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Originally Posted by Sword guys,
thanks for such speedy repolies btw ...
anyway, the pictures look okay on the camera's monitor but when I print either on my portable CP300 or send to the lab, they are generally a lot darker than I'd like.
I'm doing NO processing on the Pc at all at this stage - simply dumping from the memory card straight onto CD or else printing from the camera direct.
Any hints how to make things generally lighter much appreciated :-)
ta,
Sword |
The first para from this website might help...
http://www.sphoto.com/techinfo/histo...istograms4.htm
INTERPRETING YOUR DIGITAL CAMERA'S THUMBNAIL IMAGE AND HISTOGRAM
How well I remember my naiveté when I first got my Canon 10D. I knew I'd miss the spot metering capability of my Canon 1V but I figured the LCD image review would more than compensate for the loss of spot metering. So, I shot about 100 images just looking at the image thumbnail on the LCD to confirm exposure. After all, wasn't I looking at the actual final image? OH BOY this is so easy. However, when I got home and downloaded the images most of those first 100 images were underexposed and a few of them were over exposed. That dang little LCD was next to useless as an aid to judging proper exposure. It became obvious that I needed to incorporate a little science into my DSLR picture taking workflow. Thankfully, the 10D has an option to view an image histogram along with the thumbnail review image. The histogram generated for the images in the 10D is a luminance histogram. I'd rather have an RGB histogram but I can make do with the luminance histogram. The other thing that became obvious after my first batch of images was that shooting digital was much like shooting transparency film. You get much more flexibility for post processing if you get the exposure close to perfect 'in camera'. This is particularly important if your camera is set to output JPEG. Camera RAW format has more latitude for correcting exposure errors during post processing. Also, you have to watch out for blown out high lights. Some photographers say that you get about 5 stops of dynamic range in a high end DSLR. I believe the dynamic range available in my Canon 10D is somewhere between 4 to 4.5 stops. I see some detail in shadows 2 stops under exposure and just a little texture in highlight areas at 2 stops over exposure. My current picture taking workflow is to set my camera for 1/3 stop increments in exposure adjustment (either shutter or aperture) shoot in RAW mode and bracket any important shots, when I can, at + and - 1/3 stop.
Linear Mode
