To keep things on topic...

[Brooky]

This is a horrible picture of my nephews Lake Trout. Taken with a point and shoot. But if taken with a manual camera, what settings would be used to get nice detail on the Lake Trout, and still not have a washed out background?

[Dbl]

You have a couple of choices. Expose for the fish and the background will be blown out. You have high glare from the water in the back and camera sensors just do not have the tonal range or also called dynamic range. A camera is capable of seeing roughly 6 to 10 f-stops of dynamic range. The human eye can see as much 24 f-stops!

One way to over come this is expose for the background and use light (a flash for example) to expose the fish properly. A reflector or even a white t-shirt will help greatly.

Canon tries to help the issue by using highlight tone priority which retains extra detail in the highlights essentially by underexposing the image. The image is actually captured at a lower ISO, and then the darker areas of the image are digitally lifted to bring their brightness to the same level they would be at without highlight tone enabled. This can cause color shifts and unpredictable results though, so I am not a huge fan of it. Manual control always gives me the results I want!

That is the technology we have to work with, but of course that will change in the future. Cameras keep getting better and better.

[MuleShack]

Could try to turn around and have fish facing the sun instead of the camera facing the sun...photography 101.

Depending on your camera and software, there is a blending capabilities in some of the software.

You can take an over exposed picutre (to bring out fish) and an under exposed picture (to bring out background) and then a mid rang exposure (to show the people) and then the software blends the image so that all 3 areas look normal in the photo.

I have never tried it but it is suppose to work pretty slick.

[yakfisher]

Sun more on the front side of the subject and use flash to fill in the shadows. Those changes would help any camera and would have given the P&S a chance. The light angle would be tough for most cameras even in manual mode.

With all that being said, I'm not sure I would have remembered to do any of it after seeing that fish hauled in.

[Brooky]

Thanks guys. Actually none of this advice surprises me. I wasn't even there when the photo was taken, but what a shame to get such a crappy shot of such a great fish. All of my photo worthy fish get put in the livewell to recover, and then the boat is positioned for the sun. For the record, it was a 35 lb. Lake Trout.

[eyeguy 54]

hold the fish closer ;>)

[yakfisher]

That would take a model with longer arms.