Photographer I'm Not

[greasemonkeyredneck]

I thought it was just me being nitpicky until I got a private message inquiring about my photos. I'm in a constant struggle trying to figure out how to get consistantly good quality photos of my work. Most times, my photos are terrible. I've tried different color backgrounds in the past. I've tried lighting variations from taking all photos outside to going and buying a 500 watt light to shine one the subject. I've even attempted to wait until after dark, turn off all the lights except the spotlight. I mean, i have went to multiple extremes to take good quality photographs. Any advice would be much appreciated.

[Christina]

Greasemonkey your photos aren't bad..........just dark. If you have a good photo program, try opening your photos in it and adjusting the brightness. When I have trouble seeing your photos that's what I do. I have PSP X2 and I just copy and paste them into it and use the auto adjusting feature. Otherwise your photos are actually pretty good!

Christina

[grampa]

Hi William, Your pics are a bit dark and I don't know what settings your camera has, but you pics can be adjusted in windows foto gallery, Just move the

slider bar for Contrast and Brightness and you should get a better Photo.. I hope you don't mind I used one of your pics as a example.....Paul

[Travis]

It could also be your camera. If its an older one, maybe it's just wearing out. I know I have an older camera and takes horrible pix indoors. A lot of time, I will take my pix outside under the tree. There's plenty of light and the shade give it a nice even light and the pix come out nice. You can also try the cheap shop lights with the compact fluorescent light bulbs inside. To soften the light, clip on some wax paper to the front. That's an ebay photo trick. I'd put a shop light on two sides.

[Pixman]

If you are looking for a photo program google Picasa. It'sd easy to use and lots of brightness etc adjustments that can salvage all sorts of photos. The big news is that Picasa is FREE. Magic

[ugsduck]

The shots are underexposured.

If you are using the camera in Auto mode (Green box on some cams) then stop!

Use AV mode and open up the aperture to increase the exposure or go full manual (best option) and control both the Speed and the Aperture. If you are able to alter the ISO (see your manual) then set it at 200/300 indoors. Turn off the flash and experiment until you have found a good setting of Aperture and Shutter Speed for your workshop.

If your camera has through the lens metering then set the metering for the subject only as the background light can be fooling your camera.

Understanding exposure is a very big subject but there are zillions of advice on the 'net.

If you dont fancy delving into it all then "Picasso", as mentioned, will do a job good enough for webpages.

[greasemonkeyredneck]

Thanks for all the great advice. I think I found my problem. The problem is that I'm not a photogragher. I'm so not a photographer that I don't think I'm even spelling it right. After reading all the advice though, I have been playing around with adjusting the photos in Windows though. As for the camera, it's a fairly new camera. I bought it to shoot video, which t does very well. After getting it though, my old digital camera died and I started using my video camera for regular photos too. I do shoot photos on auto, because to figure out all the manual settings on this thing requires reading a manual as thick as a lot of dictionaries. Then on top of that, after reading most of it, I need that dictionary to figure out the meaning of most of the words. So, I'll learn how to adjust them on my pc and try to do better in the future.

 

Oh! The person who originally brought this problem to my attention in a provate message, you know who you are, thank you for bringing my attention to it.

[kardar2]

Go to the MFG website they might have some tip video you can watch. I have a Kodak 5MP which is very user friendly. and get a beginners book and learn about the basics . The one bad thing about the manuals the camera comes with is that the language is all technical and they don't think about the user being a beginner.