Pictures lacking "pop"?

[mrmarley]

Good morning all,

Noob here...I've gone out the past couple of weekends playing with my new camera, a Panasonic FZ1.

http://www.pbase.com/mrmarley/test2 - Taken between 3pm-5pm

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, (maybe it's the time of the day I'm shooting at?), but my pictures don't seem to convey the vibrance or color that I see in person when shooting.

I don't expect SLR or even G6 quality obviously with a 2.1 MP, but a lot of the pictures seem to have a bluish-green tint to them. Oh where have I gone wrong? Please help show me the way

[ukexpat]

Check that you have the camera on the correct setting (if it has settings that you can change), for example, "outdoors" rather than "indoors"...

[jcboyd]

Nigel is correct. If your camera has indoor/outdoor settings and you are shooting outside with inside settings your images can look blue/green. Another setting you might look for is white balance.

[steveandbecky]

Do you use any photo editing program for post processing? You have some super photos and they could really look just the way you think they should if you adjust the levels a bit and maybe do a few other things. It doesn't take long and you might really enjoy doing that.

Unless the image is hopelessly out of focus or you have lost the image information due to overexposure or underexposure you can usually make a not so good image into a nice one.

I know there is no substitute for correct settings in the first place, but I really think post processing is important at times.

Your photo http://www.pbase.com/mrmarley/image/36631325
would look great with very little effort. I could tell you more if you want.

[pinemikey]

Do you use any photo editing program for post processing? You have some super photos and they could really look just the way you think they should if you adjust the levels a bit and maybe do a few other things. It doesn't take long and you might really enjoy doing that.

Unless the image is hopelessly out of focus or you have lost the image information due to overexposure or underexposure you can usually make a not so good image into a nice one.

I know there is no substitute for correct settings in the first place, but I really think post processing is important at times.

Your photo http://www.pbase.com/mrmarley/image/36631325
would look great with very little effort. I could tell you more if you want.

I agree totally. Here is one of your images that I put thru some basic processing in a demo version of paintshop pro....before:


at http://www.pbase.com/mrmarley/image/36627811

can look like this:



temporarily at http://www.pbase.com/image/36684305

maybe a little over processed, but you get my drift. There is another excellent program I use to reduce noise in scanned and underexposed images, called Neat Image. Google it and you'll find an excellent tool to smooth out the rough edges.

Hope this all helps.

Mike Martin

[mrmarley]

Thank you all for the replies. It looks like it was the white balance that was causing the problem. I had it set incorrectly, giving me this type of picture:



Changed it to Auto WB, and it looks a lot better now, normal even!



I will have to play around with the post processing for these, those sunset colors look so much better after being touched up. Thanks for that Mike, as well as the program suggestions.

Steve, thanks for the compliment...I am going to read up as much as possible on post processing, but I am curious as to what technique you would use on that picture. I've been told the 3 basic steps are Levels, Saturation and Unsharp Mask. As to how I utilize that info, I still need to experiment I guess

Thanks again for all the replies,
Keith
[/img]

[chakalaka_rider]

I still don't like photoshop.
Please ignore me if you like photoshop.


Eric

[ukexpat]

I still don't like photoshop.
Please ignore me if you like photoshop.

Eric

You are entitled to your opinion, but if you want the most capable graphics/image manipulation package available, it's hard to beat. For relatively simple stuff that has been described here there are of course applications that can do the same more cheaply.

[chakalaka_rider]

I do agree, Photoshop is a great software for editing and by any means, perfecting the photo. However, I think that Photoshop sometimes make us forget about what darkrooms are able to offer, as well as actual techniques that could be used while taking the photograph with the (digital or mechanical) cameras (such as specialised lenses like filtering, and so on).

Inevitably digital cameras are becoming more popular than the mechanical ones for various reasons. One being not having to develop them at labs, therefore darkroom development will not be an option for digital users. Further, Photoshop do act like darkroom for digital cameras, as it does provide ways of altering the original photo. However, I do feel that there is a significant difference between clicking buttoms and the actual chemistry that go into the darkuse use.

I have both digital and mechanical cameras, and a programme similar to Photoshop, but to me, Photoshop and digital cameras just take out the fun in photography.

If you check out my gallery, I do have photos taken by digital camera, and few are edited with editing programme (mainly just to covert to black & white). Nonetheless, I kept photoshopping to a minimum, and use digital camera only when I can't afford films and developments (it's true! I have shot no more than ten rolls of film in my life so far!).


Eric