Canon 350D – Idiots Guide

Quite true, although I think Paul F may have been referring to comparing photos on his screen from his DSLR directly to the actual prints from his film SLR?

Paul

To be honest, I’ve never compared like for like 35MM vs DSLR photos taken of same subject in same place at same time. I stepped up to my 350D from my old Canon EOS350 and T70 35mm film cameras via a Fuji S6500 “Pro-sumer” digital with 10x zoom.

As a first digicam the Fuji blew me away with it’s sharp colours and pin sharp images, plus a host of operating modes as well as manual. Sure it had a few limitations but nothign too serious, and it overcame my scepticism that digital wa steh way to go. On the back of my results with the S6500 I took the plunge and moved “up” to the EOS 350D, looking forwad to getting back to using a “real camera” and lenses again, only to find that my images were dissapointing – obviously “soft” and with somewhat muted and dull colours, compared to the Fuji. N.B. I have only ever used the 350D in JPEG mode, never tried RAW mode….must do one day.

Comparing 35mm shots from the older Canon film bodies to shots taken (using the same lenses) on the 350D (JPEG) suggested they were generally far less sharp. I have since realised that D-SLR images require a fair degree of post-processing to get the best image for printing – unlike the Fuji images which simply needed a bit of cropping and maybe a colour balance tweak.

As Skymonster says, and something I did not appreciate before buying the 350D, was/is that DSLR images seem to require a good deal of processing, whereas lower end digitals seem to deliver “ready to print” images. Horses for courses I guess – someone using a DSLR is probably more likely to want to “tinker” with the images before displaying/printing them, whereas users of “lower end” cameras simply want to “snap and print”.

Having had my 350D a year now, I finally feel like I’m starting to get the best out of it, though at times I still prefer the convenience of the Fuji – a 10x zoom with no need to carry seperate lenses round with me, a much smaller piece of kit (albeit not quite pocket sized), bright and sharp images, and an interpolated 6Mp image that easily stands being printed out at A4 with little need to slave over a hot laptop afterwards. On a recent business trip to China I took the Fuji to save space, and had forgotten just what a delight it is to use. That said, having learnt how to work on the 350D images then

Oh, and I think the fact that I’m using a 70 – 210mm Canon zoom lens that came as part of my (35mm) 350 kit didn’t help my first results with my 350D – a budget “kit” lens is never going to produce images as sharp as a decent piece of glassware -and Digital just seems to make it’s limitations more obvious.

Moral of the story – make sure you understand just how much post-production work may be required on the images when you consider buying a DSLR! It’s all very good coming home from a day at a museum or airshow with many hundreds of images on the CF cards, but it may take many more hours to sort and process them fit for viewing/printing/display :eek:.

Paul F

ZoomBrowser EX is a terrific program for organising and viewing pictures, but personally I would neve use anything other than my trusty old Photoshop 7 for editing and post-processing. That said, I have also completed our local 14-week course on Photoshop, which is not for the faint-hearted (especially the course I attended – Swedish only!).

Do you have any image editing software at all?

Paul

Hi Paul,

Only what I received with the camera -ZoomBrowser EX

That’s next on my shopping list, what do people generally use – Photoshop?

Cheers
Tim

My first attempt today, only took about 15 pics as I lost the use of my legs after an hour 🙁 – too cold for me

click on the thumbnail below and you can see the rest of the photos

what do you think?

Cheers
Tim

Hi Tim,

I’m not surprised it was too cold. It’s been freezing up here recently!

Your shots are certainly a good start but a very important aspect of aviation photography is post processing, where you edit the shot to make it both technically and artistically as good as is possible. Do you have any image editing software at all?

Paul

Gatwick 25.11.07

My first attempt today, only took about 15 pics as I lost the use of my legs after an hour 🙁 – too cold for me

click on the thumbnail below and you can see the rest of the photos

what do you think?

Cheers
Tim

Canon leaves in-camera images deliberately slightly less sharp by default. You can increase the sharpening that the camera does with a menu option, and it’ll have an effect on jpegs produced by the camera (but not on raw format images, if you start shooting raw).

ALL quality digital images need sharpening, but the amount and type of sharpening varies depending on whether you view on the web or send to a print (typically web images need less sharpening than a print) – hence why Canon does not agressively sharpen images in camera by default, and why relying on the camera settings to sharpen images is not always a good idea – its impossible to de-sharpen an over sharpened image.

Simpistically, do not expect any DSLR to produce images straight out of the camera – there is an expectation that you will do a little bit of tweaking of any you want to use, in PhotoShop on your PC. In reality, 6×4″ prints may be OK but for anything else you really need to learn about the sharpening (and unsharp) tools in Photoshop.

