Rebel XT - Color Question

[PoohJen]

Just noticing the great pics of the Disney Magic on another thread, and it got me fretting yet again about the colors in my XT pics.

My cheapo Kodak Easy Share does take some great pictures, and gets great color. But I've been oft disappointed in many of my XT shots, and wonder what I need to read up on/practice/do differently in order to improve.

My first set of XT pics early this summer were at a baseball tournament. Got great sports shots, but I felt the colors were a bit washed out (used usually sports mode).

So I got a Hoya multi-coated polarizer, but felt the colors on my recent Magic cruise were too dark. It was overcast alot, so I assume I needed to take the polarizer off...? (ok, no laughing at me! )

I'm reposting my Magic pics here. Notice the brilliant - almost artificial - color of the sails, yet the sky and ship less distinct. I can't recall if I had the polarizer on for these.

Thoughts? Comments? Spare copy of Photography for Dummies?

 

[0bli0]

it doesn't look overcast in the photo - there are potentially two things that may have happened. (in fact i actually think it's a combination of the two)

1) you did have the polariser on (my guess, based upon the colours in the image and the exposure details). i'm hoping the polariser you have is a circular one. this allows you to turn the polarised 'grate' to allow the light's waves to come through in one direction. ideally, you turn the polariser so this happens at right angles to the sun. as you look through the viewfinder and rotate the polariser, you will actually see the colour of the sky change from a very nice dark blue to a dull paleish blue. try this next time you take the shots and try to take it with the darker blue sky (or better yet take it both ways so you can see the difference. one problem with polarisers is the affect they have on other colours, depending on the type of material (how they reflect light). also different polarisers have different 'tints' to them as well (depending on things including the coatings) - like when you wear polarised sunnies. in fact if you have polarised sunnies, you can see the affects on the sky, clouds, cars, car windows, trees, etc. by merely tilting your head from side to side. this won't matter on non-polarised glasses. fwiw i generally only use a polariser if i'm shooting a landscape because they can add an additional and often unmanageable colour element to the image. this can be really bad if your subject is a person. you will also lose some light (another reason i'm guessing you had your polariser - iso 400 @ 1/250 f7ish in daylight). i do sometimes use two polarisers like a neutral density filter (i have 2 b+w 77mm CPLs because i have so many 77mm lenses).

2) the sky is very bright and the blue colour tends to get lost due to its intensity and how sensors work. this is compounded by the 400 iso setting and possibly a lot of light cloud cover (not overcast, but 'misty' clouds). on my last trip to both DisneySea and HK Disneyland, i was bummed that the sky was overcast in tokyo and hazy in hk. generally, the best day is nice blue with some puffy white clouds - to get good exposures and give good colour to the sky. if the sky is bright, underexpose a bit to save the colour. use the histogram to check the exposure, or bracket to be sure if it's a shot you really want to capture.

what can you do? there are a few things for next time, as well as some things you can do post processing now.

-you mentioned that your kodak easy share just takes great pictures. you can actually set your XT to behave more like this *if desired*. in the menu, there should be a setting which you specify which image 'set parameters' you're using. it should say something like 'set 1', 'set 2', and 'setup'. if you go into this setting, you can increase the saturation a notch or two to get more colour. the downside to this is you're permanently modifying your images. they'll look a bit nicer out of the camera, but you run the risk of being too saturated or the colours being wrong. Canon sensors tend to be overly red sensitive. i shoot with saturation on '0' and sharpness on '-2' because i do everything in post.

-shoot raw. you have far more control over the exposure, saturation, white balance (for example, just because you're in the sun doesn't mean the light was 6500k). obviously you will need more time to process your images so doing so means establishing a workflow process.

-fix the image using software. i'm not a big photoshop user - there are some very talented PS users on this board who can run circles around me so i'll defer to them. but there are times when it proves its worth, so i'm glad i have it. in the case of the images above, it would be very easy to fix the sky in PS, PS elements, Paint Shop Pro, and even GIMP.

i highly recommend trying some or all of the ideas above before your next adventure. go out and spend an afternoon shooting around the neighborhood with the polariser (so you get a good understanding what it will and won't do), with the saturation up, and raw. and then spend some time with your software playing around with the results.

oh, and btw for people who have very fairly wide angle lenses - you can orient the polariser properly (so the sky is nice and dark) but you can see banding in the sky. this is due to how the light is hitting the sensor directly perpendicular to the sensor in the middle of the image compared at an angle on the sides.

i'm sure i left something out but my daughter is asking me to read a story so i'll fix it later if i forgot (or messed up)

 

[PoohJen]

Thank you for the detailed and well-thought-out response, I really appreciate it! Ok, for starters, and I am so embarrassed to admit this...yes, it is a circular polarizer, but I didn't know that meant you could/should rotate it!!!

(in my defense, I had gotten several - many - photog books out of the library, and tried to read about polarizing filters, but none gave me the simple, important info that you just gave me!

