There are millions (billions?) of photos online (social sites, dating sites, personal sites, etc.) and many look less than optimal, to say it nicely. Sometimes we can't see what the person or the scene really looks like due to high noise levels, poor lighting, poor focus, or any number of other problems.
So what can you do to get better results? Well, first you need to learn how your camera works, so read (and study) the manual that came with it. And then learn and understand the following. What is the best ISO setting for the conditions? What setting should you use for your camera's light meter (spot, average, center weighted)? Same for focal points. Then practice, practice, practice.
Why should you shoot RAW? When you have your camera set to JPG, your camera edits your photos and whatever pixels it doesn't need, it discards. Unfortunately, if any settings are not correct (white balance, highlights, shadows), you've lost information that may be needed to fix your photo in post processing. If you shoot in RAW, everything is still there that you might need (unless the highlights are really blown out or the shadows totally gone). You can adjust the white balance, and have much more leeway for shadows and highlights, contrast, color correction, etc.
RAW files are quite a bit larger because you're not throwing away information, but with storage getting larger and pretty inexpensive, that's no longer much of a problem. Once I've processed the files, and saved them as full size JPG's, and double check them, I delete the RAW files unless I want to experiment with them.
In a recent post I gave a link to free post processing software - here it is again in case you missed it: Free DxO Software. I personally like LightRoom better (more controls over the final results), but some prefer the DxO, and it's free - at least version 8.
For every day beach photography (which is not planned), I use a Panasonic FZ30 in JPG mode - it does a pretty good job, but can get confused when lighting gets to be too high contrast. And at ISO's above 100, quality drops off sharply (gets very noisy/grainy). The following photos were shot on Sunday (Nov 9, 2014) and post processed in LightRoom - two very nice young women playing paddle tennis at Venice Beach, California.
For planned photos, I shoot in RAW and convert to JPG - the following were shot in RAW with a Canon EOS 40D (Halloween, West Hollywood, 2014):
Hope you've enjoyed this, and if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
No comments:
Post a Comment