frustration, IMHO. The rest of the shots seemed to have been metered fine and the tonality as expected. Look at all of your backdrops and environmental conditions. Consider the fact that you shot in heavily diffused light and your subject is in matching camouflage. Hard to get any pop, from this type of composition. The shots also seem to be a bit soft on the focus side but I don’t consider that a major deal.
Your last shot seems to have some sort of conflicting Kelvin issue going on, as well. Check out all of the whites and you will see the cyan on a lot of them.
Grant,
Another really handy feature when adjusting white balance is to use the Kelvin feature (in DPP or other RAW converter). If you shoot in RAW, you can go back after the fact and adjust the white balance using the Kelvin slider until it looks spot on. I try to pick the correct WB setting in camera when I shoot, but I always go back in processing and adjust the Kelvin slider to make sure it is exactly the way I saw it.
Your camera may also have a Kelvin WB setting that allows you to set the white balance in camera to a specific Kelvin temperature. If you have time, you can take a few shots and adjust the Kelvin temperature setting in camera until it looks good on your screen – if you will be shooting in consistent light. That should get you close. If you don’t have time, just pick the closest WB setting to your conditions (daylight, shade, cloudy, etc.) and then fine tune in post with the Kelvin slider.
Of course, if you have conflicting Kelvin light sources, as Ben mentioned about the last image, this may not help you much. I am guessing that the conflicting Kelvin issues might have come from having your camera set to Auto WB, and maybe having part of the bird in sunlight and the rest in a shadow? The head and front patch of feathers in the lower right look warm/natural, but the rest of the feathers in the background of the frame have a blueish cast to them. So maybe the background was in shade and the foreground in sun? The more I look at the image, it appears that it was not shot with flash, just ambient light (no sparkle or catchlight in the duck’s eye and the water droplets, and maybe the warm sunlight is hitting the head from camera right but the rest of the body is picking up a bluiesh cast from light reflected off nearby water??? Keep in mind that nearby reflectors can reflect light that is the color of the object reflecting it.
You could try to move the subject into one consistent light source if using natural light, and/or if applicable to the situation when using a flash, try putting a gel on your flash to make it match the ambient light source temperature if that makes sense?
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