Hi everyone! This is my first post here at TMIP after lurking and then becoming a member for some time. I took this photograph of the Emerald City scene in the Great Movie Ride last Sunday. I don't own Photoshop or any other image processing tools, so the photo is exactly how it was shot on my Canon PowerShot SD630, except that it's been resized (not cropped). Any suggestions on how I could have improved the shot and how the photo could be spruced up in Photoshop (if I had it) are greatly appreciated!
Welcome to the forums! I'm not sure what the first problem came from - what mode where you in when you took this pic? ; The Tin Man is blurry, which means to me that you probably needed a little higher shutter speed.
Thanks for the reply Roger. I should have mentioned this in my first post, but I'm a newbie photographer and don't know much about shutter speed, etc., so this photo (and everything else I've taken so far) have been with my camera's auto mode. I'm sure that makes people cringe, but that's all I know how to do right now.
first of all, welcome to the forums, ok it's a good start, at least you recognize that there's some things to work on, there's always something to work on, no matter how long we do this or how many photos we take. i'd suggest getting on over to the nearest public library, read a couple of basic photography books, just to get some ideas about shutter speeds and other techie stuff, don't worry about the zone system and all that, plenty of time later. then start to consider what type of processing program you want to use. i'm partial to lightroom, both for ease of use and because scott kelby is one of the best teachers of this stuff i've ever read. imho. this is all to get into using and at least basic understanding of expoxure and shooting in raw. after all, as our leader so often likes to point out, "YOU PAID FOR ALL THAT CAMERA, WHY NOT USE IT"
Thanks Gary! I recently picked up a copy of Complete Digital Photography by Ben Long, so I'll start reading through that this week. Also, I'll compare Aperture, Lightroom and Photoshop to see which looks like it will work best for me. I'm sure that's been discussed at length elsewhere :^)
There's nothing really wrong for auto mode; ; except for maybe on dark rides! (and some others) I'm not sure of your camera but you may have some kind of night portrait mode (assuming that you can turn off the flash!) that could work on a dark ride to some extent. ; But dark rides are really designed for a dSLR over a P&S.
welcome aboard. ; your camera can do great things once you learn how to use it a bit more, but that's why we are here to help guide you and help you learn and become more confident. ; here is a quick redo of your image. ; w/b correction, noise reduction, color/contrast, sharpening. ; keep working... ; you can do this!
Wow, what a difference! You did all of that in a product like Photoshop? I definitely have lots to learn!
