Photography help thread.

Sorry H, I used to be able to move replies with they old forum , but no longer...

Have you bought a copy of this yet. It's essential if want to get get the best out of the 40D.

The 40D's JPEG converter isn't very good and the results from Canons Digital Photo Professional software is ever worse, it's absolutely abysmal . You'll get far better results shooting in RAW and using Picasa (free from google) to convert to JPEG.

Thanks, Richard and fatcat.

This business of JPEG converters bothers me.

Leica seem to do it well in their D-Lux models. Panasonic, deliberately seem to downgrade it in their versions of the same camera. OK, you can shoot in RAW and use Picasa or Lightroom or..............but why do these camera makers not do a good job in the first place ? Most of us just want to point, shoot and print !!

What about Nikon ? do they make a good job of JPEG conversion across their entire range, or is it all hit-and-miss ?

I shoot RAW+JPEG with my Nikons (D700 & D810) and rarely use the RAW files. The large (fine) JPEGs always come out well exposed, sharp and with the correct color balance.

I can understand if in camera conversion is not up to scratch, perhaps speed could be a factor especially if you shooting 6 frames/sec. But Canons Photo Professional software is a joke. How can a free software do a better job than so called professional software, although it is a bit noisy.

Photoshop is the best I've used, but far too complicated, for me at least. Keep meaning to try lightroom but haven't got round to it yet.

Picasa

Canons Photo Professional

40D software

Photoshop.

OK 40D field guide ordered.

I have taken a few  shots today at a local NT garden (Nymens), I set to Large JPEG and small RAW,and shot in manual. I can see differences,  some JPEGs look better to me.

I have Picasa on my iMac somewhere and will have another look with that.

BigH,

Try and get used to shooting raw. With a jpeg, the camera is processing the pic for an overall average result, but you are losing valuable information (quality if you like), especially if you want to bring back highlights/shadows/colour balance. Once it's lost, it's gone forever.

Getting a raw image looking good can be a pain initially and the files are bigger, but if the shot is worth keeping and you're going to the trouble to ask for advice, my advice is always shoot raw at it's uncompressed state.

I use Nikons.

The Canon 40D is a 2007 camera - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_EOS_40D

About the same era as the Nikon D300 - similar number of pixels, not that that makes much difference.

My experience is similar to @ Haim Ronen - Nikons Large Fine jgs are fine.... YMMV.

Memory cards are so cheap these days that it's worth shooting RAW & Jpeg max...Just in case you take a publishable shot that you want to process really well.

G

I don't necessarily have "better pics", but I certainly don't use and external light meter.

I don't shoot manual at all, but as I said earlier, I use Auto-ISO which gives me easy total control. There are three settings that affect exposure; shutter speed, aperture and ISO. They all need to be in balance with the lighting of the scene for a correct exposure. I let the camera deal with the one that makes the least creative difference (ISO), so I get t consciously choose shutter speed and aperture for creative control.

In very low light, or if I choose very fast shutter speed and small aperture, the camera will select a high ISO setting to get the correct exposure. This can lead to additional "noise" but this is usually preferable to a blurred, poorly exposed or out-of-focus shot that other compromises might lead to.

The suggestions to shoot RAW are reasonable, but not strictly necessary. Use the highest quality jpeg compression (and largest image size) on your camera and you'll be just fine for 99% of uses. I sometimes use RAW, however. It gives a lot of creative control once in the editing software, but is a fraction tricky with some software, and needs compatibility and updates to stay working. Once your image is edited and adjusted, saving it to a high quality jpeg results in very little degradation and is a more user-friendly format. Avoid multiple sequential versions in jpeg as this can lead to cumulative degradation as each generation of image tosses away some information.

A raw image will look dull in comparison to the JPEG, it’s the unaltered image recorded by the sensor. The JPEG image has been altered, colour saturated, sharpness, brightness and contrast modified. The extent of the modifications is determined by the picture style setting. If you press the picture style setting button on the back of the camera (looks like a six petal flower) you can change the setting.

The advantage of shooting in raw, is you can open the image in canons digital photo pro software and preview the image in photo styles available to the camera plus a few others. You then save as a JPEG in the style you prefer. I personally don’t like canons conversions to JPEG, I use DXO, this includes lens correction and allows the basic tweaks I need.

I'd recommend Lightroom whch does pretty much anything you would need it to do.  I always shoot in raw, mainly because a) I like to have control over the processing and not let the camera make my decisions and b) some shots can be improved dramatically in processing from a raw shot that you just can't get with a jpg.  It also holds lens profiles and allows you to correct for them which can be useful.  You can get away with using aperature priority for the vasst majority of your shots, especially if you use auto iso (although personally I don't).  A useful half hours practice is to take three shots of the same image, ideally on a tripod but can be done without, and set your aperature to f4 (or the lowest number you can set) and then f8 and then f14 and compare the resulting shots.  Do the same exercise on a subject that is very close to the camera, one a little further away and one a long way away and compare the photos.  I'm sure you'll be interested in the results, also worth looking at the shutter speed                           in the photos data when you review them.  This will give you an easy and quick understanding on how aperature mode works and how you can use it to get different effects with the same image.

