How to Get Professional Photos from your XSI

By now you’ve started to take some photos with your XSi, but you may be asking yourself if the photo appears a little soft or flat in appearance.  If this is the case you are not alone, but you are not without options to correct this.   

A key aspect of beautiful, stunning, and professional photos is the clarity in which the photo is able to replicate details of your subject matter.  When the photos are blurry, or flat, they just dont have the clarity required to match the professional appearance.  

One way to improve your photos, technique, and focus accuracy in one easy move is to use any available ambiant light to your advantage. In the photo below, I have the choice to shoot facing the sun, or have the sun over my shoulder to help light up my scene, subjects, and provide better light for greater focus accuracy.

sun lighting the subject from behind the camera

By thinking of where our main “key” lighting is coming from, we can efficiently use it to provide faster shutter speeds, better focus accuracy, and add to more dynamic contrasts in our scene. Compare the above image to this image below where the lighting is now coming from the side. We still have great focus accuracy, dynamic contrast, and lighting. I am selecting how to use light to add drama to my capture.

sun to left

Finally notice in this last shot, as the sun has set we no longer have strong contrast to help provide interesting contrast changes and lighting. It changes the feeling of the photo from dynamic to a flat image.

sun has set

The reason photos are blurry, flat, or not very dynamic is due to a few factors.

1) inadequate lighting – low lighting, hard to distinguish subject matter from surrounding environment. Colors are flat, image lacks pop, often times when its past dusk and there is not enough available sun light. Can be rectified by the use of external lighting such as flash.

2) Poor focus – focus can be affected by inadequate light, the focus systems rely on adequate light to differentiate contrast. The focus system focuses via contrast phase detection, so adequate contrast and light is necessary for accurate focus.

3) Subject matter or camera shake blur – when an inadequate shutter speed is used, it will be hard to hand hold the camera or freeze subjects that are moving fast. Fast shutter speeds are required for action and hand held photography. For action / sport photography, a shutter speed of 1/500th or greater is almost always necessary.

Noise Reduction: When shooting in JPG mode, your camera will likely be applying noise reduction. Noise reduction softens digital noise introduced from high ISO sensitivy or underexposure of photos. Shooting in raw enables greater control in the balance between noise reduction and image sharpness. The end user can process the RAW file as they see fit.

Shooting in JPG: 
If you are shooting in JPG, refer to my previous explanation of Picture Styles.  These picture styles are user selectable options which change the sharpness, contrast, and other characteristics of your photos in camera on the fly while taking the photos.  When shooting a JPG, the camera captures a raw file – compresses the data and processes it using its in camera algorithms and then discards the raw file saving only the JPG.  Therefore JPG’s are already compressed, edited, and not extremely capable of being altered in post processing.  You will want to maximize the results of your cameras inbody software if you are going to use it. 

All of the picture styles provide some sharpening, but none of them provide adequate sharpening.  You can create custom picture styles using the XSi.  Go to the picture style selection menu select a custom setting and  set the sharp levels  much higher – upwards of 5-7.  Bump contrast one or two levels as well and play with the camera take shots – adjust the settings based on the results you are achieving.  Whatever you figure out, I am confident that increased sharpness levels will bring about much more of the look you are attempting to achieve. 

Additionally, you can continue to use the existing picture styles without creating your own custom selections.  You can then import your photos into the computer and use Canon’s supplied “Digital Photo Professional” software.  Open the image with DPP and you will see a few options you can change, one being sharpness.  Bump the sharpness way up from 2-3  to  7-10  and select based on your preference.  This is an easy and great way to fix your jpg’s if you dont mind sifting through each file. 

Photoshop tutorial on sharpening your XSi images will be the same as sharpening your Raw files.  Please see the intermediate/advanced user section for these more complicated steps.

Shooting Raw: Refer to Intermediate/Advanced users section.