# New Camera - Request Opinion on Photo Comparison



## unirdna (Jan 22, 2004)

I bought a new digital camera, and I'd like your opinion on which takes a better photo. Now, I know that tweaking of the settings on either could improve the photo, but I still think that such a poll could aid me (so, thanks for voting ). 

Both cameras were set to Shutter Priority 1/20 sec with the flash turned off. All other settings were on "auto".

Once I get some votes in, I'll discuss which photo was captured by which camera (for those interested).

And please don't critique my tank . I just got back from a plant swap, and the aquascape is in a "thinking" stage.

Thanks for your input. Ted.


*Photo #1:*












*Photo #2:*


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## awrieger (May 12, 2005)

Photo 2. The colours just seem to be a tad more vibrant and brighter. The details are a little sharper as well, eg the fine leaves on the stem plant to the right just to the left of where the light's flaring at the surface

Can I guess?? #2 is your new camera, and it's a Canon Powershot! Maybe an S2 IS?


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## unirdna (Jan 22, 2004)

awrieger said:


> Can I guess?? #2 is your new camera, and it's a Canon Powershot! Maybe an S2 IS?


Hehe. I've seen your work station photos...all the fancy toys on your desk - you are a techhead, and you can't wait, can you?  Tomorrow (whoops - I mean, later today), I will pull back the curtain.


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## messy_da_legend (Feb 16, 2006)

definitely photo 2


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## Anti-Pjerrot (Jan 20, 2006)

photo 2 - some of the back details are better.


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## ginnie5 (Jan 9, 2003)

hmmm goping against the group here and saying #1. #2 looks a little blown out to me.


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## RoseHawke (Mar 10, 2004)

I'm the same, photo #2 looks like more of the highlights are blown, although overall it is a crisper picture. In the end though, it's easier to fix sharpness than it is a blown highlight, so I went with #1.


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## turbomkt (Jun 9, 2004)

I'll agree that #1 is the better picture specifically because of the blown highlights.

And I will bet money I know exactly what camera you used on each picture


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## Pseud (Oct 2, 2005)

Photo 1.

Number 2 is washed out.


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## bastalker (Dec 8, 2004)

I dunno....You can see the pearling a lil better in the back right hand side of tank *#2*:wink:


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## jasonh (Oct 26, 2003)

#1 is better. #2 is oversaturated and the highlights are blasted more than on #1.


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## Ryzilla (Oct 29, 2005)

I will have to go with #2. I am not going to judge this based on whether or not one photo looks more exposed then the other. But #1 seems to be a bit choppy around the edges I cant judge colors because I I have no Idea if both pics were taken under the same manual settings. I would have to go with #2 only on the fact that the lines are cleaner.


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## Sorenweis (May 5, 2005)

Photo 1 is definitly better - much more even and there is obvious purple fringing in photo 2.


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## unirdna (Jan 22, 2004)

Thank you everyone for your votes and comments roud:. I'm completely wowed that a few of you know digital cameras well enough to make predictions. I guess you can develop an eye for detail for such a thing....impressive nonetheless.

And the answer is......:

Photo#1 is my NEW camera:
Canon Powershot S80 
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2005_reviews/s80.html

Photo#2 is my OLD camera:
Olympus C-5050 Zoom
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2002_reviews/c5050.html

The C-5050 is still a very popular camera because it is still the most versatile Olympus ever made. And, in truth, the C-5050 is probably capable of taking a better photo than the Canon because you can tweak the heck out of everything on that baby. Alas, my (trial and error) photography skills seem to have peaked. 

In truth, I prefer photo 1 as well. It seems that different shades of green are better pronounced. But, I do hear exactly what those who prefer #2 are saying about the vividness.

So, here's my _real_ reason for buying the new Canon S80. It has nothing to do with planted tanks, so if you are bored by other subjects, stop reading now . The Canon is a bit smaller and more compact than the Olympus, but the underwater housing is much much smaller (probably 75-80% less volume displaced). I am a freediver, which means I don't use scuba tanks, and lugging the C-5050 down to 30m and back gets a bit tiring. So, this new Canon will be much more streamlined. The second reason was because of the video the Canon is capable of taking (1024x768, 15fps or 640x480, 30fps in Motion JPEG format). I like to capture underwater video, but camcorder options are too expensive and bulky. Here's a shot of me with the Olympus C-5050 in its housing.

