Well what do ya think.....???

[Firemedic478]

(Kinda long-winded post, sorry)

Hey Everyone,

I am up here in Gatlinburg TN on our annual Family Snow Vacation. Went to the mountains, and found what was left of the snow. I decided to pull out the camera and try to take a few shots of the kids while sledding. I decided to use the Automatic setting on my drebel and what follows is the result. In looking at the info, and trying to figure out why the pictures came out so dark, I think I came up with some possibilities. I would like ya'alls opinion, and see what everyone thinks. I am a brand new newbie, so any help anyone could offer would be greatly appreciated.

Idea #1 - In the automatic camera setting, the ISO was set at 160. I am thinking that for the actual low light conditions present (due to being in a very shaded area) the camera was fooled by the white snow, and hence threw off the WB. I am thinking that better results could have been obtained using a higher ISO, say 400.

Idea #2 - Adjust the exposure (increase by 1-2/3). I have been reading all about this, but never thought of it while in the Auto mode. I did use the onboard flash on the rebel, however obviously it wasn't enough. I have an idea I will be adding an external flash to my wish list....

Idea #3 - Shutter speed and aperature. This is the area I need help in. For the picture below the Tv = 1/100, and the Av = 5.6. Would a larger aperature have helped? I know that in order to freeze the action the Tv should remain high, but how about the Av? Like I said any help here would be greatly appreciated...

Thanks for any and all help, I greatly respect everyones input....

Ken

[Peter_AUS]

It is a matter of just white balancing the image. What imaging software do you have, Photoshop, Elements, ?????

[Firemedic478]

Wholly Smokes......

Well I guess I have just shown how much of a newbie I truly am. Yes, I have Photoshop Elements. I played with this picture for what must have been an hour, and couldn't get it to look like at all what you have done. Could you please share with me a quick and easy way of doing what you did? I did a search in the help area of elements and came up with adjusting the levels (using the sliders on the histogram). Is this what you did? I played around with moving the sliders and still didn't get to look as good as you got it.

Thanks for your help. Guess I shouldn't stress myself out so much over it... Thanks again Flashram.

[Photo-John]

Mr. Firemedic-
I was apparently moving your discussion while you were posting. Don't be offended. I just thought it was more appropriate for the Help Files forum.

Peter said that it was just a problem with the white balance. Actually, white balance was only part of the problem. The larger issue, in my opinion, is the underexposure. And your guess about the camera being fooled by the snow wqas right on target. But your proposed solution - changing the ISO setting - won't change anything. It will increase the sensitivity of the camera, but it won't actually lighten the image, since the exposure is still the same. Your camera's light meter evaluates a scene based on averaged light values and some other stuff programmed into it's processor. In general, it tries to make everything a medium gray. And it did a pretty good job of that here. Unfortunately, that's not what you wanted. You need to learn to predict what your camera's going to do and override it when you know it's going to make a bad decision. Any time you have snow or another bright background, you're going to want to set your exposure compensation at +1 or more. That will brighten up your photo. Similarly, if you have a background that's very dark - like a coal mine - and you want it that way - then you should try -1. Learn to understand how your camera thinks and learn when you need to step in and take control. Your exposures will be much better.

And Peter was right about the white balance. It was way off. If you used custom white balance or shadow white balance, your color would have been much better. But it wouldn't have affected the exposure one bit. They're seperate functions.

Welcome to the site. Hope that helps!

[Peter_AUS]

As John said, you need to meter correctly , but in this situation is is probably very hard to do that and get the children playing in shots that you want as keepers. You really need to meter the snow and trying to do that in Automatic mode, just isn't really possible. You need to be in manual mode.

What I did, was did a curves adjustment, picked the highlight picker and clicked on the snow. I then did a little minor adjustment to colour to bring out the red a little more, added a little to the contrast and then saved it for the web, I was trying to show you this as I was typing as well.

I use Photoshop which has quite a few more features than elements does, at one time Adobe was allowing those using Elements to upgrade to Photoshop at a reasonable price, might be worth checking out for the extra new features that it does have, like shadown/highlights adjustments.

I don't have Elements installed on my computer so can't really talk you through it more than I have done above.

Hope that helps.

What camera are you using by the way.

