Some pictures of Scotland.

SaltWaterHippo

Hiii. I've had my camera less than a week, Todays the first day I've had good weather since I got it so I went out to experement a little. Heres some pictures I got. (edit) - Oh yeah, Forgot to say that I'm using a Canon 40D with a EFS 18-55mm lens. It also has a 0.45x widener thingy on the end for wider pictures, Cant remember what its called, sorry






Always wanted to try that with water.

What I'd like to do is take pictures with a deep/dark blue sky in contrast to white clouds but still have loads of rich green colours. If I went for nice green colours the sky would be over exposed, If I went for a dark sky the green would look too dark.

This was taken with the following settings
ISO - 200
Apeture - F22
Shutter Speed - 1/50 sec
White Balance was on Auto.


And I'd rather have it looking like this... (Photoshoped)


Can it be done by tweaking the settings on the camera or will I have to photoshop it most of the time?

Any help / comments would be appreciated.
Thanks, John.

illuminati919

You got some pretty good shots there but I would crop out the vig it's really distracting.

hschlessphoto

I agree. But that image witht he water is fantastic except for the bike!!! that would be an A+ image without it. just try and clone stamp it out of there on photoshop. great overall photos though!

SaltWaterHippo

Thanks guys. After I climbed down I relised the bike was in the way and I couldnt be bothered moving it. Theres also a plugin for photoshop I've been meaning to install for barrel distortion correction and to get rid of those black areas in the corner. Just havent got round to it yet

OsirisPhoto

Nice shots. The vignetting from the wide angle adaptor ruins them though and the image quality is bad at the edges... get rid of it and buy a wide angle lens. If budget is a big issue, get rid of the 40D and get a 400D, or even a 350D. A lens is worth a hundred cameras.

Unless you specifically need a small aperture, f/22 is a bit much even for landscapes.. I keep within f/5.6 to f/11 - most lenses give better results if they are kept away from the extreme ends of the scale. It also makes dust and hairs more apparent, as on your image.

You are doing the same as me... thinking the camera is level when it 'aint You'll find you tend to 'tilt' the camera about the same amount and the same way.. just be aware of it before you press the button.

I take it you are shooting JPEG and not RAW? Think of it like this, when shooting JPEG the camera is like a poleroid.. it applies the required procesing to the raw image from the sensor and spits out a ready to use JPEG. The saturation, contrast, sharpness can be adjusted in camera. If you set the camera to RAW, it gives you the 'negative'.. ready for processing on your PC using any one of a number of programs. There are a lot of benefits to RAW, discussed elsewhere on the forum.

The problem you have encountered trying to capture detail in some areas and not over-expose the sky might by helped by exposure bracketing or filters. Nothing wrong with using Photoshop either

SaltWaterHippo

Hi there. Thanks for the advice. I'll try shooting with lower apetures next time The adaptor thingy is just a tempory thing, I ordered a Peleng 8mm fixed lens around the same time as my camera and I'm actually expecting it today but its not arrived yet I do enjoy photoshopping but I guess I want to learn how to tweak the camera to get certian results aswell as using photoshop, Just something that interests me. I shoot all my pictures in RAW, I just convert them to JPEG if I want to upload them.