pls help diagnose problem

These are 1st pics with my new (used) XT 350D. I am in the process of going through a tutorial (Blue Crane?) on how to use my Camera so I am only using Basic settings & JPEG right now. I am very disatisfied with what I have done so far. I have been able to slightly improve the quality using "Auto Level" in Paint.net, but shouldn't these be better without having to do that?

I took a couple others today that were worse, very washed out looking (sorry for the non-technical descriptions).

I am using the lens I got with the camera, a Sigma 18-50 1.3-5.6. I understand that this is not the best of lenses and have a better lens on order.

Any suggestions would be appreciated

(top pic is after auto-evel)

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i really think you should be taking pics in raw format... then you could fix this with a nudge of a slider... basically the problem is this - the photo has a high dynamic range, meaning the difference between the darkest dark and the lightest white colors is too far apart for the sensor of your camera to handle... so when you chose which part of the frame you wanted your camera to meter on, it did its best to expose that part ok, and could do nothing else about the other parts.

In your case, the well exposed part is the harbor, boats and the street across. The burned out part is the sky.

There are other ways to "fix" this except in post processing... how?

1) read up on hdr...
2) get a gradient filter for your lens... its not too expensive and it darkens your sky so its much much bluer and more beautiful basically
3) if you photo in raw, go to the levels graph and reduce the highlights and the brights, also some recovery maybe etc... you can fix most of this problem there

and then there's the lens ....

The subject you choose is difficult to capture all in one shot as you have a very bright sky and a much darker foreground. If you expose for the sky the foreground will be very dark. If you expose for the foreground, the sky will blow out.

Is your goal to fix this specific picture of is it to learn how to shoot in these difficult situations? If the former, that's pretty straight forward and a few PS adjustments can bring this pic right where it should be. If it's the latter, there are techniques that you can use at the time you capture the picture so that PS adjustment is not necessary.

The lens is not the problem. You should learn to use the on-board histogram and from the histogram learn to make judgements about the exposure. Once you get the hang of shoot a little and examine a little you will find your exposures are more correct. Trusting the auto-exposure metering system is not always the best strategy, because the light meter is as dumb as a rock. If you are not smarter than it, then we are in a lot of trouble. You may want to keep things in Manual mode until you figure out what does what.

We've identified the problem - too dependent upon auto-exposure and not using the feedback that is available to you immediately after taking the picture (histogram).

We've suggested a cure - learn to use manual controls (ISO, Aperture, & Shutter) and the histogram to correct bad exposures while still at the location

And now it's up to you to take the bull by the horns.

Yeah, what they said. But I saw another error that should be fixed everytime it happens. Your horizon is really off. I know that it's not one of the things you were really asking about but it's one of those basic things that should be fixed every time you work on a shot. Better yet make it a habit to look out or that when you take the shot. It's one of those things that make it hard to look at a photo sometimes.

Thanks for the help!!

I am not convinced that a wide dynamic range of light in the scene and improper exposure are the problems as most everyone seems to think. Here are some things that do not support that argument:

1. There are no black areas that lack any detail.
   
2. As shown in the edited image in which the OP used auto levels, it appears that there are no blown out highlights in the sky (however the extreme amount of jpg compression makes it a little difficult to give an absolute evaluation).
   
3. The generally low contrast image is not what I would expect to see if the captured scene actually had a dynamic range that was too great to record in a single shot.

Here is an example of editing the image if I first arbitrarily assign a color profile of AdobeRGB based on my stated assumption and then after editing, convert the profile to sRGB before doing a save for web. I reduced the image size to keep the file size within limits while still maintaining reasonable JPG quality.

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That edit really makes a difference Bill. What did you do before converting to sRGB?

SwingBopper wrote in post #6575284
That edit really makes a difference Bill. What did you do before converting to sRGB?

Basically, tonal adjustments in ACR -- brightness, contrast, blacks, clarity, andd vibrance.

Thanks Bill,

Yes, My camera was set to AdobeRGB. I Have set it ti Srgb. The changes you made made made quit an improvement.

I will make note to match colorspace values.

I realize this is elementary stuff to most of you, thanks for putting up with me.

From the suggestions I've had, next time I:

manualy check and set ISO to match lighting conditions.
manual aperture & focus
shoot in raw format
stay away from "auto levels" when editing
straighten horizon (I can do that )
-
learn to use histogram

Got my new lens: Tamron 17-50 1:2.8 !
Gradient Filter and PSE on order!

ok here is mine, it might be a little dark saved as camera raw / straightned horizon and a little levels control. probabley a little to saturated

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