1. Check your camera's white balance setting, and set it to incandescent or flourescent light (it's a lightbulb icon on my camera) for indoor pictures to get truer colors. (Note the yellow cast on the picture of Ben's Halloween candy. It's so much better in the ones in my mosaic below!)
2. Without flash, photos taken in low light can have a lot of noise or easily be blurred. Changing them to sepia can sharpen and provide much better detail. (Note the two versions of Ben and the presents in the mosaic. This photo is quite fuzzy full-size--the color is nice, but the sepia version looks much clearer.)
3. Pictures with lower resolution often look great if they are smaller. You may not want to print them, but they can look great on your blog or in a small slot in a photo book.
4. Susan's pictures were action shots, so she increased the shutter speed (a.k.a. sensitivity or ISO) to keep them from being too blurry. This results in lower resolution yet, she pointed out, which is why she kept them small and used sepia. (Edited: Actually, for Susan's accurate explanation of this, check the comments! I lost some info in my translation--which incidentally happens all too often in my photography as well. ;-) )
5. She also recommended that if possible, move the subject close to a window or lighter area.
If you can use these tips, then go try them out, thank Susan, and pay them forward!
10 comments:
She really does take beautiful photos! Amazing. Thanks for the tips!
Tracy-
Thanks for the kind words. I LOVE your mosaic below!
Just a slight clarification on #4 (cause I'm totally vain that way ... blush): High ISO doesn't reduce resolution - the size of your image is the same no matter what ISO you use. BUT, higher ISO does usually equal higher "noise" (more grainy-ness, also more aberrant color "dots" thru-out the image, and less sharpness all the way around due to increased grain). So, if you use a large image size, all this noise will show loud and clear. Using a smaller image size will hide it to a large degree. And, of course, converting to b&w/sepia makes the aberrant colors go away and "sharpens" everything a bit because it converts all the colors to shades of light & dark, thus increasing the contrast.
Yikes, that's a lot of wordiness for me. I need to go rest now.... (big huge grin!)
Happy Monday to you and your family...
hmmm, more clarification now that I've proofed what I wrote ... resolution = number of pixels in your image. ie. 2000 x 3000 pixels. That stays the same no matter the iso. How you spread out those pixels (into a 4x6" image or a 40x60") = your image size.
So, higher ISO means more noise which means you wouldn't choose a super large image size.
Susan, thanks so much for fixing my terminology. I neglected to make it clear that I put your advice into my own words--big faux pas there!! Sorry about that! But there, I got yet another lesson that way. ;-)
And now you have used up all of your words for one day HERE--go take some pictures, you'll feel better. Thanks so much for being so gracious!
thanks for the tips!! LOVE the mosaic.
Thanks for posting these tips! I need these badly!
Those are great tips. I always forget about sepia. I'm gonna have to go play with some sepia because I hate to flash inside, and I have lots of noisy pictures.
I love photo tutorials because I stink at using my camera and taking pictures.
She has beautiful pictures doesn't she.
Great tips. Thanks to Susan from me too!
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