Back on topic . Again thanks everyone. And feel free to start/continue discussion, or ask me any questions.

The C-5050 will be going up on eBay later this afternoon


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## Betowess (Dec 9, 2004)

Ooh, Ted ninjaed me...

Well on my Dell 20" Ultrasharp LCD, photo 1. Highlights are blown out a little bit in photo 2. But changing the shutter speed to a tiny bit faster would probably correct that. I'll look at work on my Lacie CRT, but I bet it will look like this too.
But what I like in #2 is I can see more of the mid tones, which is why the highlights are probably blown out as well. Kind of a toss up... They both look pretty good. The tank looks great, oops... not suppose to critique.


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## unirdna (Jan 22, 2004)

Betowess said:


> Ooh, Ted ninjaed me...


HiiiiiYa :hihi:.

BTW folks, could someone give me a brief explanation of what it means for a photo to be "washed out".


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## Betowess (Dec 9, 2004)

I'm going to guess that when they said washed out, they were referring to what photogs traditionally called "blown out", or going "nuclear" in digital parlance.


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## awrieger (May 12, 2005)

Well, I got the Canon Powershot bit right, but the wrong picture! I meant pic #1 !!! Ha! Typo!! lol! 

The reason I picked the second pic as your new Powershot is because I just got one too! The difference between it's richer colours and brighter pics compared to my old Pentax Optio is very similar to your photo #2 vs #1 in my case.


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## jasonh (Oct 26, 2003)

unirdna said:


> HiiiiiYa :hihi:.
> 
> BTW folks, could someone give me a brief explanation of what it means for a photo to be "washed out".



Sure. When it's "washed" or "blasted," it means that the highlights are too bright. Look at the large-leafed plant in the middle left (sorry, don't know what it is). In photo 1, you can see more of the ridges on the leaves than you can in photo 2. That is because the highlights are too intense. more stuff gets bumped up to 255 (white in RGB), so instead of seeing detail with some white highlights, you see a big white leaf. Hope that explains it well enough....


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## unirdna (Jan 22, 2004)

jasonh said:


> Hope that explains it well enough....


A very good explanation - Thank you.


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## hoffboy (Feb 20, 2005)

Photo 1 seems to have a better black point. For those of you who don't know what that means, look in the foreground grass. The black there is darker than in photo 2, which yields better overall contrast. In Photoshop you can choose white and black points for a given photo, which, IMO, is one of the simplest things you can do to make photos pop. This really helps with blown out photos because you can 'turn down' the white, but there's a tradeoff in terms of overall contrast.

I've been thinking about light diffusion methods for taking better tank shots, since the plants at the top of many tank photos are blown out. Perhaps some metal mesh, like from a screen door, might work, but I have yet to experiment with what effect this would have at the bottom of the tank.

Oh, if you're wondering, I select white/black/(and also grey or midtone) values in the 'levels' and 'curves' dialog in Photoshop. For those who haven't tried it, you should check it out. You'll be amazed. Also check out 'unsharp mask' as a way to quickly reduce noise and sharpen your photos.

Note of bias: I used to work on the Photoshop team at Adobe, so I naturally use Photoshop over other apps that might have similar controls.


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## Betowess (Dec 9, 2004)

hoffboy said:


> I've been thinking about light diffusion methods for taking better tank shots, since the plants at the top of many tank photos are blown out. Perhaps some metal mesh, like from a screen door, might work, but I have yet to experiment with what effect this would have at the bottom of the tank.
> 
> Oh, if you're wondering, I select white/black/(and also grey or midtone) values in the 'levels' and 'curves' dialog in Photoshop. For those who haven't tried it, you should check it out. You'll be amazed. Also check out 'unsharp mask' as a way to quickly reduce noise and sharpen your photos.
> 
> Note of bias: I used to work on the Photoshop team at Adobe, so I naturally use Photoshop over other apps that might have similar controls.


