Colour advice

Hi Everyone,

Since my recent 70-200 2.8 IS lens acquisition I'm looking to try and learn to use it to improve my skills. I'm finding that my shots all come out cool(yeh I know white balance issue with the 40D) and also a bit flat colour wise... I'm seeing all these brilliant colour shots shots on the forum here and it's making me a bit sadfase cause I can't seem to get such brilliantly rich colours without photoshopping and then it just looks too much and fake.

Could someone point me to a good guide on the subject or share some of their own techniques?

Thanks in advance.

Shoot RAW and adjust the color temp and saturation in DPP to whatever you want. Plus sharpness, exposure etc. The pictures you're seeing here were most likely shot that way.
Post one of your "fake looking" images from Photoshop maybe someone can guide you.

How about I post one of my photos out of the camera and someone make the adjustments the way they should be...

Or just give me some rough steps of what they would do in PS to improve the image.

I know there is a lot of noise cause i had iso at 1600 but there's nothing I can do about that after the fact. I'm still learning and I'll chalk that one up to a silly mistake. I was shooting indoors just before that pic was taken.

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Actually you shot in ISO 400, so that's not so bad. The things that are wrong in the rendering (as opposed to the capture - like being too close) can be corrected in the jpg, but it can be done much better and with less image degradation in RAW and you should consider using it. First is the WB, I'm really surprised that AWB gave such a bad result in an outdoor scene where it usually does fairly well, but Auto anything can let you down. Second is the exposure, it is about a stop and a half to two stops underexposed. Once again this was caused by over-reliance on the automation. In a scene like this with lots of whites and other light colors you have to override the Av with 1.5 to 2 stops +EC. Actually you had 0.33 -EC. In PS raise the white point and do a curve adjustment to brighten the midtones.

yeah I was too close but it was the best I could do... I had just bought the 70-200(like 2 hours before hand) and was trying it out. The moment I stepped any further i had people stepping in in front of me even though i was dressed in the uniform(same as the guy in the picture) with a bigarse lens so it was obvious that I was taking pictures in an "official" capacity... thank you very much for all the other tips though it's much appreciated.

Can't tell you the number of times I've come around a corner and found something great going on only to find I have the wrong lens mounted. Enjoy that big white beauty.

BTW, one of my granddaughters is a Capoeira addict. If you turn on Image Editing OK, I can show you a fast enhancement.

TCShadow, we cant make any adjustments on your photo because you havent checked the box for "Allow image editing" within your profile. If you want to allow it, go to User CP, edit profile, additional information and check the box.

Done now - Didn't realise that was needed. I've been doing Capoeira going on 4 years now. It is a bit of an addiction although right now all I can think of are apatures and shutter speeds....

Like I said before, white balance and white point and midtones brightened. Plus a soft-light blend with itself at 50% opacity.

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