If you've not already got one, for a Canon I'd highely recommend hitting ebay and buying a ef50 which will cost you less than fifty quid.  Its super sharp for the money and has a large aperature of 1.8 which is great for portraits. 

Is this strictly true ?

I always shoot a RAW file and a JPEG file in the "finest" settings available.I then always copy these files from the SD card to my computer and back them up in an external hard drive. If I decide to modify a camera generated JPEG file, I always do it on a "copy" of the original. I'm sure the original isn't lost forever..............or is it ?

A jpg is like an mp3, the camera removes data that it thinks we don't need and this data, just like the music data in an mp3, is then gone forever.  This is why it is sometimes possible to produce a good image in terms of exposure or colour or detail from a raw file that would have seen the same file saved only as a jpg discarded. If you work from a jpg to edit, if I am not mistaken, each subsquent time you save it the quality will be lower although this will only apply once I guess if you save it to a different file name

Jpeg quality degradation appears when you open save and close, if you open again and then save, data will be lost.  Multiple saves from an open file will only have the degradation from from a single save.

The advantage of using RAW is that one can extract greater exposure latitude from the image than you can from a Jpeg.  Very useful if you have a bright sky and dark shadows, the dark areas can be lightened up and the bright areas toned down.

It's not just the highlight/shadow/colour balance that's processed by the firmware/software, it's the sharpness, etc.....the list goes on.

If someone is seriously into photography and they're happy with the processed jpeg that comes from their camera, I'd suggest that something is seriously wrong with their photography. Copy this statement and stick it......................................at the bottom of their forum advice.

Kind regards. 

Another recommendation for Lightroom. If you shoot in RAW you've got the choice of fine-tuning each shot (well worthwhile) or, if you've a group of photos you want to do quickly you can easily set up an adjustment template you can apply to the lot. Once you're used to it, adjusting your photos in RAW is so much more interesting & you'll be amazed at just how good you can make even mediocre shots look.

+1

lightroom is my tool of choice (hardens beck to when I had a darkroom!), and you can easily tweak almost any aspect, including geometrical distortions. And as Tonym said, a batch of photos taken under the same conditions are easily done en-masse after the first.

But definitely better with raw than jpg, as nothing yet has been thrown out, so much more detail may be there if, for example, it is overexposed.

Another vote for Lightroom. Batch processing feature is superb. Rarely use Photoshop now save for the odd HDR and the like. 

Hi H.

Haven't posted here for a while but saw this and thought I should jump in. Good advice so far and another vote for Lightroom from me. I signed up to the monthly subscription earlier this year and for less than the price of a CD per month I get Lightroom and full-blown Photoshop which I rarely use but it has a great Content-Aware-Fill tool which is amazing for cleaning up stuff you should have re-composed to avoid but didn't notice at the time 

For Canon EOS, PhotoPlus magazine is pretty good. It had a major revamp earlier this year and is dedicated to Canon EOS only. I just gave up my subscription because I've started with another system but for someone getting back in to photography or just starting to take it a bit more seriously it is very good but like most monthly mags does get repetitive over time.

I'm a member of the EOS Magazine forum (at www dot eos-magazine-forum dot com  which is full of excellent advice, e.g. you can post images and get feedback. Costs nothing to join just like here.

Cheers

Scott

Two tips I've always found useful to keep photos sharp and not blurred;

1.  Select a shutter speed that is at least the equivalent of the focal length of your lens - i.e. if its an 80mm lens select 1/80 or faster (or if using aperture priority make sure the resulting shutter speed equals this)

2.  For landscapes use f8 or above and focus a third of the way into the scene.  It feels strange because you naturally want to focus on a focal point but this is a quick and dirty way to get close to the hyperfocal distance which helps to ensure that the photo is focussed from front to back

Its amazing how many more keepers I got once I was told this

A lot of it also depends how steady you are and what sort of stance you adopt. If you can brace gainst something you can go slower. Sitting down so your elbows can brace gainst your knees can work. Leaning your body, or the camera directly against a pole/wall/tree can be useful. Laying down and resting your camera across your camera bag or pack is also useful. The attached photo was shot using this technique in the dark pre-dawn with 50 ISO film. The shutter speed was a couple of seconds. It's not super sharp, but I was still glad to get the shot with the gear I had.

Practice helps here.

Of course, with auto-iso turned on, you can set your minimum shutter speed for the lens, then play with your aperture for depth of field. Otherwise, when using simple aperture priority, you are always having to check that your shutter speed hasn't dropped too low as the lighting and aperture change..