Jim followed up on my reply to his initial question by supplying a couple of sample photos that he was not totally happy with. I won’t reproduce them here since they aren’t my photos, among other reasons, but I will post a few comments and observations.

The two photos were both taken in Yosemite, this summer I think. I took a more careful look at a photo that I think I recognize as being taken along the Tuolumne River in Tuolumne Meadows, with Mt. Gibb in the distance. I have several observations about this photo:

1. The exposure seems pretty good. Judging from the jpg I saw, it may be slightly underexposed – the histogram stops a bit before the right edge and detail is missing in the shadows of the trees on the right side. (This detail might still be recoverable in the RAW file.)
2. It looks like the photo was made at a f/22… and this likely is a problem as far as sharpness is concerned. The best aperture for optimum sharpness on crop sensor cameras is generally right around f/8, plus/minus a stop or so. While closing down (e.g. – f/22) would seem to provide greater depth of field, it also emphasizes diffraction effects that decrease the maximum sharpness of the lens. Imagine that you were perfectly focused on an object at f/8; you would likely be obtaining the sharpest possible image of that object. Now decrease the aperture to f/22; this object in the focus plane is now less sharp than it was at f/8. In Jim’s photo, most of the scene is a pretty good distance away… and out of focus due to diffraction. There is little to gain by increasing depth of field, and I suspect that the small aperture is responsible for the fuzzy focus.
3. In terms of effective framing of the scene, this might be more effective with a tighter crop. There is not enough to hold my interest on the right and left margins or in the foreground, so cropping some of these areas out of the frame might produce a more effective image I think. (It might be possible to go for a squarer format and do most of the cropping from the sides.)
4. There is a strong blue cast on parts of the water’s surface, probably picked up from the sky. I would adjust this by selecting this area (with a feathered edge) and reducing overall saturation and especially saturation in the blues.
5. Other parts of the image might be improved by a bit more saturation – perhaps about a 10 or 12 setting in PS.
6. I would perhaps make a feathered selection of the distant ridge and by levels or curves adjustments give it a bit more contrast.

The other photo is of an impressive scene that almost all Yosemite visitors have gawked at – including me. It was shot along the road descending into the valley from the north, looking east into the valley.

The difficulty with this shot is mostly the lighting. This is a very difficult place to photograph unless the light is just right, typically very early or late in the day during the summer. It looks to me like Jim was there during the middle of the day when the light is almost directly overhead and is quite harsh – tough conditions!

I didn’t take a close look at the technical aspects of this image, though it does appear to be fairly well exposed. It may be a bit overexposed, judging from the histogram of the blue channel which picks up the intense blue of the sky – but again there is a good chance that this could be handled in the RAW conversion.

Dan

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Jim wrote to ask about exposure, color, and sharpness results on photos taken on his Canon 350D/XT. Here is what I wrote in reply to his original email:

First of all, in regards to exposure the histogram display is your friend. I have my XT set to display the very small version of the image after exposure along with the histogram display. The histogram can tell you quite quickly whether your exposure captures the full dynamic range. In fact, I often use the first shot as my light meter – I let the camera make the first exposure in aperture priority mode and then look at the histogram. Then I frequently switch to manual mode and set aperture and shutter speed based on what I saw in the histogram.

If the full dynamic range will not fit into the histogram display – in other words there is a sharp cutoff at the bright and dark ends of the scale and the highlight warning flashes the display – I will give priority to avoiding blowing out the highlights. In other words I close down or increase shutter speed so that I avoid losing detail in the bright areas, even at the expense of seeing the curve shift toward underexposure. When this happens there are still a couple of things you can do to salvage the shadow areas, especially if you shoot RAW mode: you can bring up the dark areas in your software on your computer if they aren’t _way_ too dark, or you can shoot multiple exposures of the scene (obviously on a tripod) with some optimized for highlights and others for shadows and then combine them in Photoshop. (I did that in a major way to create the Pacific Sunset from Windy Hill shots I recently posted.)

Are you shooting in RAW mode or shooting .jpg files? I always shoot in RAW mode because it does not compress the image data at all – it basically dumps the photosite data into a file. (Hence, “raw” I suppose.) RAW files contain greater dynamic range and give you more room to make post-camera corrections in software. In fact, you really _must_ make a number of post-processing adjustments in order to get the most out of RAW files. Plain unprocessed RAW files are not very impressive and, in particular, they are not very sharp looking. (jpg files may appear sharper straight from the camera due to in-camera sharpening and other automatic adjustments, but they cannot be improved much beyond this point.)

