I share any and all of the frustrations you all are enumerating. I've been
using an Oly E10 for a while now and with all of the variables involved, I'm
ready to go back to a Rolleiflex and Tr-X.
One of the strategies that I've heard and haven't tried (no real good
opportunity to do so) is to take two exposures: one for the shadows and one for the
highlights and then combine them in Photoshop (or whatever software lights yer
lamp). Obviously, this works only for stationary objects; portraits and
other moving subjects are right out. When I do try this, I'll fall back on a
suggestion that that Monte Zucker made in a Shutterbug article to overlay the two
images and use the eraser function to take away from the topmost
image...seems better than trying to select areas and then "jig-saw-puzzle" them
together...fewer funky edges.
Is RAW the answer? One of the reasons that I bought the Oly in the first
place was that RAW was recommended as a means to achieve the highest quality
possible and to be able to adjust the contrast and color balance of the image
after the fact using software. There are a couple of software options out there
right now and I haven't made a decision as to which would be the most
effective. Adobe offers an add-on or plug in that gives more control over the
processing of the RAW image than is built into the basic software.
I have been advised to set the camera's contrast setting to "Low" and to not
mess with the sharpness setting at all...to leave that in the "normal"
position. The lower contrast setting seems to help and if that's an option, I'd
recommend that you experiment with that. The Oly always saves the settings that
I make...I'd be suprised to learn that Canon or Nikon doesn't do the same
thing. My problem is that I have to REMEMBER to reset the adjustments after I
shoot and move on...using the optical viewfinder on the E10, it doesn't always
show what the adjustments are...though it does save me from using the LCD and
wearing the batteries down.
The histogram can be adjusted in software after the fact, so I take the
approach that I'm shooting color transparency film and try to adjust for good
highlights and juice the shadows up on the computer.
argon
Received on Fri Jun 11 08:16:50 2004
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