Photography Question From An Amateur

[danthepoetman]

I've been told as well the lighting makes the difference more than the equipment. Take the picture below; I snapped it back in 2010 with my Canon SX10is...which is basically a fancy point-and-shoot. I lucked out with the light; it had rained the previous evening and the skies were clear. No tripod, but I did (just recently) fiddle around with the colors and such in Adobe Lightroom.

Eventually I'll get a good light kit for shooting portraits and such.

I'm STILL practicing with the manual settings on my camera. I have a long way to go, but I'll get there. Krissy, so will you!

Very good, Willie, very nice!
But where is that thread, you know? "post your own pics" or something? Willie, you really should post more of this stuff! You're so talented. Your pictures are a joy to look at. Really!
Or post some of them on that new thread by Nikki. What is it? "Favorite pics"?

[Willie Escalade]

I'll be taking more pics soon. I'll be hitting up San Diego next weekend, and St. Francis next month.

Of course I'll try and get pics of the local ladies as well muahahahah

[MacShreach]

Krissy,I looked at the pics in the k4u thread and I don't see a lot I'd put down to a problem with the camera. Some of your pictures are heavily backlit, and modern cameras will automatically expose for the foreground, which on digital will just blow the bright background to white. (Digital is actually more like transparency in its dynamic range, or latitude, than colour neg.) In backllit situations, use fill flash or a big white reflector to kick light back in without having to expose so much. In movie use a fixed light.

Your bedroom scenes appear to be lit by not very bright available light (which some of us know as 'available darkness'). To take in situations like this, in film, you'd use a wider aperture, a slower shutter and a faster emulsion. Digital cams it's the same, wider aperture, slower shutter, and more gain on the sensor. More gain on the sensor means more noise, which makes the image look 'grainy'. In situations like that you really do have to use lights to get a decent result. In addition, BTW, your camera is struggling to give a decent white balance in those pictures. Lights will fix that.

If you have a sharpness problem then that could be an equipment issue--autofocus problem most likely--but I can't see that in the pics. The camera you are using is well capable of decent images. Don't waste money replacing it just now, invest in lights and learn how to use them.

The advice to use manual is good but you need to learn quite a bit more before you can use that properly. The pictures look well-enough exposed, just the lighting situations are fiendish.

Post some others here to give a better idea of the issues.

[MacShreach]

Some of my galleries are shot in evening light but even the ones I take in broad daylight will either have grain or washed out spots in them.

You'll need to post a couple of samples for a decent crit, love.

[Tate07]

GroobyKrissy,

Thanks for the welcome without seeing the metadata on the image let me give you a few pointers that might help.

I am gonna take a look at the pics and then comment a bit

[Tate07]

GroobyKrissy,

OK had to reread your intro. If I am understanding you properly...the answer is no.. it isn't impossible to get great pics from a D5100. A D5100 is a pretty darn good camera for the money.

A couple of thoughts that might help..

1) Shutter speed matters. As a rule don't go below about 1/60th of a second shooting people. Based off of their movement increase your shutter speed. typically in studio I will shoot no lower than 1/100th to 1/125th.. on locations I drop it to a minimum of 1/80th of a second (since I am generally using flash). UNLESS you are using a longer lens..don't ever drop below the focal length of your lens when shooting people. if you are using a 105mm then try not to drop below 1/100th.. a tripod will give you a bit of fudge factor to go lower but your results may vary( camera shake, wind, etc). People are 3 dimensional.. even if you think they aren't moving.. they are :P

2) Be aware of ambient light and how it affects your images. There are times when we can still SEE in the evening, but the camera doesn't see like our eyes. Your camera has limitations, all cameras do. ISO 200 will yield much better results than ISO 3200 or 6400 (less channel noise, and will look sharper) Do you shoot with a flash? If not you might think about getting one

3) RAW vs. Jpeg... I would choose RAW any day of the week. There is so much more information there that you can use to recover a shot if you overexpose or underexpose it. I always shoot RAW+Jpeg Fine. It is redundant, but works for my needs. Try shooting RAW and playing with it a bit. Do you use Photoshop/Camera Raw or Lightroom?

Hitting post..

[Tate07]

4) Try shooting in a priority mode or manual mode instead of full auto. If you give the camera full control of itself.. then it will do great on a sunny day shooting with the sun. Otherwise it usually fails miserably. your camera has a built in light meter reading a bit on how it operates will help you immensely (+ is overexposing - is underexposing) regarding proper exposure. Try to keep the exposure to in the middle of the meter. You will have situations where you need to adjust this on a case by case basis.

5) Gear matters. The quality of a Nikon 24-70mm 2.8 vs. a Kit lens 18-55mm. The 24-70 will blow it away for sharpness. If you stick in the DX range the 17-55mm 2.8 is a fantastic lens too. It doesn't mean the 18-55 is horrible, it just means the 24-70 is THAT much better. I shoot a D3 as my main camera and it still rocks because of the sensor. There is a big difference in sensor ability and results between a D3200 and a D4, but unless you plan on dropping 6k on a body you make trade offs. Never underestimate the importance of good glass(lenses).


Hitting post...