In general, when I convert my RAW files (use the Adobe Camera Raw component of Photoshop) I increase the contrast and saturation a bit (the exact amount varies), decrease the exposure (and sometimes compensate by adjusting brightness) so that highlights are not burned out, adjust the shadows setting to the lowest black level, and adjust for chromatic aberration if necessary. Yes, a lot of steps! But that’s not the end.

Once the file comes into Photoshop there is still a lot of work to do. At a minimum (in all but the rarest cases) I adjust levels so that the dynamic range of the image fills out the available dynamic range of my printer. Depending upon the image I may also make adjustments to curves, saturation, and so forth. And then, in classic style, I dodge and burn as necessary. On some images I employ other more exotic techniques (local adjustments to contrast, levels, saturation) to get what I’m looking for.

So a short summary:

No, I don’t use separate light meter, but I do use the camera

as a meter by means of the histogram display.

I try to get the histogram curve to fit into the middle of the

display and avoid blowing out the high end especially. (A good

curve goes _to_ the high end but not beyond.)

If the dynamic range is too great I take multiple frames at

different exposures and combine them later in software, or

if the problem isn’t to severe I can rescue the shadows from

a single exposure in the RAW converter.

I always shoot RAW.

Post-camera adjustments to levels, exposure, saturation,

contrast, and (especially) sharpening are necessary when

you work with RAW files.

—–

Jim wrote to ask about exposure, color, and sharpness results on photos taken on his Canon 350D/XT. Here is what I wrote in reply to his original email:

First of all, in regards to exposure the histogram display is your friend. I have my XT set to display the very small version of the image after exposure along with the histogram display. The histogram can tell you quite quickly whether your exposure captures the full dynamic range. In fact, I often use the first shot as my light meter – I let the camera make the first exposure in aperture priority mode and then look at the histogram. Then I frequently switch to manual mode and set aperture and shutter speed based on what I saw in the histogram.

If the full dynamic range will not fit into the histogram display – in other words there is a sharp cutoff at the bright and dark ends of the scale and the highlight warning flashes the display – I will give priority to avoiding blowing out the highlights. In other words I close down or increase shutter speed so that I avoid losing detail in the bright areas, even at the expense of seeing the curve shift toward underexposure. When this happens there are still a couple of things you can do to salvage the shadow areas, especially if you shoot RAW mode: you can bring up the dark areas in your software on your computer if they aren’t _way_ too dark, or you can shoot multiple exposures of the scene (obviously on a tripod) with some optimized for highlights and others for shadows and then combine them in Photoshop. (I did that in a major way to create the Pacific Sunset from Windy Hill shots I recently posted.)

Are you shooting in RAW mode or shooting .jpg files? I always shoot in RAW mode because it does not compress the image data at all – it basically dumps the photosite data into a file. (Hence, “raw” I suppose.) RAW files contain greater dynamic range and give you more room to make post-camera corrections in software. In fact, you really _must_ make a number of post-processing adjustments in order to get the most out of RAW files. Plain unprocessed RAW files are not very impressive and, in particular, they are not very sharp looking. (jpg files may appear sharper straight from the camera due to in-camera sharpening and other automatic adjustments, but they cannot be improved much beyond this point.)

In general, when I convert my RAW files (use the Adobe Camera Raw component of Photoshop) I increase the contrast and saturation a bit (the exact amount varies), decrease the exposure (and sometimes compensate by adjusting brightness) so that highlights are not burned out, adjust the shadows setting to the lowest black level, and adjust for chromatic aberration if necessary. Yes, a lot of steps! But that’s not the end.

Once the file comes into Photoshop there is still a lot of work to do. At a minimum (in all but the rarest cases) I adjust levels so that the dynamic range of the image fills out the available dynamic range of my printer. Depending upon the image I may also make adjustments to curves, saturation, and so forth. And then, in classic style, I dodge and burn as necessary. On some images I employ other more exotic techniques (local adjustments to contrast, levels, saturation) to get what I’m looking for.

So a short summary:

No, I don’t use separate light meter, but I do use the camera

as a meter by means of the histogram display.

I try to get the histogram curve to fit into the middle of the

display and avoid blowing out the high end especially. (A good

curve goes _to_ the high end but not beyond.)

If the dynamic range is too great I take multiple frames at

different exposures and combine them later in software, or

if the problem isn’t to severe I can rescue the shadows from

a single exposure in the RAW converter.

I always shoot RAW.

Post-camera adjustments to levels, exposure, saturation,

contrast, and (especially) sharpening are necessary when

you work with RAW files.

—–