Gettin Frustrated

[ssim]

Need a little advice here folks. I’ve had my 10D for a couple of months now and am getting frustrated with amount of post processing that it takes to get my shots looking even half way decent.

I shoot just about everything in RAW and then convert using Breezebrowser. I’ve done some comparisons between Zoombrowser and this program and there is little difference to my eye.

My shots that include a significant amount of sky usually take a lot of post processing some to the point where I just turf them. I spend a fair bit of time at the airport doing aircraft coming and going and they just aren’t up to par.

I’ve tried some of the custom function settings but quite often the shots are so underexposed that they aren’t worth the effort. I’ve tried shooting manual with some moderate success but am still not happy. After I’ve worked with the custom functions I usually end up rebooting the camera to get back to “normal”. What custom functions are really worth the effort.

My underlying question is, is it possible that I have a lemon even though some of the shots come out just fine. Would upgrading the firmware help any, even though Canon says nothing about color management in the latest upgrade. Should I be talking with Canon.

I’ve tried using a custom white balance, different color temperatures, shooting in JPEG large, all with the same basic results.

I use nothing but Canon lenses, 16-35mm f2.8L, 100 f2.8 Macro, 100-400 f4.5-5.6L IS USM, 24-85mm f3.5-4.5 USM, 50mm f1.8 II, 100-300mm f4.5-5.6 USM.

I hope it’s something I am doing wrong (did I say that). Anyone have any good advice without beating me up too much.

Thanks

[excessnoise]

ssim wrote:
Need a little advice here folks. I’ve had my 10D for a couple of months now and am getting frustrated with amount of post processing that it takes to get my shots looking even half way decent.

I shoot just about everything in RAW and then convert using Breezebrowser. I’ve done some comparisons between Zoombrowser and this program and there is little difference to my eye.

My shots that include a significant amount of sky usually take a lot of post processing some to the point where I just turf them. I spend a fair bit of time at the airport doing aircraft coming and going and they just aren’t up to par.

I’ve tried some of the custom function settings but quite often the shots are so underexposed that they aren’t worth the effort. I’ve tried shooting manual with some moderate success but am still not happy. After I’ve worked with the custom functions I usually end up rebooting the camera to get back to “normal”. What custom functions are really worth the effort.

My underlying question is, is it possible that I have a lemon even though some of the shots come out just fine. Would upgrading the firmware help any, even though Canon says nothing about color management in the latest upgrade. Should I be talking with Canon.

I’ve tried using a custom white balance, different color temperatures, shooting in JPEG large, all with the same basic results.

I use nothing but Canon lenses, 16-35mm f2.8L, 100 f2.8 Macro, 100-400 f4.5-5.6L IS USM, 24-85mm f3.5-4.5 USM, 50mm f1.8 II, 100-300mm f4.5-5.6 USM.

I hope it’s something I am doing wrong (did I say that). Anyone have any good advice without beating me up too much.

Thanks



I've got the solution. Let me have your lenses for awhile and I'll check them out with my 10D. Kidding of course. I've had similar feelings of frustration with mine. Different problems but I feel like I'm always one step off, chasing the camera. Mine would blow out the highlights badly, would get a lot of back focus using my 28-135 IS lens and real soft focus. Lost confidence in it (me) so I sent my back for recalibraton last Saturday. I'll see if it is any better after I get it back.

[Roger_Cavanagh]

ssim,

You don't actually say what you think is wrong with your pictures: are they fuzzy, under-exposed, over-exposed, have poor colour or what?

BreezeBrowser uses the Canon SDK for conversion so the basic pictures produced by BB will be identical to those produced by Canon converters. However, BB offers additional post-processing options to further enhance your images.

Can you be a bit more specific and offer some examples with EXIF data?

Regards,

[rdenney]

I'm thinking the same thing as Roger. What result don't you like?

I have often complained about camera metering systems. Digital cameras have to find the right exposure slot in which to fit the light from the scenery. It's hard work for any metering system.

Planes against a sky are a tough thing to meter. There's lots of very bright sky, and one small often-dark airplane. If the sky isn't blown out, the plane is murky, unless the sun is behind you and the plane is brightly colored. And if you expose for the planes, the sky will often just go white. This is true with film, too.

What to do? Well, you can use the same tricks you used with film. A polarizer will darken the sky (maybe), and a grad filter will help control the sky's brightness compared to the ground.