Scenic photographers regularly use a gradient filter (or gradual grey filter), which is darker at the top (or bottom depending how you orient it). These filters fade to no transmission reduction about a quarter to a third of the way from the top. I think Cokin make some, but they are a bit spendy. The idea is that often the sky is too bright for a scene where the foreground is darker. Therefore if one can tone down the brightness at the sky, you can get a good exposure for both the lower landscape and the sky. They work great but are not cheap to buy at $75 to $100. Plus they require a filter holder such as the Cokin Pro Z system which is another $75 tp $100 for the ring and adapter sized to your lens.


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## hoffboy (Feb 20, 2005)

Betowess said:


> Scenic photographers regularly use a gradient filter (or gradual grey filter), which is darker at the top (or bottom depending how you orient it). These filters fade to no transmission reduction about a quarter to a third of the way from the top. I think Cokin make some, but they are a bit spendy. The idea is that often the sky is too bright for a scene where the foreground is darker. Therefore if one can tone down the brightness at the sky, you can get a good exposure for both the lower landscape and the sky. They work great but are not cheap to buy at $75 to $100. Plus they require a filter holder such as the Cokin Pro Z system which is another $75 tp $100 for the ring and adapter sized to your lens.


VERY interesting. Thanks for the tip! This is giving me ideas involving transparent channel gradients in Photoshop. I'm going to do some experimenting. You may have just put me onto a cheap and fast way to correct for this uneven brightness that many of us struggle with.


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## cobra (Feb 4, 2005)

hoffboy said:


> VERY interesting. Thanks for the tip! This is giving me ideas involving transparent channel gradients in Photoshop. I'm going to do some experimenting. You may have just put me onto a cheap and fast way to correct for this uneven brightness that many of us struggle with.


You can't recover blown highlights in photoshop. Like somebody mentioned above once the highlights are to level 255 (pure white) the detail is gone in all three color channels-RGB. With any photo, the main photo edit I would suggest starting with is a levels tweak using a 16 bit levels adjustment/clip. just move the sliders to each side of the histogram till it just touches the outer edges. Then move the center slider to adjust the mid tones to your liking.

If you have PS CS2 you can take several pics at different exposures. Then you can do HDR photo merge in order to get the shadows, midtones and highlights where you want them. All you need is a tripod and cooperation from the fish to stay in one place :fish: throughout the photo session  This process is like using a graduated ND filter for a film camera (most typical film camera filters don't work well with digital cameras). Another great step for avoiding the propensity of digital blown highlights is to shoot in RAW, edit the digital file as a RAW, then convert to the file type of your choosing. BTW Unirdna, nothing wrong with any of your digital cameras that you use. All digital cameras from the cheapest point and shoot to the medium format digital camera backs that cost tens of thousands of dollars have this inherit quality of blowing highlights. It's the nature of the technology.

G


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## fjpod (Mar 11, 2006)

Photo 1 is a little more saturated. The colors are deeper, and the highlights are less washed out. It's technically a better photo. Camera 2 could be adjusted to do the same thing.


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## Kayakbabe (Sep 4, 2005)

What is cool about most digital cameras today.. they have a builtin ND nuetral density filter kind of tool... Lots of SLRs have it too. My Minolta 35mm does. I just set the camera for an exposure of -1... and it acts like a ND filter. My Pentax digital has it too. when I use it there is more data int he highlight areas of the digital images to play with in photoshop (or another image editor). Shooting digital is way different than film.. film would capture way more info that I could tweak in the development and printing process. But as long as I know what the digital camera is capable of.. I can get just as good photos.. probably better with the digital becuase I don't have the expense of film and development so I can take way more pictures at many different camera settings. I can afford to experiment more and turn around time on the images is almost instant instead of hours or days. 

Anway... that said... lighting is really important.
I've had problem with the top lighting overpowering stuff too. I took a tip from AGA photoshoot session (pics of Mr. Amano shooting pics of his own tanks) and it works. Get a peice of that black foam core.. it's maybe 4 bucks at Hobby Lobby. and I put that at the top of my tank so that I don't get overspill (not sure what to call it) of light from over the top of my tank into my lens. I has really helped cut down on that glare at the top of the photos. And even though I'm not shading the light down to the plants... it has reduced the highlights on those too. I think it has to do with angle of incidence of ambient light overly sensitising the CCD in the camera. Cut down on some of that incident light.. and you get more of what you are aiming at. 

