Noobie dissapointed

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katbloke

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Name
Graham
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Right been on here a while asked a couple of questions but never gone any further due to time and situation.

Now today I had the time and the situation whilst working so i took this.

olicrom.jpg


I like where i was stood and the composition (if thats the right word?) but Im gutted by the way the photo turned out.

Camera is an inherited EOS 350d with the standard 18-55mm lens.
It was set on AV mode and white balance was on daylight.
Now ive since spoke to my brother who used to own the camera and he has suggested TV mode with shutter speed set to 500, was on 120 prior to adjustment and white balance has been restored to auto.

Opportunites like this dont come along every day but im this place for 6 weeks now so would like to have a go and get some nicer shots, maybe some ideas on a more apt lens.

Thanks in advance.
Graham.
 
This is the problem with overcast white skies - you run the risk of overexposing when it makes up the majority of the shot.

As an aside, shoot in RAW and then things like white balance (and to an extent, exposure) afterwards on your computer.

Also, I'd bump up the saturation a little to make the colours stand out more.
 
the main problem with this is you've got ISO 1600 set and the days that bright you've maxed out the shutter speed at 1/4000 so the shots over exposed - drop the ISO to 100 / 200 on a bright day
 
I would probably use use the AV with F.5.6-8 and let the camera sort the shutter out. If its day time you should get a fast enough shutter anyway.

Start with ISO100-200 first, and if you need a faster shutter to 'freeze' the image, bump the ISO up a step.

As mentioned above if you can shoot in raw it will let you edit the white balance and chose the best one on the editing side.
 
Crikey, ISO 1600! no wonder it's overexposed.

Drop that and the noise in the picture will be greatly reduced too.
 
I think there are a few probs here,
The lens (esp if it is the earlier non is version) is not the sharpest.
Whilst shutter speed is important esp on moving objects,nothing in this pic seems sharp,suggesting maybe this is not the problem.
There is also a very big light sky,which has not helped-effectively bleaching the pic.
White balance can have a huge effect esp on inside shots,where Canons and prob most others struggle,but here Cloudy or auto would work and i dont think this is the prob.
High iso is the other big prob.
If you are looking for another lens i would highly recommend a nifty fifty (£75 from Kerso on here)Its not fancy,no zoom,bit plasticky.But the shots are like night and day compared to a kit lens.
 
Wow so many replies already and im lost, it was shot in Raw
 
smurfettes said:
I think there are a few probs here,
The lens (esp if it is the earlier non is version) is not the sharpest.
Whilst shutter speed is important esp on moving objects,nothing in this pic seems sharp,suggesting maybe this is not the problem.
There is also a very big light sky,which has not helped-effectively bleaching the pic.
White balance can have a huge effect esp on inside shots,where Canons and prob most others struggle,but here Cloudy or auto would work and i dont think this is the prob.
High iso is the other big prob.
If you are looking for another lens i would highly recommend a nifty fifty (£75 from Kerso on here)Its not fancy,no zoom,bit plasticky.But the shots are like night and day compared to a kit lens.
Click to expand...

The reason nothings sharp is the high ISO
The reason the shots bleached out (overexposed) is that the ISO is to High and the camera cannot adjust the shutter any more than 1/4000 to try ant reduce the amount of light entering the camera so its over exposing.

Before buying a new lens Have a look on this on exposure.
 
Dogfish_magnet said:
The reason nothings sharp is the high ISO
The reason the shots bleached out (overexposed) is that the ISO is to High and the camera cannot adjust the shutter any more than 1/4000 to try ant reduce the amount of light entering the camera so its over exposing.
Click to expand...

Yes well done :clap:,please read my post again-properly,the high iso is ONE of the problems,as i mentioned,there are other factors here too.
 
That lens is absolutely terrible it must be a really really bad copy of the 18-55 because the image is covered in CA and is very soft.

The overexposure is because it had a shutter speed of 1/4000 but it may well have overexposed anyway as it probably metered the exposure off the black steam locomotive, which would blow out the overcast sky anyway.

Photographically the image is terrible, and if you regularly get results as soft and as CA'd as that the first thing you need to do is ditch that lens! :gag:
 
Right so if ive read and understood correctly, ive put it on AV mode, iso speed of 200 and f5.6.

I hope ive got that right
 
smurfettes said:
Yes well done :clap:,please read my post again-properly,the high iso is ONE of the problems,as i mentioned,there are other factors here too.
Click to expand...

The ONLY issue is high ISO -everything else is a product of HIGH ISO - a new lens will not help - white balance no effect - lack of sharpness is a product of high ISO, the light sky has NOT bleached the shot , HIGH ISO has maxed out the shutter and caused OVER EXPOSURE. :clap::clap: next time i get a soft over exposed image i must remember to buy a new lens
 
trencheel303 said:
That lens is absolutely terrible it must be a really really bad copy of the 18-55 because the image is covered in CA and is very soft.

