Make the picture pop!

Digicams are designed to get the color to pop. They are designed for no post production. However if you learn to use the camera software for tweaks, or something like Picasa3. Your pictures will pop more.

Post production is now a significant part of a good photo. You might just adjust the contrast, or the adjust the light levels, but you can also change other items. Typically, I adjust the contrast and brightness to crisp up the picture. If I'm still not happy with the image, I may play with the color or vary the fill and shadows. Here's the original shot before post production. This picture was taken by our Art Photography Director while riding in the car.


Syracuse has a number of older buldings with these painted billboards. I hope to capture a number of them this spring. Sadly they are fading and being torn down or painted over with a single color.

Great Light at the breakfast table

The light is coming in dining room window at breakfast and it's just perfect. You grab the camera and snap a picture and it's too dark. You turn the flash on and try again. Poof! The pictures washed out with too much flash.
There is a solution: Set the camera to Sunrise/Sunset. What? I'm not taking a picture of the sunrise, but my cute toddler eating breakfast! You have to understand how the camera "thinks". What it does is think in terms of Aperture, Shutter and ISO.
These three work together to make or break the picture.

• Aperture: How big is the lens letting in the light.
• Shutter: How long is the picture exposed to the image.
• ISO: How much image processing needs to happen.

There is more to it. The aperture will affect the focus of the image (not so much in Digicams). The shutter has to be fast enough to freeze the picture or it will be blurry. The ISO has to right in conjunction with the shutter or the pictures turn dark and orangeish.
So how does the camera think? The camera manufacturer has logged many hours with professional photographers and how they would set the camera (film SLR) to take the picture. For the Sunset/Sunrise setting, the camera needs to capture the light on a wider dynamic range, light to dark tones. It will push the ISO up, turn off the flash and drag the shutter just an instant longer. This is how the pros did it for years and years.
Now you can shoot like a pro and not have to take years.

Digicam 101

This will be a series on how to get better pictures out of your digital point and shoot. This will pretty much work on all digital point and shoot cameras. The settings may be a little different, but the tips will be the same.
These all be labeled "Digicam101class" so they'll be easy to find later. I'll be using a Nikon Coolpix L6.

White Balance

What's so important about white balance? Everything. The above picture is the finished composition. How's that look compared to the orange cast below. Strobist info: SB-24 bounced off ceiling at about 1/4 power, 1/80 sec. exposure, f/5.6. White balance set to Incandescent. Well that is the end result, but what did we start with? Here's the first picture with the flash setting right where we want it.


This one the white balance is set to Auto, the default. The problem is that the ambient light in the room is incandescent and the studio lights are a mix of daylight CFL and incandescent floods. The camera couldn't compensate for all the yellow/orange light. When the White Balance Setting is manually changed to match the majority of the ambient light and then use the flash for fill, the result is picture perfect. I tried to correct this is post production, but the results don't measure up to nailing the exposure in the first place. Here's the color corrected Auto White Balance:


The color is washed out. The skin tones are wrong. It's doesn't pop! So the quick tip for today is to set the white balance when one type of light out powers the rest, or there's only one kind of light. Remember if the color is wrong on the review screen, check the white balance and see if the colors come out right.

Happy shooting until next time.