Need Help Adjusting a Canon Rebel XTI

[SkunkedAgain]

I'm a Canon guy. I owned a 35mm Canon Elan, have two point-and-shoots, and have had a Canon Rebel XTI for about a year. I like them all, except I've noticed that all of the pictures out of my newer XTI are darker and less vibrant than my point-and-shoots. I almost (and often do) need to use Photoshop to fix every photo.

Is there a camera setting that I can play with to fix this? Would adjusting the sharpness/saturation/contrast/etc help?

[Steve Foss]

Skunked, look in your menu for "picture styles," where you can adjust color, saturation, contrast and sharpness. This allows you to get just the look you want and let the camera do the processing.

It only works in jpeg, because RAW images are completely unaltered by in-camera processing. If you're shooting RAW, you'll have to do some post processing always.

In experimenting, be careful not to overdo the in-camera stuff. I'd take increasing the in-camera alterations a step at a time (taking images and checking them on computer along the way) and stop when you get where you want to be. Increasing in-camera saturation can kill detail if it's taken too far, and too much contrast can blow out your highlights. Too much sharpness also can make a pic look overprocessed.

As for the pics being darker than your point and shoots, that may simply require an adjustment in the camera's exposure. Or it could be that once you make the adjustments mentioned above you'll be happier with the results and they may not appear dark to you. If they're still too dark, check your manual for "exposure compensation."

[SkunkedAgain]

That's what I thought. I started messing with the "picture styles" stuff last night but couldn't get a good assessment of the changes by shooting in my house.

As far as the exposures go, I'm usually shooting in the aperture or shutter speed priority modes. You'd think that they'd get the exposure right but I'll try experimenting by going a stop or two in the other direction.

Thanks Steve. I suppose I could have just asked you some of these things when we were sitting together at the Vermilion FM get-together!

[Steve Foss]

No prob, man. Ask me there, ask me here, it's all good!

I shoot weddings now completely in large jpeg, and I have jpeg picture styles set exactly the same on all three of my bodies so the camera does some of the work, which means I have a lot less to do in post processing.

When we're talking hundreds of images at a time, even one or two minutes per image in pp adds up to hours of time savings at the computer.

With a little experimentation you'll get it dialed right in and will hardly have to lift a finger in pp.

As for the pics being dark, wait to worry about that until you get your picture styles finalized. It may take care of the problem.

[SkunkedAgain]

Thanks. I played with those settings a little bit. I found that I must have previously set it on a custom "user defined" setting. I changed it back to the standard setting and then shot about 400 frames at a wedding. They definitely look a lot better.