Did the camera get it right?

[tyke]

Hi, everyone.
I am very new to the forum and this is my first post. Hope I got things mainly correct.
I am new to digital imaging, having used Canon EOS film cameras for many years. I took the attached image in Swaledale, North Yorks., a while ago. For film I have always used a Gossen Variosix F meter, set for aperture priority and set my camera manually. Being new to my Canon EOS 550D, I decided to leave exposure to the camera until I got the hang of using it. For this image the camera set 1/160th sec, f/10 and I was using an EF_S 18-55mm zoom lens.
[IMG] IMG_0158 by stephenblanchard731, on Flickr[/IMG]
I felt that the greens appeared yellowish, so I fiddled with Digital Photo Professional, supplied with the camera. This gave the following image.
[IMG] IMG_0158CONV by stephenblanchard731, on Flickr[/IMG]
I would be very grateful to have comments from everyone to suggest if the camera got it right and where I go from here to improve my images.
Steve

[AB26]

NO! YOU got it right!

[MrB]

Steve, the appearance of the sky suggests that it was a clear, possibly breezy day, and most of the scene appears to be sunlit. If so, the colours of your original photo look fine to me. It feels as though the image needs a slight clockwise rotation. I think it might benefit from a very slight reduction in brightness and also an increase in contrast, e.g. -



But, of course, you were there, so what do you think?

Cheers.
Philip

[Ken Curtis]

I think the camera got it more right than your second copy, which does not have enough yellow. I agree with Philip.

You have a choice to make when processing an image. You can make it look like you remember seeing the scene, or you can make the image look like you want people to view it. Usually, with the lighting that you had, the grasses and leaves do have a fair amount of yellow coloring.

[tyke]

Thank you Andre and Philip for your comments.
Philip, you are spot on with your assessment of the weather. I like your adjustment of my original image. This makes me think that I was over the top with the processing of the image. My only excuse is that I have only used DPP this one time. What software did you use?
One of my reasons for joining the forum was to share pictures of my favourite part of the UK, hopefully for others to enjoy. I thought feedback in the early stages of my journey into digital photography would be invaluable for guiding me in the right direction. I have read tutorials on exposure and histograms and now need to practice.
Any and all further comments would be gratefully received.
P.S. It poured with rain soon after I took this shot. I had time to put my camera back in my rucksack, but I got wet.

[Manfred M]

I don't know DPP at all; but the first image looks "right" from a colour standpoint. I suspect you are looking for more "pop" in the image, and you can usually get that by playing with the black point (and white point). I don't know if your software supports that though.

[Digital]

Nice photo.



Bruce

[Shadowman]

Steve,

Did you get an overexposure warnings from the camera on the first image?

[tyke]

Once again, many thanks for the replies.
Shadowman, no, I didn't get an overexposure warning. Do you think that I should have?
GrumpyDriver, So far I have only used the software supplied with the camera, Digital Photo Professional and don't know whether it can do what you suggest. As I am new to this I have not yet spent on additional software for processing. What software would do what you suggest?
Cheers,
Steve

[Shadowman]

Once again, many thanks for the replies.
Shadowman, no, I didn't get an overexposure warning. Do you think that I should have?
GrumpyDriver, So far I have only used the software supplied with the camera, Digital Photo Professional and don't know whether it can do what you suggest. As I am new to this I have not yet spent on additional software for processing. What software would do what you suggest?
Cheers,
Steve

I think you should gotten the warning considering the bright areas of this image, however if you were using negative exposure compensation prior to taking the shot then no you wouldn't have gotten the warning. Most, but not all, camera systems tend to overexposure an image and if it did and you saw the warning you could have adjusted in-camera and the effect on your final image colors would perhaps benefit from the adjustment.

[ajohnw]

I would be inclined to agree with the yellowish green in the grass - not typical of any brit grass I am aware of especially in the Dales. It's a problem I often have and feel it's something to do with the colour balance of the cameras - bit like comparing Fuji with Kodak. I feel that digital often comes out a bit Fuji.

I tried a spot colour balance on the white in the clouds and that seemed to push things in the right direction so used a warm cool slider to cool it down further. Then increased contrast a little.

.

I feel that should be some what closer and only a touch yellow but looking at it now I have posted it maybe a touch too much cooling. The auto white balance in cameras is pretty good these days but may still need slight tweaks like this.

If you are new to this and used to shooting colour film digital has it's dark room and paraphernalia as well. The 1st aspect is are you seeing what others are seeing - it really needs a calibrated monitor. Then comes software and a pretty steep learning curve on that aspect. The calibrated monitor is easy but really is needed.

John
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[ajohnw]

I think you should gotten the warning considering the bright areas of this image, however if you were using negative exposure compensation prior to taking the shot then no you wouldn't have gotten the warning. Most, but not all, camera systems tend to overexposure an image and if it did and you saw the warning you could have adjusted in-camera and the effect on your final image colors would perhaps benefit from the adjustment.

Perhaps a little more explanation may help with that. Many people use the click here to upload photo's from your computer to show images on here. Then we would be able to see the camera settings by right clicking and selecting properties.

I'd guess from the results that you used a standard camera exposure of some sort where it looked after the metering. It's done a pretty good job really but maybe some of the cloud is clipped a little. This happens because the camera doesn't monitor every area in the shot and it will also do it's best to get what it senses into the shot. It is possible to compensate for this but the rest of the shot will come out darker and need more post processing to get it back to normal. Initially if I were you I wouldn't worry too much about limited clipping as in this shot until you are thoroughly used to using the camera and can handle some post processing. It's oh so easy to take on too much at one time.