The overexposure is because it had a shutter speed of 1/4000 but it may well have overexposed anyway as it probably metered the exposure off the black steam locomotive, which would blow out the overcast sky anyway.

Photographically the image is terrible, and if you regularly get results as soft and as CA'd as that the first thing you need to do is ditch that lens! :gag:
Click to expand...

Sorry what does CA'd mean? The lens is genuine Canon 18-55 efs
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by trencheel303
That lens is absolutely terrible it must be a really really bad copy of the 18-55 because the image is covered in CA and is very soft.

The overexposure is because it had a shutter speed of 1/4000 but it may well have overexposed anyway as it probably metered the exposure off the black steam locomotive, which would blow out the overcast sky anyway.

Photographically the image is terrible, and if you regularly get results as soft and as CA'd as that the first thing you need to do is ditch that lens!

Sorry what does CA'd mean? The lens is genuine Canon 18-55 efs

Ignore him.
 
katbloke said:
Right so if Ive read and understood correctly, ive put it on AV mode, iso speed of 200 and f5.6.

I hope ive got that right
Click to expand...

You need to keep a eye on the shutter speed and if its looking to low up your ISO, this will increase the shutter speed or if its getting to high reduce the ISO, the higher the ISO the poorer the image you will start to lose detail and sharpness. Best thing to do is go and have a play :)
 
They were Hogwarts coaches lol, typically after i packed my camera away the next train along was a Western pulling a class 47 doh.

But going by my first photo i couldnt do it any justice, trouble is im used to point n click and these settings boggle me as to what they do & mean
 
Dogfish_magnet said:
You need to keep a eye on the shutter speed and if its looking to low up your ISO, this will increase the shutter speed or if its getting to high reduce the ISO, the higher the ISO the poorer the image you will start to lose detail and sharpness. Best thing to do is go and have a play :)
Click to expand...

Got 6 weeks work at that place, so opportunities will be there although the content probarbly wont be, great having a PTS/ COSS card allows to go anywhere on the railway safely of course
 
katbloke said:
They were Hogwarts coaches lol, typically after i packed my camera away the next train along was a Western pulling a class 47 doh.

But going by my first photo i couldnt do it any justice, trouble is im used to point n click and these settings boggle me as to what they do & mean
Click to expand...

Don't worry about it, ISO is easy-peasy but it controls all your other settings and throws them askew if you get it wrong. 100 - nice and sunny, 400 - gloomy, 1600 + black cats in a coal bunker. Your white sky and the ISO setting weren't talking to each other, hence the soft, bleached out look. Play around before you take the important stuff...like Westerns and Duffs.
 
Photo Plod said:
I think he's referring to Chromatic Aberration - a sort of halo effect you can see on some of the rocks.

However, I don't think that's the problem, really, here - the main problems have already been covered, so I don't want to add to the confusion ;)
Click to expand...

I am indeed referring to chromatic abberation, and it's not just on the rocks you can see it, but on the edges of the steam locomotive. It's everywhere, one of the worst instances of CA that I've seen. To say that it's 'not really a problem' is a bit odd, unless you're on a monochrome monitor and can't see how detrimental the effect is to the image?


Dogfish_magnet said:
The ONLY issue is high ISO -everything else is a product of HIGH ISO - a new lens will not help - white balance no effect - lack of sharpness is a product of high ISO, the light sky has NOT bleached the shot , HIGH ISO has maxed out the shutter and caused OVER EXPOSURE. :clap::clap: next time i get a soft over exposed image i must remember to buy a new lens
Click to expand...

ISO 1600 isn't going to ruin an image that much. I have countless images taken at ISO 1600 which are still acceptably sharp.

IMG_8361_sb.jpg


The above being one of just many examples.

Yes, the high ISO setting (and the knock on effect) is one of the main problems here, but the lens being completely dire is obviously another. High ISO does not cause a very soft image nor does it cause CA! I don't see how much clearer I can try to make myself :thinking::bang:
 
Sheesh - come on guys high ISO has nothing to do with under or over exposure - you can correctly adjust aperture and shutter speed to give the correct exposure regardless of ISO setting as long as ambient levels aren't particuarly bright.

The train and the foreground is pretty well exposed - no more than perhaps half a stop over-exposed, and there's the problem - it's a black train pretty well correctly exposed for. The blown out sky is entirely down to the difference in luminance levels between the train and that featureless white sky, which is way beyond the ability of the sensor to deal with. Lowering the ISO wouldn't have had any effect whatsoever on the basic problem - you can't expose correctly for the train AND for the sky.

A grad filter to hold back the exposure for the sky would be the way to deal with the problem, or take two exposures, one for the sky - one for the train and combine the two in editing.
 
CT said:
Sheesh - come on guys high ISO has nothing to do with under or over exposure - you can correctly adjust aperture and shutter speed to give the correct exposure regardless of ISO setting as long as ambient levels aren't particuarly bright.
Click to expand...