[Ecstatic]

Soooo...
I use a Nikon D5100, usually just the auto-settings on a Vanguard ABEO Pro Series tripod. It is not that I am unsatisfied with the picture quality, but it just seems that this camera should be able to take better pictures. Are the auto-settings just not good enough or am I doing something wrong to get the washed out places and grainy pictures? I am not a big believer in heavy post-production besides adjusting colors a bit. I shoot on the highest quality JPEG setting. Is RAW that much better?

Krissy, great recommendations by Jamie, MacS, and Tate, emphasizing the fundamentals: glass, lighting, exposure. By your description (washed out and grainy), I think Mac hits the nail re: backlit scenes being blown out, and the camera compensating in low light situations by automatically setting a high ISO ('gain'):

Your bedroom scenes appear to be lit by not very bright available light (which some of us know as 'available darkness'). To take in situations like this, in film, you'd use a wider aperture, a slower shutter and a faster emulsion. Digital cams it's the same, wider aperture, slower shutter, and more gain on the sensor. More gain on the sensor means more noise, which makes the image look 'grainy'. In situations like that you really do have to use lights to get a decent result. In addition, BTW, your camera is struggling to give a decent white balance in those pictures. Lights will fix that.

It's awesome that dSLRs can give you extremely high exposure levels by pushing the gain, allowing the capture of images in very low light situations (the Nikon D4 goes up to 12,800 ISO, expandable to 204,800), but this will always yield grainy, noisy images. For crystal clear photos, you want a much lower ISO, 200 (like Tate suggests) and no more than 400. Better to add light, to keep the ISO low for much clearer images.

The sensor in the D5100 isn't a match for the D4, but it's a fine sensor and keeping your ISO lower and using more light (incident light on the subject, not backlight) is essential.

1) Shutter speed matters. As a rule don't go below about 1/60th of a second shooting people. Based off of their movement increase your shutter speed. typically in studio I will shoot no lower than 1/100th to 1/125th.. on locations I drop it to a minimum of 1/80th of a second (since I am generally using flash). UNLESS you are using a longer lens..don't ever drop below the focal length of your lens when shooting people. if you are using a 105mm then try not to drop below 1/100th.. a tripod will give you a bit of fudge factor to go lower but your results may vary( camera shake, wind, etc). People are 3 dimensional.. even if you think they aren't moving.. they are :P

Spot on! I rarely shoot at 1/60th, usually 1/125th - 1/200th.

2) Be aware of ambient light and how it affects your images. There are times when we can still SEE in the evening, but the camera doesn't see like our eyes. Your camera has limitations, all cameras do. ISO 200 will yield much better results than ISO 3200 or 6400 (less channel noise, and will look sharper) Do you shoot with a flash? If not you might think about getting one

As noted above. Flashes can be problematic--those deep, dark shadows they can cast, the sharp, flat contrast they create--but as fill light very useful, even in sunlight. For the Nikon, a Speedlight 600 or 800 will do, or you can experiment with off-camera light, like an LED array (one with adjustable white balance).

3) RAW vs. Jpeg... I would choose RAW any day of the week. There is so much more information there that you can use to recover a shot if you overexpose or underexpose it. I always shoot RAW+Jpeg Fine. It is redundant, but works for my needs. Try shooting RAW and playing with it a bit. Do you use Photoshop/Camera Raw or Lightroom?

I always prefer RAW (NEF in Nikonese). RAW allows all sorts of post-production corrections that are impossible, or nearly so, with JPEG, particularly adjusting the white balance after the fact. Oops, you had a tungsten white balance (3200K) accidentally in a sunlight (5500K) setting? Try to fix that in JPEG! Almost impossible, and being a lossy format, you're going to lose data anyway. But in RAW, just adjust the white balance (easy in Photoshop), and voila, you're at 5500K or whatever level you desire. There are several other adjustments as well, all made in RAW before the image is opened in Photoshop proper, for final adjustment and save as JPEG for the web.

[GroobyKrissy]

Thanks everyone for the input and good information.

I guess though, what my actual question is:

Does the Full-Auto function on a camera such as the D5100 "top out" at some point... and have I reached that point?

I realize that I could achieve better results using other settings, but I simply don't have the time / patience to take a picture, readjust the settings, take a picture, etc. etc. When I shoot outdoors, there are usually numerous people about and I dislike gathering crowds. The auto function allows me to take about 500 pictures in just a few minutes, which is great.

Maybe there isn't a YES/NO answer to the question. Really all I'm looking for is the very BEST full-auto camera out there (with articulating view finder).

[Ecstatic]

Well yes, it "tops out" with the inherent limitations of auto setting: there's only so much latitude that auto will allow, nothing like what manual will allow. I don't think you'll gain that much with a move to a D5200, D7100, etc. Moving up to FX (full frame) could help (larger sensor, eliminating the 1.5 multiplication factor of the DX level), but still you'll have auto limits.

Maybe the P (program) setting will be more adaptable to your sets? But I'd prefer going to aperature priority over Auto, so that you control the depth of field, which in itself could sharpen your images, so long as you know the distance you are from the camera for the exposure within the depth of field range. If you're not moving, then the shutter speed will not blur the image when it's snapped.