re photograps

dharn

dont know if this is the right area to post this query but here goes 'the attached photos are typical of the results i get from my fuji finepics s 5500 as you can see if the sky exposure is correct then foreground is too dark of if foreground ok the sky bleached out or over exposed if i am pointing anyway south or near the direction of the sun is this a weakness of the camera or digital in general was thinking of upgrading to say something in the 500- to 600 euro range in either nikon or canon would cameras in that price range digital slr be better in those situations

5uspect

It's a problem with the dynamic range of your scene in general.

Often photographers will use grad filters or multiple exposures to expose each area correctly. (You may be familiar with the often heavily stylised filters they use on Top Gear) Typically a filter will be a darkened piece of glass that gets progressively lighter in one direction.

In terms of digital you can take a few images and blend them together to obtain a "High Dynamic Range" image. Be warned the HDR route is littered with the corpses of many promising photographers...

dharn

thanks for your reply so are you of the opinion that by upgrading to a better camera the digital slrs from canon or nikon with standard lens that it could still be a problem even thought the sensor in the camera will be bigger and i thought better able to cope with contrast issues, i dont remember 35 mm film cameras being that difficult to use in those lighting situations

5uspect

Bigger sensor means less noise, not contrast. A lot of SLRs can shoot in 12 or 14bit RAW so you have more tonal range to push your exposure just as you can do with film in the darkroom.

Digital sensors tend to also be forced to a highly linear response when film probably isn't. When you shoot in RAW you can take advantage of the log response at the highlight end by recovering seemingly blown details.

An SLR will give you more freedom to go crazy with curve adjustments. Typically you have to adjust the images anyway as default RAW is often dull and even soft before processing.

CabanSail

I have looked up the Specs and the S5500 has RAW as an option. Are you using this or just Jpeg?

If you shoot RAW then you will have a larger dynamic range to work with but it means you then need to process your images.

dharn

i only use j-peg must use raw sometime and see the difference i do some photo editing with paint shop pro 9 so hopefully i will be able to manage raw files incidentally i very seldom print photos but store them on computer but lke to get the best results possible with the camera and the main reason for posting was i was wondering had i exhausted the limits of my present camera attached are more satisfactory photos which were facing east the following day which are much better

5uspect

I'm not sure Paint Shop can handle RAW files. Picassa can but it's limited editing wise. There are also plugins for the GIMP and of course the software bundled with your camera.

People here recommend Lightroom and Photoshop since they're the best.

miss.devine

i'm not quite sure what you expect your camera to do. sensors, as far as i'm aware, still need to adhere to the zonal system. i mean, to me some of the images look (almost) correctly exposed in the foreground and certain parts of the sky are bleached out. i'm sure if i was standing there with my canon 550 i would get a similar tonal range. looks like you need to tweek your curves and levels a wee bit.

try using lightroom. i have been using it for a few months now and its fantastic. you can personalise the set-up and view your images in contact form. the tools are very advanced. im getting superb results

it is not as advanced as photoshop but if like me, you dont want to change arms into wings, and only want to achieve what you would in the darkroom, well then its perfect!

dharn

thanks for that must investigate lightroom

dharn

Waa ! it costs 300 euro i already have paint shop pro and dont really want to buy another editing programme looks like i bought the wrong programme originally but will have to stick with it now will probably look at using neutral density filter perhaps, i have a polarizing filter but did not find it very useful for the situation described so have not used it much lately

5uspect

PSP can do levels and curves so you'll be grand.