Please Help I have Questions

Im still pretty new at all of this but have been reading all i can. Can anyone please give me some pointers on why my photo looks so soft and washed out? I shot this on a tripod, the camera is a Canon EOS XSi, with a EFS 55-250mm lens. I also had a cheap sunpak CPL on the camera at the time. The time of the picture the sky was overcast. The camera was set the manual with the following settings: f/10, 1/15, ISO 100, camera style was on faithful, Focal length was 55.0 mm. I had the metering on spot and metered off one of the bushes that i felt was neutral.

ETA: Oh yeah this was shot in RAW + JPEG so i uploaded the JPEG


This picture is straight out of the camera, no editing has been done.

I am no expert but I usually try bumping the contrast up a bit.

The sky is blown out (as you can see the reflection on the water, there are some blue skies). As far as the photo being flat, I think you really just need some post processing to bring out the color. You may want to ditch the cheapo CPL and get a better one. I don't have a CPL yet but you can control the the "degree of polarization" by spinning the polarizer. It may be it wasn't properly adjusted as well.

I gave it a quick shot since you had image editing ok:

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

Yeah i see a little post processing helps, im also wondering about the trees, they seem to lack detail but maybe that is just something that comes along with foliage. Im new to this.

It's really hard to say on the detail with such a small web-sized photo. It looks fine to me from here.

merlin2375 wrote in post #10761382
It's really hard to say on the detail with such a small web-sized photo. It looks fine to me from here.

Yeah, it's not going to show every leaf in an image that is only 467 pixels wide, that's probably around 1 pixel per leaf, so they will clump into groups of similar colour / tone. The full res image should show you how much detail you captured.

As for the flatness of the image, it didn't help that you shot the scene whilst there was no sun on it. There is clearly some blue sky in the reflection, so a little wait would likely have given you better light. Light is the medium we use to create the image, so it is worth waiting until it is 'right' (or as near as it is going to be) before taking a shot. One of those passing clear sky patches letting sun through onto the scene would have transformed it.

The CPL doesn't seem to have done much, partly because the light seems to have been wrong for it, but also because the scene didn't really suit one anyway. Why did you use one? I'm not trying to be catty here, just trying to get you to think through the use of a filter, rather than sticking one on because it seems like something you should do.

If you can't think of a reason to use one, then leave it off (especially as it's a cheap one, so will likely be costing you some image quality). Common reasons might be to enhance a blue sky (but there wasn't one in the scene) or to reduce / kill reflections. You clearly left the reflection alone (quite rightly), so the CPL must have been rotated to have little / no effect on that leading me to assume that wasn't the reason for it's use.

Did you lock the mirror up and use timer or remote release? Even on a tripod you can get some camera shake effect from mirror slap at 1/15, or a slight movement when pressing the shutter release. That could explain some of the lack of sharpness, as could a poor quality filter, or simply that you resized it without any sharpening (resizing to fit the web also softens the image). It could be any of these factors, or a combination.

A bit of processing is always required to get the best from an image, but it will always be better if the camerawork is spot on in the first place. So thinking about what you are trying to achieve, and how to achieve it, plus paying a LOT of attention to lighting, will pay dividends. Create the image in your mind first, THEN in the camera.

Don't worry, apart from an occasional godlike being with supreme natural talent, we ALL sucked at first. A bit of practice and the results will start to improve.

You could also try shooting in Standard instead of faithful.

prrs4me wrote in post #10761535
You could also try shooting in Standard instead of faithful.

With that lighting, it would still need the contrast cranking up a bit more and possibly other attributes, to get the jpeg looking good straight from the camera.

Using the picture styles to boost the jpeg though, would throw the histogram off for the raws (I don't know if the OP uses the histogram, but it is well worth getting into the habit).

As he shot it in raw, it is reasonable to assume that he would work on that, rather than the jpeg, and the picture style won't make any difference except perhaps to set the defaults.The actual raw capture won't be affected.

The washed out look in your image is because you did not get the full range of available tones into your image. The shadow slider could still be pushed quite a bit more to the edge of the histogram, within the levels dialogue box. (see attached image)The softness is probably due to you shooting in RAW. All digital images will require some sharpening, whatever the source or capture method. Canon does not tend to apply any default settings to the RAW file (I must have removed them when I first got my cameras and I don't remember now what the default was) but Canon does add sharpening to jpegs and the file colouring is also changed by default. In general you can think of it like this rough rule of thumb... RAW files need to have your ideas imposed in post capture processing and jpeg files are usually adjusted in the camera body although you do have some limited control over how they will appear.

For a polarising filters to be at their most effective, they need to be oriented at 90 degrees to the sun. Another point is that they can be less effective in enhancing the blue of the sky or removing haze if the conditions are not particularly sunny, although you should still see an effect when removing reflections from shiny surfaces or water. Polarising filters reduce the amount of light hitting the sensor and you can count on about 1 ~ 2 f stops of light being blocked by a polarising filter, depending on the strength of the effect. This will have an effect on your shutter speed. Probably, you would want to up the ISO setting a couple of stops just to compensate for the effect of the filter. FWIW, I prefer to have the soft light which comes from large areas of cloud, especially when shooting a wedding. Strong sunlight produces very deep and harsh shadows.