When I shoot negatives, I'm accustomed to mountains of latitude, but I know that I'll have to do the work myself to bring out that latitude. The lab will bury my shadows to make it look "punchy" by adding contrast in the printing. If I gave those shadows enough exposure, the sky will often be dense and will need lots of work to control after scanning. Slides are easier because they have so little latitude that there isn't much you can do with them if you missed on your exposure. Digital is in between, with more latitude than slides and also with the transparency's fear of overexposure. So, to get an image with all the info in it, it often looks a bit dark when treated straight. "A bit dark" to me means "highlights not blown out."

Digital is wonderful but the things we had to do to manage excessive contrast and other difficulties with film we still have to do with digital.

So far, I have found that I get good proofs just by a little contrast-enhancing S curve adjustment and unsharp masking. That's what the Fuji minilab machine at the camera store does, but with digital we assume that responsibility.

Rick "who thinks the minilabs overcompensate for my good lenses by assuming I have bad lenses like most others" Denney

[Pekka]

ssim wrote:
My underlying question is, is it possible that I have a lemon even though some of the shots come out just fine. Would upgrading the firmware help any, even though Canon says nothing about color management in the latest upgrade. Should I be talking with Canon.


Lemon is always a possibility, but it would be nice to see some samples if you'd want a comment and comparison for overall quality. Maybe you could post a link to one preferably RAW image which is VERY good in your mind, and one which is a NOT GOOD, a problematic one.

[scottbergerphoto]

What you say about FVU and BreezeBrowser makes sense. However I just converted about 20 Raw shots taken at ISO 800 with a 10D and 70-200/2.8L. The converted shots with FVU were very noisy/grainy and unuseable. Post processing with USM or CSPro didn't help. I then converted the same Raw files with BreezeBrowser, using Combined Conversion only, no other adjustments. They were beautiful. No noise/grain. I just sharpened them with the low setting of CSPro. There must be something different in the conversion process between FVU and BreezeBrowser.
Scott

[codeglue]

This may not apply, you don't list the specifics about your poor shots.

1. What quality computer screen are you using? Tube/LCD/Laptop - all makes a huge difference in your "view" of things. Try and calibrate these, there are lots of sites explaining this.

2. For aircraft action shots try sports mode. I know it is a dummy mode, but it can serve to isolate the problem by forcing AI Servo focus, fast shutter speeds.

3. If you are trying to reduce shadow by overexposing, step into the digi world and get the Shadow Photoshop action by Fred Miranda. Does wonders. Don't blow out the exposure, underexposure is best.

4. Pump up the saturation/sharpness settings in the 10D.

[ssim]

I'm not sure if I'm doing this right but here goes. I've taken the horse carriage as a shot that I would view as
decent.

The original is here

http://www.pbase.com/image/18584800.jpg

The Exif data is as follows:

File: 143_4302.CRW
File size: 7,513KB
Image Serial Number: 143-4302
Camera Model: Canon EOS 10D
Camera serial number: 0320200728
Firmware: Firmware Version 1.0.0
Owner: Sheldon R. Simpson
Date/Time: 2003:06:30 17:06:30
Shutter speed: 1/200 sec
Aperture: 8.0
Exposure mode: Tv
Flash: Off
Metering mode: Evaluative
Drive mode: Single frame shooting
ISO: 100
Lens: 16.0 to 35.0 mm
Focal length: 35.0mm
Subject distance: 655 m
AF mode: One-shot AF
Image size: 3072 x 2048
Image quality: Raw
White balance: Auto
Color space: sRGB
Saturation: Normal
Sharpness: Normal
Contrast: Normal
Tone: Normal
Custom Functions:
CFn 6: Tv/Av and exposure level: 1/3 stop

Here is the image after processing

http://www.pbase.com/image/18584801.jpg

Now onto the problem ones. Here is the original

http://www.pbase.com/image/18584829.jpg

And the exif data

File: 145_4579.CRW
File size: 4,931KB
Image Serial Number: 145-4579
Camera Model: Canon EOS 10D
Camera serial number: 0320200728
Firmware: Firmware Version 1.0.0
Owner: Sheldon R. Simpson
Date/Time: 2003:07:03 08:52:05
Shutter speed: 1/800 sec
Aperture: 14
Exposure mode: Tv
Flash: Off
Metering mode: Partial
Drive mode: Continuous
ISO: 200
Lens: 100.0 to 400.0 mm
Focal length: 235.0mm
Subject distance: 655 m
AF mode: One-shot AF
Image size: 3072 x 2048
Image quality: Raw
White balance: Auto
Color space: AdobeRGB
Saturation: Normal
Sharpness: Normal
Contrast: Normal
Tone: Normal
Custom Functions:
CFn 6: Tv/Av and exposure level: 1/3 stop

And the post processed image

http://www.pbase.com/image/18584830.jpg

So from this information can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong.