John
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[Manfred M]

Steve - I suggest you figure out what DPP can do for you before getting into a more serious piece of editing software. While there are many options out there; most people will end up getting one of the Adobe products; Photoshop Elements, Photoshop Lightroom and for the advanced user, Photoshop.

[Shadowman]

I think you should gotten the warning considering the bright areas of this image, however if you were using negative exposure compensation prior to taking the shot then no you wouldn't have gotten the warning. Most, but not all, camera systems tend to overexposure an image and if it did and you saw the warning you could have adjusted in-camera and the effect on your final image colors would perhaps benefit from the adjustment.

Steve,

I used ACR on your jpeg and it indicated slight overexposure of the sky which isn't a big deal considering the small area, but it's what I assumed the camera would show as a correct exposure.

[IzzieK]

Yes the camera got it right...but it need a bit of work on the brightness and exposure. Just my opinion.

[MrB]

Thank you Andre and Philip for your comments.
Philip, you are spot on with your assessment of the weather. I like your adjustment of my original image. This makes me think that I was over the top with the processing of the image. My only excuse is that I have only used DPP this one time. What software did you use?

Steve, I usually use Corel PaintShop Pro for tweaking images. The version I have is X4 - I think it is up to X6 now.

Philip

[bnnrcn]

Hi Steve,colours in your original shot look good.You might make some corrections in brightness and contrast as well I think that would give a better photo.I'm very new to PP and I started with DPP like you do but after reading the instruction manual and editing a couple of photos I found it weak and I thought spending some time and effort on a more powerful software would be better.So I have Photoshop CC in my computer now although I'm not an advanced photographer at all and I like learning it.I started learning the ACR part of the software firstly,then I will go further.If you are sure that you will stick with digital photography,If you find yourself close to computers and softwares, if you have an analyzing mind and If you want to learn as many functions as Photoshop CC has ,I would suggest this software very much.You can subscribe to it buy paying monthly.I have subscribed with a good price because I committed for subscription for a year.

[tyke]

Once again, very many thanks for all the feedback. I have now (almost) decided on the way forward for me. I must, first of all, get my monitor calibrated. I am on a limited budget so am looking at buying, second hand, perhaps a Spyder system, possibly from ebay. I need to make sure I am seeing my pictures as everyone else does. I then intend to study the instruction manual for my camera in greater depth to make sure I understand all it's functions. I will re-read the tutorials on this forum dealing with exposure and histograms. Finally, I will experiment by taking lots of pictures. Hopefully, I will be able to post the results on this forum for comments and guidance. As John said in his post it is easy to take on too much at one time.
I look forward to submitting further posts as time and improvements allow.
Thanks again,
Steve

[ajohnw]

Once again, very many thanks for all the feedback. I have now (almost) decided on the way forward for me. I must, first of all, get my monitor calibrated. I am on a limited budget so am looking at buying, second hand, perhaps a Spyder system, possibly from ebay. I need to make sure I am seeing my pictures as everyone else does. I then intend to study the instruction manual for my camera in greater depth to make sure I understand all it's functions. I will re-read the tutorials on this forum dealing with exposure and histograms. Finally, I will experiment by taking lots of pictures. Hopefully, I will be able to post the results on this forum for comments and guidance. As John said in his post it is easy to take on too much at one time.
I look forward to submitting further posts as time and improvements allow.
Thanks again,
Steve

There is another alternative. Dell do a range that come pre calibrated for sRGB. It's not a brilliant calibration but is close enough.

Much depends on what monitor you currently have. I'm mentioning this as when I started hanging around on here and several other places I was using a monitor that I had had for some time and was perfectly happy with so I bought a 2nd hand calibrator. There was a surprising difference but I quickly found that I needed to look dead square on at the screen to make adjustments. No comments on here but elsewhere the comment perhaps over sharpened cropped up. Initially I looked on this site for a "bargain" suitable for calibration.

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews.htm

The best buy turned out to be a ViewSonic. It seems they often market a reasonably priced monitor with a good quality panel. I avoided the coarse dot pitch models. Not sure what people on here feel about that but I would suspect the same as me.

The site is useful for something else as well. Contrast and brightness settings. Most monitors come set way too bright for photo work.

So there are 3 routes really. Calibrator and your existing monitor if suitable, Dell and no calibrator and say ViewSonic and a calibrator. BUT budget has to be included in the consideration as well. I don't see any problems using a 2nd hand calibrator. When I bought mine Mac's were upgraded so many people were selling them as they couldn't use them on a Mac any more. Currently I suspect some are being sold as Dell have introduced a hardware calibrated monitor that needs a specific make. Not something a lot of people need worry about. The only calibrator I would most definitely avoid buying used is the Pantone Huey. They had problems with LED monitors. You can find good reviews of calibrators on this site.

http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/index.html

I sold my used one and bought a colormunki display because of concerns about LED monitors but it turned out to give the same results.

Googling a monitor "make and model calibration" often comes up with some information.

When you have exhausted DPP there are several free post processing packages about so that aspect needn't cost anything at all. I run Linux so in real terms can't use anything else. When you get to that aspect just ask. Most will say Adobe Adobe Adobe but there are alternatives.

John
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[JBW]

I have found that my camera is very obedient and does exactly what I ask of it. But i know that you have found a lot of very talented and helpful people who help you to learn how to tell the camera just what you want it to do. Welcome to the club.