Washed out photos

Which lens do you use ,and do you have some filters or hood attached on lens?

tonylong wrote in post #12179491
Brewster, are you shooting jpegs or Raw?

If jpegs, try playing with your Picture Styles. If you, say, set it to the Landscape PS it gives the images more "pop".

20D, no Picture Styles.

Levels adjustment, get the whites white and the blacks black. Most digital photos need that.
You can do that with jpegs or raw. If you are doing no processing just sooc, try decreasing your exposure and increasing your contrast, see if that helps.

As was mentioned, the problem was light and user, not the camera.

In the few I looked at, you're shooting in Av, which means the camera needs to calculate exposure based on it's metering.. and it's doing that in scenes with (what looks like) overcast light and a lot highlights and shadows.. you're also using pattern metering, which is fine, just understand how that impacts your exposure.

If you're shooting in RAW these should be easily recoverable. Moving forward try using manual mode so that you are controlling exposure, not the camera's metering.

tzalman wrote in post #12183495
20D, no Picture Styles.

Ah, good call, I missed that!

Here are two older shots taken with my 20D, both in similar lighting conditions... obviously post processed, but they were not nearly as washed out as yours straight out of camera. It's not the camera, or a dirty sensor. Start shooting in manual so that you're not relying on the camera to calculate your exposure. It's always going to try and establish the middle ground to save highlights and shadows, which is going to result in low contrast in situations like your example.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/tycn/4890663145​/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/tycn/4894599691​/

BrandonSi wrote in post #12183993
the problem was light and user, not the camera.

THANKS your comment made me laugh, I remembered my college professor telling us in class that the computer is only as smart as the user!

enjoy
m

2 things to start with first clean the sensor or send it in for cleaning second I would invest in a polarizing filter if you are going to be shooting a lot outside.

BrandonSi wrote in post #12183993
As was mentioned, the problem was light and user, not the camera.

In the few I looked at, you're shooting in Av, which means the camera needs to calculate exposure based on it's metering.. and it's doing that in scenes with (what looks like) overcast light and a lot highlights and shadows.. you're also using pattern metering, which is fine, just understand how that impacts your exposure.

If you're shooting in RAW these should be easily recoverable

I think that pretty much nails it. I recently shot a series in similar light with the same results. Shooting RAW saved the day

light has been mentioned already but i'll also say the these pictures look like they have typical sf bay area haze.

Have you tried increasing saturation and manually adjusting the white balance slider a hair warmer? Vibrancy in LR3 works wonders as well, Im not sure what the equivilent is in Aperature tho.

like everyone is saying shoot raw, clean sensor
i know my images aren't great. but
i went from this

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Redirected to error image by FLICKR

Looks like you sneezed on the sensor.

Heh! Some people would prefer the "style" of the first one!

sbattey wrote in post #12192746
Looks like you sneezed on the sensor.

lol! :P

@op: you dont have image editing on so i can post it but i took the one with the guy standing on the sand uped the exposure by 1.40, blacks did 15, fill light just a tad because couldnt get blacks where i wanted them and a slight s curve, clarity and tad bit of vibrance and turned into a photo i wouldnt be ashamed of puting on fbook
you dont really need to shoot raw, that jpeg was perfectly salvageable. but raw is awesome :P

@ tony yeah i was going for the washed out lens flare, but then i started pp'ing it and liked it a bit more
i dont like the super washed out look

he could apply picture styles in one of the canon programs right? i hardly use them so i donno