I had alot of color and other exposure problems with my cruise pics, which I chalk up to learning the new camera, so I've been using the enhancement software that came with camera to correct them.

Thanks again, and thanks to your daughter for sharing her dad with us!

 

[JR6ooo4]

...also the foreground is very well lit. Or has much more light than the side of the ship we can see. If the sun was to your right. or you went to the other side of the ship the color brightness/saturation would probably be much closer to the rest of the frame.

Mikeeee

 

[spoon2003]

Thank you Jen for asking a question that has been on my mind....

Thank you 0bli0 for the detailed explanation. I too, really appreciate you sharing your expertise on this board.

Thank you Mikeeee for pointing out simple strategy, I keep forgeting that I can move around for different light/angle. Will put that note on my cheat sheet.

Sue from Boston

 

[MarkBarbieri]

The term "circular polarizer" refers to the way the polarizer handles the light, not the shape of the polarizer. The other type is a "linear polarizer". Linear polarizers confuse auto-focus systems and metering systems, so you'll need a circular polarizer for pretty much every digital camera I can think of.

To understand what a polarizer does, think about light as being made up of a lot of different waves. Each wave bounces up and down (or side to side). A polarizer only lets light waves that are bouncing in the same direction through and it blocks the other waves. So once light gets through the polarizer, all of the waves are bouncing the same way.

As you rotate a polarizer, the set of light waves that it lets through changes. Watch through the lens as you rotate the polarizer and you'll probably see the sky go from faded blue to a rich saturated blue and then back again. You may also notice that the surface of the water goes from shiny/reflective to clear and back again. You can also use it to reduce glare from chome or other shiny surfaces.

The effect of the polarizer varies depending on the relative positions of the light source, so the polarizer might work better for the sky when the sun in to your side rather than directly ahead of or behind you. The same is true of other reflective surfaces like water or chrome. The great thing is that you can see the effect by looking at the LCD or viewfinder while you turn the polarizer.

Polarization is one of the rare filter effects that cannot be duplicated in Photoshop. To get the effect, you need to use the polarizer and the point when you capture the image.

Stacking polarizers (using more than one), introduces another weird effect. If you rotate one and leave the other in place, you can get them to either work in harmony (both polarizing the light the same way) or against each other (one blocking light with waves in one direction and the other blocking light with waves in the other direction). While you look through the lens and rotate one while holding the other steady, you will see the image fade to black and then lighten up again. That's how you can use two polarizers as a variable power neutral density filter.

A neutral density filter, for those that don't already know, is one that darkens an image without otherwise effecting it. They can be useful when you want a longer shutter speed (perhaps to get a sense of motion in flowing water) or when you are shooting with such a wide aperture and such a bright subject that the desired shutter speed is too fast for you camera.

If you've been to Disney World, you've probably used polarizing filters without even knowing it. The 3D movies are shown with the image for each eye shown at a different polarity. The 3D glasses are a pair of polarizers set 90 degrees apart. Next time you sit down for a 3D movie, borrow your neighbors glasses, hold them together, and rotate them. You'll see the effect I described above.

As for the other issue raised about color saturation, I agree with what was said. By default, most P&S digicams apply large amounts of saturation and sharpening to their pictures under the assumption that their users will not do any editing with them. Most DSLRs default to very little if any added saturation or sharpening, leaving it up to the photographer to apply them in post production. This gives the photographer more control over the image because if you oversaturate in the camera and blow out colors, you cannot recover the lost detail by desaturating them later. If you prefer the look and simplictiy of a P&S but still want to shoot with a DSLR, use the process above to adjust the settings of the camera.

 

[PoohJen]

As you rotate a polarizer, the set of light waves that it lets through changes. Watch through the lens as you rotate the polarizer and you'll probably see the sky go from faded blue to a rich saturated blue and then back again. You may also notice that the surface of the water goes from shiny/reflective to clear and back again. You can also use it to reduce glare from chome or other shiny surfaces....The great thing is that you can see the effect by looking at the LCD or viewfinder while you turn the polarizer.

...As for the other issue raised about color saturation, I agree with what was said. By default, most P&S digicams apply large amounts of saturation and sharpening to their pictures under the assumption that their users will not do any editing with them. Most DSLRs default to very little if any added saturation or sharpening, leaving it up to the photographer to apply them in post production. This gives the photographer more control over the image because if you oversaturate in the camera and blow out colors, you cannot recover the lost detail by desaturating them later. If you prefer the look and simplictiy of a P&S but still want to shoot with a DSLR, use the process above to adjust the settings of the camera.

Huge help; thanks Mark (and everyone!). I hadn't realized I could rotate the polarizer and check the effect in the viewfinder - it may sound obvious to others, but I had no idea how to use the polarizer, and it didn't come with instructions!

re: the saturation explanations, thanks! I was thinking my camera was defective - seriously! - so you have put me at ease. When I have more time to just 'play' with the camera, I will try changing some settings as suggested, see if I can find my happy point.