Advice on Camera setting to cure problem

Hi I have attached two photographs ,one as taken the other just adjusted with levels.It was taken on a very dull cloudy morning through a fence so not the best conditions.What i would like to know is this. All i have done to the picture is used levels and finished with a reasonable image.What camera setting could i have changed prior to taking the picture to have made the use of post processing with levels necessary. On other photos taken at the same time i adjusted exposure compensation but didnt solve the problem.
The equipment i used was a Canon 7D with 100 x 400 lens 1/320 sec , iso 400 , 1/3 compensation. I didnt want to go higher than 400 and realised my speed , but thought i would try it .
Looking forward to any advice or ideas.
Thank you

Heya,

Let your camera system reach ambient temperature before shooting. I'm only guessing, but looks like dew had formed on your lens when you were shooting, which made it lose contrast, lose focus accuracy, and killed detail.

Very best,

Hi and thank you for your reply .After checking a couple of similar photos of the same item the lens was cleaned and settings checked so i dont think dew could have been responsible . I have had this problem on a couple of occassions in bad light .Many thanks again

thefitter wrote in post #18161304
It was taken on a very dull cloudy morning through a fence so not the best conditions.

The fact that you were shooting through a fence might have something to do with it. (Depending on the type of fence of course)

I had wondered about that but would the end result have been so easily solved with just levels being tweeked ?
Mick

If you are shooting through something that is reducing contrast it will tend to push the ends of the histogram in towards the middle. When I used to use my 500mm mirror lens this would happen all of the time, since it was a very low contrast, and rather soft, lens. The only solution to this is to pull the ends of the histogram back out until you hit the ends and get a good black/white point. Since the exact amount of movement required will vary on EVERY shot it is not really possible to allow for this correctly my adjusting processing parameters in advance. Personally dealing with these sorts of issues is one of the reasons that I shoot RAW, it means that you are still dealing with all of the 14 bit sensor data, and should get a much better result than using levels on an already 8 bit JPEG.

Alan

Looking at the metadata of your second posting (the flat one), I see that it was indeed shot in Raw and opened in PSCS6/ACR7 (_MG_1031.CR2). This being the case, there is no camera setting that will make the initial image contrastier because camera settings do not affect Raw files. Also the contrast, or lack of it, is not caused by ISO, or metered exposure or exposure compensation. It is caused by three factors; the primary one being the flat illumination, second the limited tonal range of the subject, and third the fact that Adobe Camera Raw's default rendering of Raw files is intentionally bland and flat - flatter than any other Raw converter because Adobe believes that a Raw conversion should also be the product of user input and the default render is merely the starting point.

In this case, however, that flatness is furthered by the fact that although ACR 7.0 was the first version of ACR to utilize the new Process Version 2012, you seem to have it set to use the older Process Version 2010, which by it's nature tended to produce flatter defaults.

I would advise to utilize the full editing power of the Raw file that you are already shooting by switching to P.V. 2012 and doing most, if not all, your adjustments in ACR, rather than afterwards with PSCS6's Levels tool.

Oh, one more thing - when you output jpg images for web posting, if they are in Adobe RGB space (as are these two above), anybody who is not viewing them in a properly implemented color-managed browser environment will see them as flatter and darker than you intend. Convert them to sRGB.

In addition to what Elie said, the lens you are using (the original 100-400) is notoriously blurry at 400mm. You will probably have to experiment with a well-lit, contrasty target at 400mm to find the optimum aperture to get sharp images. This is critical and even more so when the light is not great. You will be fighting the balance between stopping down and stopping down too much and introducing diffraction artifacts. Diffraction can be rectified somewhat in post by using a deconvolution sharpening technique.

Try shooting a well-lit target at between f/8 and f/11 and see what aperture works best. f/5.6 (the largest aperture at 400mm) may only give you acceptable results when the subject is well lit and the contrast in the image, overall, is wide enough to hide the relatively blurry lens rendering at 400mm. My understanding is that the newer 100-400 is a major upgrade over the original.

You probably could also have exposed another 2/3 to a full stop in your raw image before you started to lose detail information in the bird's bright head feathers. Examination of the raw file (using Raw Digger or a similar application) would help you adjust your exposure settings to minimize noise in this case.

kirk

First let me say thank you to all who have tried to help me on this matter.I have read and digested everything that you have
pointed out and will try the different things that may be the cause. I do agree that at 400 max a certain amount of image quality can be lost . Unfortunately my wife wont let me have one of the new ones or a prime so i will soldier on . lol. There are many things mentioned that i at present know nothing about , so that seems like subject for the weekend .
I thank you all once again
Mick

kirkt wrote in post #18161946
... the lens you are using (the original 100-400) is notoriously blurry at 400mm...

Seems to be a bit of an overstatement. I have plenty of sharp and contrasty shots taken with the original 100-400 at 400mm, and many if not most were at f/5.6.

Archibald wrote in post #18162974
Seems to be a bit of an overstatement. I have plenty of sharp and contrasty shots taken with the original 100-400 at 400mm, and many if not most were at f/5.6.

Glad to hear it.

Kirk

Archibald wrote in post #18162974
Seems to be a bit of an overstatement. I have plenty of sharp and contrasty shots taken with the original 100-400 at 400mm, and many if not most were at f/5.6.

Same here. Cannot fault the lens at 400mm and f5.6.

Hi Elie
Thanks for your imput on my problem.It would appear that i am using Process Version 2012 already . When i do open it in Raw format the information at the bottom of the screen shows it as 8 bit.I can change this by a drop down list to16 bit , but should it already show as 16 bit .Is there somewhere on the 7D to change the Raw from 8 to 16 bit or in CS6 to automatically open it in 16 bit .If i should post this as a new request please let me know as this was the first post i have made on this site
Many thanks
Mick

thefitter wrote in post #18161350
Hi and thank you for your reply .After checking a couple of similar photos of the same item the lens was cleaned and settings checked so i dont think dew could have been responsible . I have had this problem on a couple of occassions in bad light .Many thanks again

How do your photos look when you are not shooting through a fence and not shooting in bad light? If they are OK, then the problem is the fence or the bad light.