A

Quite true, although I think Paul F may have been referring to comparing photos on his screen from his DSLR directly to the actual prints from his film SLR?

Paul

One other comment – I find that my EOS350D gives “softer” images (i.e. less “sharp”) than I achieved using the same lens(es) on my older Canon 35mm film SLRs – possibly this is simply due to the fact that the PC screen is somewhat larger than a typical 6 x 4 ” enprint, and so shows up the lack of sharpness more readily? Or maybe I just haven’t yet set the 350D correctly – there are so many user settings that you can adjust once you move out of the “Auto” mode.

Canon leaves in-camera images deliberately slightly less sharp by default. You can increase the sharpening that the camera does with a menu option, and it’ll have an effect on jpegs produced by the camera (but not on raw format images, if you start shooting raw).

ALL quality digital images need sharpening, but the amount and type of sharpening varies depending on whether you view on the web or send to a print (typically web images need less sharpening than a print) – hence why Canon does not agressively sharpen images in camera by default, and why relying on the camera settings to sharpen images is not always a good idea – its impossible to de-sharpen an over sharpened image.

Simpistically, do not expect any DSLR to produce images straight out of the camera – there is an expectation that you will do a little bit of tweaking of any you want to use, in PhotoShop on your PC. In reality, 6×4″ prints may be OK but for anything else you really need to learn about the sharpening (and unsharp) tools in Photoshop.

A

Update

JUR – Thanks for the link – certainly very interesting 🙂

Paul F / PMN – Thanks for advice – will certainly start practicing and will post the results here – lets hope it decent weather this w/e 🙁

Cheers
Tim

One other tip – I find that my EOS350D gives “softer” images (i.e. less “sharp” than I achieved using the same lenses on my older Canon 35mm film SLRs – possibly this is simply due to the fact that the PC screen is somewhat larger than a typical 6 x 4 ” enprint, and so shows up the lack of sharpness more readily?

I don’t think it’s a lack of sharpness as such; more that they’re completely different formats viewed in completely diffferent ways. Consider this: When you look at your PC’s screen it’s made up of pixels which are big enough to see with the naked eye if you get close enough (if it’s a CRT display). The ‘pixels’ in the paper of your film print are microscopic silver halide crystals, so because the individual blocks forming the image are much smaller, the image appears sharper.

thr62… I couldn’t agree with Paul F’s advice more. Learning basically how each shooting mode technically operates, and then practicing really is the best way to improve, and again, it’s so easy in the age of digital. I cheated in a way because I started getting into shooting on film a year or so after starting with DSLR’s, saving me a great deal of money and time! One thing you can always do if you’re not entirely happy with the results you’re getting is post example shots you’ve taken along with the EXIF data. Doing this enables people to see exactly what your camera was doing when you took the shot, so maybe someone coud point you in the direction of settings that are possibly a little more more appropriate for the conditions you were shooting in.

Hope that helps!

Paul

thr62

There’s only one way to find out what works, and thats to get out there and practice.

Fast shutter speeds might seem the obvious choice to help avoid camera shake, but they will “freeze” propellors or rotors, aperture settings may help “focus” or “blur” backgrounds – it depends on the effect you are after – sometimes a background adds to a photo, sometimes it can detract from it.

Sure there are some basic rules of thumb, but ultimately (as in most things)the only way to improve is to get out there and practice.

The good thing with digital technology is that you can take loads of photos at no real cost, apart from a few units of electricty to charge the battery pack, and to run the PC afterwards, andyou can now see the results almost instantly, with no need to wait for films to be developed etc. When I think back to how many rolls of 35mm film I “wasted” when first visiting airports and airshows, I realise how lucky the “digital generation” are. So what if you fire off 200 plus photos and they are all cr@p – just empty/reformat the CF card and you’re ready to try again!

One tip I would suggest is that you don’t try too many different settings in any single practice session, or you will forget what you have tried, and end up wondering how you actually achieved that one good shot – though most modern image manipulation programs can display all the camera settings used when you are viewing the image.

One other comment – I find that my EOS350D gives “softer” images (i.e. less “sharp”) than I achieved using the same lens(es) on my older Canon 35mm film SLRs – possibly this is simply due to the fact that the PC screen is somewhat larger than a typical 6 x 4 ” enprint, and so shows up the lack of sharpness more readily? Or maybe I just haven’t yet set the 350D correctly – there are so many user settings that you can adjust once you move out of the “Auto” mode.

Get out there and get shooting – you’ll soon find out what settings best suit your own taste and style.

Paul F

This could be something for you? http://airfoto.photosite.pl/