Photography Tips

[Speedy Claire]

I`m still trying to get the best out of my camera but a problem i`m having over and over is that my pics always look dull despite the fact that they can be taken on a gloriously sunny day.

I`ve fiddled with all the settings ie. landscape, high ISO etc and occasionally one will turn out nice but I`m not sure what I`m doing wrong.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated :notworthy:

[DarrenSV650S]

Stick it on auto. Perfect results every time :)

[the_lone_wolf]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirds

What camera are you using?

You want to use the lowest ISO setting you can without having too slow a shutter speed

A small aperture will give you a longer depth of field, meaning things close to the lens and far away will both be in focus, but will need a longer shutter time to expose the photo correctly

[embee]

What camera is it? Some makes tend towards "brighter" colours than others, often the really bright ones are artificially overdone, it looks impressive at first sight but is OTT.

See if there is a review of your particular camera on http://www.dpreview.com/ or http://www.steves-digicams.com/ and whether they commented on it.

Use as low an ISO as possible at all times. In the manual there will be info on adjustment of "exp" which may give you what you want. If you're using it in a manual mode, make sure you have the appropriate "white balance" selected (daylight/cloud/incandescent etc). Check for any "effect" settings.

(Edit - obviously writing as Lone Wolf posted, same points covered)

[Speedy Claire]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirds

What camera are you using?

You want to use the lowest ISO setting you can without having too slow a shutter speed

A small aperture will give you a longer depth of field, meaning things close to the lens and far away will both be in focus, but will need a longer shutter time to expose the photo correctly


It`s a Kodak and it says on the front AF 3x optical aspheric lens 10.3 mega pixel, High Definition stills, face detection and blur reduction M1063 :rolleyes:

Not sure how i adjust the ISO setting (can`t find it on the menu!) but I`m off to a barbeque so will have a fiddle. Many thanks.

[Speedy Claire]

Many thanks embee.. i`ll dig it out and take the manual with me and see if i can find anything

[the_lone_wolf]

It`s a Kodak and it says on the front AF 3x optical aspheric lens 10.3 mega pixel, High Definition stills, face detection and blur reduction M1063 :rolleyes:

M1063 is the model name, only thing I;d say is that 10.3 megapixels crammed into a compact camera's small sensor will result in a lot of noise in the photos if you're using higher ISO settings. Your model can use ISO 50, 100, 200, 400, and 1000, for better shots see if you can manually set it to remain on 50, 100 or 200 depending on how much ambient light you're shooting in - anything more will produce noise in the photos i'd suspect:cool:

[embee]

There's a brief review of the M1033 and M1093 (I assume similar to M1063) on http://www.steves-digicams.com/hardware_reviews.html the and in the summary they recommend using the "smart" mode for most circumstances, does yours have this? The sample photos look brighter in smart mode than in the other settings.

[Speedy Claire]

I don`t think mine has a "smart" mode... I took some tonight on auto and they were a lot better, maybe I`ve just been trying to fiddle around too much?

LW... what do you mean by "noise" in the photo? I`ll dig out the manual if I can find and see how to change the ISO setting. Many thanks again guys

[the_lone_wolf]

LW... what do you mean by "noise" in the photo? I`ll dig out the manual if I can find and see how to change the ISO setting. Many thanks again guys

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_noise

[DarrenSV650S]

I took some tonight on auto and they were a lot better, maybe I`ve just been trying to fiddle around too much?
:takeabow:

[Alpinestarhero]

look in teh manual and see if thre is a setting where you can manually change the colour saturation

[TC3]

Even some of the best cameras get it wrong at times as it can be easy for the camera to be tricked by the way light is falling on the subject/scene. While using auto can give some decent results it will often crank ISO up and introduce digital noise.

I would keep iso down and saaturation, sharpness etc at 0 and take it from there tweaking a bit as you shoot same sscene and see how things are affected. Ultimatly you could run the pics through software (Picasa is a free download) and use the auto correction and see if you prefer those results. Also you could adjust the contrast and shadow light very easily to achieve a result that may resemble the original scene a bit better then what the camera could capture.

[matt_rehm_hext]

Show us these pics then, I can help you after I've seen the real thing.

[Speedy Claire]

Many thanks guys. Matt most of the pics i`m talking about are on my thread in photo`s bout my mini adventure in Scotland. It stuck me as odd that the sky in a lot of the pics looked dull and overcast yet it was a glorious sunny day when they were taken. I think i`m gonna have to read the manual and swot up on noise, saturation, iso and all that other stuff!

[matt_rehm_hext]

The reason why the pics where it was a nice sunny day but the sky looks dreary is because the sky is over exposed. This is because the camera is exposing for the foreground which is darker so the camera let in more light to get a decent exposure on the land, which would then over expose the sky because the sky is a lot brighter.

You could try turning down the contrast a lot and depending on the scene, over or underexposing deliberately to see if the shot comes out ok.

It's more of a problem with digital cameras, especially consumer-compact ones due to their lack of dynamic range, the ability to capture a wider degree of difference between dark and light, something that shooting print film (as opposed to slide film) has an advantage over digital in it's ability to capture more range.

Also you could try making a HDR photo (high dynamic range) to get a nice shot. Look this up on google, some of the shots can look so fake but a good HDR (in my opinion) is one that looks natural whilst achieving good average exposure on the dark and light parts of the image.

[Spiderman]

Many thanks guys. Matt most of the pics i`m talking about are on my thread in photo`s bout my mini adventure in Scotland. It stuck me as odd that the sky in a lot of the pics looked dull and overcast yet it was a glorious sunny day when they were taken. I think i`m gonna have to read the manual and swot up on noise, saturation, iso and all that other stuff!

Also find out what type of autofocus the camera uses and if you have options for it.

i know my little Olympus Mju can either be "spot" autofocus or "central". Sometimes i know when i compose the shot what element i want to be the main focus and thus also the correctly illuminated part. Then i haf push the shutter to focus it where i want and then keep it half pressed while recomposing the shot in the viewfinder again and hey presto, the result i want as opposed to what the camera wants.

[tigersaw]

I have a m1033, pictures can be pretty hit or miss, even two pictures taken one after the other can be very different, so dont beat yourself up about it.
Try the panoramic mode, where it takes 3 pictures and stitches them together - one of the smart options - results from that have been really superb