For this image, I probably would have attempted to mirror the scene, in the viewfinder because the crop has to remove so much of the image. The grass in the foreground is a distraction and I would remove it. As for the rest, it is personal taste. I extended the tonal range in the shadow areas, without making the greens excessively vibrant and unrealistic, then sharpened very slightly and cropped to remove the distracting elements.

HOSTED PHOTO
please log in to view hosted photos in full size.

It does look washed out - and from everything you said you did, I'm not exactly sure why, can only speculate.

Meaning, the normal things that would washout the image either don't apply because you were shooting in manual, or you tried to take care of - metering on a neutral bush and using spot and using the CPL. After metering on the bush - did you lock the exposure?

Obviously, since it's not a bad image it can be 'fixed' in post, but I think you have the idea on what you should be doing to get it right in camera.

I would echo what Sandpiper said about trying to get some sun in the scene - that would help with the contrast, and who knows that might have been all that was missing.


As for post - even if you weren't asking for pointers, all you really need to do it set your white and black points to get a non-washed out image. Fairly quick and simple. (I'll admit to messing with the sky I wanted to try out the BlendIf instead of a selection.)

I'd stay away from the square crop though, the symmetry makes it look like a rorschach butterfly gone wrong.

HOSTED PHOTO
please log in to view hosted photos in full size.

Why did i use a CPL..... Good question, I just purchased it to see how much it would really help with sky colors and reflections on water etc. I had it on my camera, rotated the front while looking up at the sky and didnt see much difference. Just left it on and took this picture. I kind of figured it would help with glare off the water. Im still really trying to figure out how to "Set it" The front rotates so im sure that does something. I know you need to be perpendicular to the sun and all that for it to work well.

I did not lock up the mirror (Forgot about that one) but i did have it on a 2 second timer to shoot.

Thank you for your help and advice.

sandpiper wrote in post #10761449
Yeah, it's not going to show every leaf in an image that is only 467 pixels wide, that's probably around 1 pixel per leaf, so they will clump into groups of similar colour / tone. The full res image should show you how much detail you captured.

As for the flatness of the image, it didn't help that you shot the scene whilst there was no sun on it. There is clearly some blue sky in the reflection, so a little wait would likely have given you better light. Light is the medium we use to create the image, so it is worth waiting until it is 'right' (or as near as it is going to be) before taking a shot. One of those passing clear sky patches letting sun through onto the scene would have transformed it.

The CPL doesn't seem to have done much, partly because the light seems to have been wrong for it, but also because the scene didn't really suit one anyway. Why did you use one? I'm not trying to be catty here, just trying to get you to think through the use of a filter, rather than sticking one on because it seems like something you should do.

If you can't think of a reason to use one, then leave it off (especially as it's a cheap one, so will likely be costing you some image quality). Common reasons might be to enhance a blue sky (but there wasn't one in the scene) or to reduce / kill reflections. You clearly left the reflection alone (quite rightly), so the CPL must have been rotated to have little / no effect on that leading me to assume that wasn't the reason for it's use.

Did you lock the mirror up and use timer or remote release? Even on a tripod you can get some camera shake effect from mirror slap at 1/15, or a slight movement when pressing the shutter release. That could explain some of the lack of sharpness, as could a poor quality filter, or simply that you resized it without any sharpening (resizing to fit the web also softens the image). It could be any of these factors, or a combination.

A bit of processing is always required to get the best from an image, but it will always be better if the camerawork is spot on in the first place. So thinking about what you are trying to achieve, and how to achieve it, plus paying a LOT of attention to lighting, will pay dividends. Create the image in your mind first, THEN in the camera.

Don't worry, apart from an occasional godlike being with supreme natural talent, we ALL sucked at first. A bit of practice and the results will start to improve.

I did not lock the exposure per say as i had all the setting manually input.

Thanks for your input.

cmchavis wrote in post #10762158
It does look washed out - and from everything you said you did, I'm not exactly sure why, can only speculate.

Meaning, the normal things that would washout the image either don't apply because you were shooting in manual, or you tried to take care of - metering on a neutral bush and using spot and using the CPL. After metering on the bush - did you lock the exposure?

Obviously, since it's not a bad image it can be 'fixed' in post, but I think you have the idea on what you should be doing to get it right in camera.

I would echo what Sandpiper said about trying to get some sun in the scene - that would help with the contrast, and who knows that might have been all that was missing.


As for post - even if you weren't asking for pointers, all you really need to do it set your white and black points to get a non-washed out image. Fairly quick and simple. (I'll admit to messing with the sky I wanted to try out the BlendIf instead of a selection.)

I'd stay away from the square crop though, the symmetry makes it look like a rorschach butterfly gone wrong.