It does when it causes the shutter speed to become 1/4000, the maximum.
 
CT said:
Sheesh - come on guys high ISO has nothing to do with under or over exposure - you can correctly adjust aperture and shutter speed to give the correct exposure regardless of ISO setting as long as ambient levels aren't particuarly bright.
Click to expand...


he was using AV at f5.6 so at iso 1600 the camera needed to go over 1/4000s (the 350D max) to get the correct exposure hence the image is a bit overexposed
 
Looks like the shot is overexposed about a stop for the darker regions and a few stops for the sky. I believe the native ISO for your camera is 100, so only come off this if you really need to. You could have used a graduated filter to bring out the detail in the sky, or taken a correctly exposed sky at the same time and blended it in.
 
CT said:
Sheesh - come on guys high ISO has nothing to do with under or over exposure -
Click to expand...

When the camera is set to AV and the iso is set to ISO 1600 and you need a shutter of speed of over 1/4000 to get a correctly exposed shot on a body that has a max shutter speed of 1/4000 you are NOT going to get a correctly exposed shot.
 
CT said:
Sheesh - come on guys high ISO has nothing to do with under or over exposure - you can correctly adjust aperture and shutter speed to give the correct exposure regardless of ISO setting as long as ambient levels aren't particuarly bright.

The train and the foreground is pretty well exposed - no more than perhaps half a stop over-exposed, and there's the problem - it's a black train pretty well correctly exposed for. The blown out sky is entirely down to the difference in luminance levels between the train and that featureless white sky, which is way beyond the ability of the sensor to deal with. Lowering the ISO wouldn't have had any effect whatsoever on the basic problem - you can't expose correctly for the train AND for the sky.

A grad filter to hold back the exposure for the sky would be the way to deal with the problem, or take two exposures, one for the sky - one for the train and combine the two in editing.
Click to expand...


I think the ISO still as a part to play in the overexposure here. As far as I know ISO 1600 is the max on the 350D. As is 1/4000 sec shutter speed and if this was shot at 55mm then f/5.6 will be the widest aperture. The camera couldnt have reduced the exposure anymore so this is the result. I agree it wouldnt have made the image perfect but I'm willing to bet you'd at least have got some detail in the sky if the ISO was set to 100-200 and the camera had been able to compensate properly.

Tom N.
 
Well thanks for the suggestions, ill try with the settings i posted above and will come back with another shot.

I posted my photo to be ripped apart as i wasnt happy with it also hence i posted it in the newbie section because thats what i man :).

Graham.
 
katbloke said:
Well thanks for the suggestions, ill try with the settings i posted above and will come back with another shot.

I posted my photo to be ripped apart as i wasnt happy with it also hence i posted it in the newbie section because thats what i man :).

Graham.
Click to expand...

when your out and about getting used to the camera stick it on fully auto every now and again and you'll have something to compare your settings / results with.
 
trencheel303 said:
It does when it causes the shutter speed to become 1/4000, the maximum.
Click to expand...

Well yes - that's because he was using AV and has the aperture set at f5.6. He could very easily have stopped down a stop or two to get a lower shutter speed, but my point is it wouldn't have made a great deal of difference to the outcome. There isn't a great deal technically wrong with this shot - you just can't reproduce detail in the train and in the sky with one exposure, not without a grad filter.
 
CT said:
Well yes - that's because he was using AV and has the aperture set at f5.6. He could very easily have stopped down a stop or two to get a lower shutter speed, but my point is it wouldn't have made a great deal of difference to the outcome. There isn't a great deal technically wrong with this shot - you just can't reproduce detail in the train and in the sky with one exposure, not without a grad filter.
Click to expand...

Yes indeed... but the whole shot was overexposed. The black locomotive has blown out whites on it! :cuckoo:
 
But the shots are like night and day compared to a kit lens.
Click to expand...

Utter, utter rubbish. I have seen some AMAZING shots with the kit lens. The problem is spelled out in post #3 by Dogfish Magnet.
 
trencheel303 said:
Yes indeed... but the whole shot was overexposed. The black locomotive has blown out whites on it! :cuckoo:
Click to expand...

I think we conceded the slight over-exposure of the main subject a few posts back? :cuckoo:
 
Slight? I think it's more than slightly overexposed, given we have areas of blown white on a black locomotive. I really don't think a grad filter would be needed to see some detail in the sky either. This is one of these 'mountain out of molehills' situations I think. The picture is overexposed and suffering bad lens abberations - that's all there is to it. It's obviously a bad copy of the 18-55 and the camera settings wrong.
 
It's not blown white - it's a reflection on a black surface. So if it's so badly over-exposed how many stops do you think you could reduce exposure before you started losing shadow detail on the train in the exmple posted?
 
Have a read up on exposure from books or the web, then try and decide what you think would be the best settings
Also read the camera manual and get to know how all the relevant settings can be changed

It is a pretty lousy picture, but sure you will soon be seeing great improvements
 
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