[another view]

I'll bet Peter lightened it up quite a bit too. There are a few ways to do it, and do it very quickly. Best bet is to get Scott Kelby's book for Photoshop Elements, I was just using mine for CS tonight with yet another situation. His books won't teach you the hows and whys, but will get the job done quickly.

Image > Adjust > Levels and also Image > Adjust > Curves are two very powerful tools in Photoshop.

Idea #1: Wouldn't have mattered for the amount of exposure. It would give you a faster shutter speed for the same aperture; or a smaller aperture for the same shutter speed. Can be handy for low light and/or moving subjects - but it wouldn't change the amount of exposure if you're in an auto mode.

Idea #2: The camera's light meter is always looking for an overall midtone and usually works well. When you have a lot of white snow, you'll probably need some "+" compensation but 1-2/3 stops sounds a bit much. Varies from camera to camera and if you were using film it would have depended on whether it was slide or negative film. Usually 1 stop gets it done, but YMMV.

Idea #3: Exposure is made up of three things. Remember algebra?! It's an equation! ;) The three values are ISO speed, aperture and shutter speed. If you move one value by a stop and no others, you'll get one stop more or less exposure. If you increase one and decrease another, the net result is the same. Aperture doesn't stop motion, it's just shutter speed. You may need to use a larger aperture (or higher ISO speed) to get that higher shutter speed though. For what you've got here, 1/100 should be OK.

[Peter_AUS]

i actually didn't lighten it very much after the first white point adjustment in curves, it did it it's self.

[Firemedic478]

Thank you very much to everyone that has responded. You guys ROCK.......Such useful information and such speedy replies.......

Photo-John - Sorry about posting in the wrong section. Guess I should have realized this was more of a "Help" problem. Thanks for putting me in the right spot. Also thanks for the great info you have provided. Makes me want to go back out tomorrow and take some more snow pictures.

Flashram - What can I say.....Thanks for making me go back into elements and play around with it more. I think i figured it out. Simply hitting the "Auto" in the adjusting levels area got all of my pictures looking 1/2 way decent. Thanks for your quick responses and all your help.

Another View - Although I try hard to forget algebra , I realize that it is an important process here. Thanks for the lead on the book, I will definately see about getting a copy of that.

Thanks again guys......

[livin4lax09]

i actually just hit the auto color correct button, and it came out with this...

[Peter_AUS]

Auto isn't something I have had great luck with, but it is a starting point to see if something is possible.

Scott Kelby's books are great starting points to learn, haven't read the Elements one, but if like the Photoshop ones (I have 3 of them) they are a good read and re-read as well.

Play with the curves side of things, there are little eye droppers there, hover over them and they tell you what they are for. Once you get the hang of things a bit more, by trial and error it does become a lot easier and a bit of second nature as well.

It is advisable to try and develop a routine workflow as well, and then trying things as you go. Make layers and work on those layers to make your adjustments, then you can move back and forth in the layers to see what you like, dislike etc, something I started doing and it does help.

Digital Imaging Forum is a good place to post in as well for this type of question as well.

Don't forget to Unsharpen Mask a little at the end of processing images before you save for the web, just to sharpen the image a bit. I also use Noise removal software on some of my images as well, to be a bit creative with certain types of images (read into this Portraiture Work and middle aged people like my wife and I).

Glad I help in some way.

[Firemedic478]

i actually just hit the auto color correct button, and it came out with this...

yeah, after playing and playing with it, I finally realized that the auto correct button was there and it gave me the same results. It's just that I had no idea what it did or what to do with it. Thanks or your reply.

[Firemedic478]

Play with the curves side of things, there are little eye droppers there, hover over them and they tell you what they are for.

Thanks again Peter, I actually found those little eye dropper things before I found the auto correct button. Got OK results, but then with the auto correct they look a lot better. I will certainly look into getting the book. Thanks again.

[Peter_AUS]

The Auto Correct works OK, but you need to setup some default values in some settings to get it to work better, which is explained in the Scott Kelby Books at the beginning of the Photoshop Books for CS version. Have a look in the Elements book and see if it is in there when you get it, or just go into a Book Store and browse the books if you can find them, not sure if they are just available on his Websites to purchase, which is how I got mine, through the Photoshop User Website.