Thanks for the help

[soumya63]

ssim wrote:
.....
So from this information can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong.


Just by looking at your picture of aircraft, I can see it is not exposed properly. The vast bright blue sky has confused the meter and under exposed the shot by a stop.

The overly misty appearance is due to the fact Telephoto lenses increase the mist or fog. This happens with all telephoto shot. It is not a fault of your camera.

But that is ok, that is what the post processing are for. The post processed image what you show us, is again not the true representation of what you have seen that day. You have removed all the mist or fog hanging around in the air and make the aircraft look so bright and white. Actually the correct truthful rendition can be achieved by playing with the curves and levels of the image and be truthful to what you have seen that day. But remember Photographer has the last word on the way his images should look. Many time we do not like the natural look and tweak the image in Photoshop to look better.

In nut shell, apart from a stop underexposure due to strongly lit background, I can see no defect in your picture. At least no evidence to call your camera a lemon.

Soumya

http://www.mitraphoto.com

[codeglue]

Now we're onto something.

1. Sheldon, the Canon booklet on the 10D sez that using ADOBE RGB color space WILL result in flatter, more muted colors. That accounts for some of the muting. Switch it back to standard if you want better color out of the camera with less processing - not sure if this applies to RAW mode though.

2. RAW mode results in ZERO white balance being set at the time of exposure, it is all controlled by the converter, ie, you will have to set it. More work at time of conversion.

3. Photo of the jet, underexposed. I don't remember what the name of the exposure metering mode is, but use the one that is the circle, not the filled circle. You may also want to trick up the functions such that the center metering zone is the one the camera focuses with. It is also very easy to have the exposure settings turned down with the little wheel, make sure you are where you need to be there.

4. Shadow Recovery in Photoshop, a FM tool, does wonders for these shots. You will see detail in the landing gear, under the wings, it will bring out the maple leaf on the tail. This simply can't be done at the time of the photo.

[rdenney]

ssim wrote:

Now onto the problem ones....

...
Metering mode: Partial



I think this is your problem. You metered the center of the scene covered by the focus zone, which was dominated by the white airplane and the bright blue sky. The airplane looks 18% gray to me--as though this is what the meter was reading. Evaluative would have balanced the whole scene to 18%, making sure that all the zones are within the range of the sensor (if possible). Center-weighted would have averaged the whole scene to 18% though with more emphasis in the center area, and that probably would have been fine. With the whole scene exposed to 18% gray, the plane would have been close to its true white.

Your one or two stop underexposure would never have been seen if you had negatives printed at a minilab--they'd have corrected it in the print. And it would have been dark but more blue than gray on most slide materials.

I agree with the other poster that AdobeRGB will flatten the image a bit. That color space has more colors, and when rendered outside Photoshop will compress that wider gamut into the narrower space provided by sRGB. Having the bigger color gamut is good if you will be making a print, or if you'll be doing a lot of post-processing, but it's better to convert it to a native color space for the display device if that's where it will end up.

Make sure you view images in Photoshop with the "Windows RGB" preview set, and that will tell you approximately what it will look like on the web. I have found that sRGB and Windows RGB make all colors brighter and more saturated compared with my corrected images in AdobeRGB when viewed in PS without the preview mode.

But I think the metering was the big issue for the airplane shot.

Added later--I just looked again at your exposure, and it indeed seems two stops underexposed. The Sunny 16 rule suggests that the shutter speed should be 1 over the ISO when the aperture is set at f/16, for sunlit subjects. I often use f/11 instead of f/16 with negative materials, and I think Sunny 16 should really be Sunny Almost 16. You shot at f/14, which is my definition of almost 16. Your shutter speed was 1/800, when the Sunny 16 rule would have suggest 1/200 (1 over your ISO film speed). That's two stops underexposed. Again, I think it's the use of Partial metering rather than Evaluative or Center-weighted metering that caused it.

Rick "who has come to trust evaluative metering--up to a point" Denney