Hello, Since receiving my Rebel kit for Christmas when it came out years ago, I have been rather unimpressed with its still image quality. Generally speaking, all shots appear to be out of focus along with random color saturation issues. Admittedly, my knowledge of DSLR is very miniscule, having only shot 35mm (an A-1 purchased new in the 80's, LOL) and medium format many years ago. I enjoy motorsports photography mainly, but use this camera for standard family snapshots where quality isn't front and center to me. I've dabbled only a little in the quest to clean up the (what I'll call latent) images with settings in the camera body, but have had little to no luck. I next to never use it for video. Images are not short or long focused. They can be cleaned up with a photo editor, but seemingly every one needs done and have never had an image that totally impressed me even afterwards. Same/similar results come from either the 18-55 and 75-300 Canon brand lenses, although the short one is generally better. I believe that I did not edit either of the 2 top pics shown that were taken with the long lens. Bottom one may have been edited, short lens used along with a little bit of fill flash. All 3 pics were shot ISO 100, 1/60sec. shutter priority. I've tried all of the basics carried over from my A-1 days... program, shutter priority, aperture priority, full manual exposure, manual focus, ISO change... no discernable dfference. My guess is that I'm missing something in basic setup of the body. Sometimes my indoor snapshots of family, both with and without flash, are acceptable. Sometimes. Is there a software update available? I haven't ruled out the "need" for a more professional, more advanced, newer body to get what I'm looking for. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks. .
Apart from the first pic, the others look pretty good. The first one is suffering with low contrast/incorrect exposure. If you are shooting JPG then make sure you use the Large, Fine setting. Possibly change the exposure metering to Centre weighted and play around with the Contrast & Sharpness settings in Picture styles on the menu. There are so many things you can change, this model of camera is capable of some really great results so don't give up and don't bother buying anything more expensive until you have mastered this one.
I think you have hit the nail on the head, Ray. The use of a neutral density filter would have help the first image to cut down glear a bit.
Welcome to the forum, MotorArts. Like anything we work within limits, Use a higher shutter speed next time, this will let less light onto the sensor there for, not so bright. look at the light meter built into the camera, in the first image it would have shown it to be to the right of the zero setting. lastly have a look at your camera manual and see what it says about shooting in bright conditions, not much for reading the manual and it makes your eyes glaze over, get onto youtube and see what it shows on taking images in these conditons. Above all don't give up, learning is trial and error.
Yes Welcome to the forums Moto! Seems your over exposing a bit, at least for the given situation which is rather harsh in the first place to deal with. Shooting into the sun does have its challenges. Are you using raw or jpg? Have you tried different metering modes for the lighting? Did you confirm there is no exposure compensation dialed in?
Thank you for the welcome, guys! No compensation. Shooting in JPG. It's been a while since I've adjusted anything. If I did in the past, it didn't make much of a remarkable difference to me. Being a noob to the digital age (and the old guy slow learner, lol), I guess I kinda would have expected an SLR to take better pics out of the gate than my cellphone without having to make any adjustments. Thinking along the lines of "easier" and "faster" to achieve results than poking around in the settings menu every time I pick it up. Shots above were taken in TV at 1/60 so (in my mind) I would have the best depth of field with the long lens (even though the one was with the short lens) in the bright sunlight of this day. I've shot many action and stills of dirt bikes, with different settings all over the board, and honestly get pretty much the same results. I'll have to mess more with the Picture Styles menu, which I have not done. I have only applied what I've known works in 35mm... which doesn't seem to be translating to my satisfaction. What will RAW do that JPG does not?
Lets put it in film logic, RAW is the developed negative, it contains all the information captured by the camera in a file. This file allows you to edit more stuff in the image, such as white ballance and various other things, JPEGs are like a cut down version of the RAW file, allowing less editing to be donel. JPEG is the hardcopy or a image or photo that a programme can read or be able to print, storing all the JPEGs in a file or folder is like putting them in a photo album or like my parent did, a woodern box to be later taken out for viewing.
The photos are looking overexposed to me. There shouldn't be any issue in photos when shooting in a sun, however, you have used JPEG for that and RAW would have given you the possibility to fix the image properly. BTW, JPEG processing applied by the camera is designed to produce a good-looking image right out of the camera, and this processing cannot be undone. A RAW file, on the other hand, is processed by you; so you can decide how the image will look.