You could try a big black peice of paper or cloth too, but i'd look for something that has a flat matte surface on it. The foam core works for me.. I tape it to the front top of my tank with a peice of scotch tape, then just let it lean back against the cables that the light rig hangs over the tank, when my husband isn't around to hold onto.


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## unirdna (Jan 22, 2004)

Great discussion, everyone roud:. Please take this thread as far as it will go. I'm soaking it up.


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## Solace (Feb 12, 2006)

I would suggest using the M mode for manual, opening up your f stop to about 6.3 or 7.1, setting ISO to 200 and trying a shutter speed of about 1/20th

That will give something like this:
http://www.guildsolutions.com/aquaria/Aquarium-20gal-3-26-2006-0001.jpg

It is a little grainy, but not too awful. 


If you have good tripod, try ISO 50, 1/5th exposure, F 5.6.

http://www.guildsolutions.com/aquaria/Aquarium-20gal-3-26-2006-0002.jpg

I cant say these are perfect settings all around -- but they work with the Powershot A85. I generally take pictures with the Digital Rebel SLR however. The reasons i give these suggestions is to get rid of the wash at the top of the aquarium. The higher the F stop, the more depth you will get and you will need a slower shutter, but it will get rid of the wash.

Getting rid of all of the wash is going to be next to impossible unless you have a very good camera, very bright lights coming from multiple angles and higher than what we generally use. But you can eliminate some of it with the higher F stop and slower shutter. 

A friend of mine is a professional sports photographer and he's been teaching me how to use the cameras over the past few months and I must say that even the very first lesson he gave me was to throw away the 'automatic' mode unless your outside shooting family pictures and dont have time to adjust the settings to your desires. Learning what the settings did and how they affected my pictures taught me a lot. 

Im still a n00bie and my pictures still pale when compared with others, but I am getting there I beleive.


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## unirdna (Jan 22, 2004)

Solace said:


> If you have good tripod, try ISO 50, 1/5th exposure, F 5.6.


Solace, I tried this, and it worked very well. Maybe the best photo I've taken roud:. Thanks for the advice and the link.


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## Betowess (Dec 9, 2004)

BTW, a gradient filter doesn't really need the Cokin series filter holder if one is shooting with a tripod. Actually, no camera needs one. You can just hold up the filter in front of the lens during the exposure. So that can cut down over 1/2 of the cost, for the perfectionist who wants to buy one. And remember, to the human eye the highlights at the top of the aquarium are still darn near "blown out". That would happen with both film or a DSLR, although film had (note the past tense) a greater exposure latitude. 

A neutral density is really just exposure compensation. Not really needed with today's cameras. And you can shoot with auto exposure just fine. I do it every day. You just need to manually adjust the exposure compensation. Shoot aperature priority to select depth of field, then adjust the exposure compensation plus or neg. until you get a sweet histogram (or properly exposed image).


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## unirdna (Jan 22, 2004)

I'm so excited! I've been experimenting with all of the advice and recommendation posted, and I'm taking some of the best aquarium photos ever!!!

Here's a [relatively] high resolution shot I took today - awesome!

https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/bier/AGA 2006-03-26 012.jpg?uniq=-ckag56

I used no photoediting software (other than cropping the photo) - not even any brightness or contrast work. That's a "pure" shot from the camera.


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## Solace (Feb 12, 2006)

unirdna said:


> I'm so excited! I've been experimenting with all of the advice and recommendation posted, and I'm taking some of the best aquarium photos ever!!!
> 
> Here's a [relatively] high resolution shot I took today - awesome!
> 
> ...


Even the pros with $20,000 in equipment will photoedit a bit. 

IDK If you saw this pic of mine, but this is one of my best.

http://www.guildsolutions.com/aquaria/3-26-06/CRW_0002.jpg


Keep up the good work and keep playing around with the manual settings, it only gets better. 

lower F stop = more concrete area of focus, blurry other places
higher F stop = more wide area of focus

Dont always judge by the light meter in the viewfinder, its not always accurate at what you are aiming at!

Strike a pose, take several differnt exposure settings and see what works the best, write it down and go back to it the next time.


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## MiSo (Oct 26, 2005)

#1 is definately better

i dont light the brightness in the second one.


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## jasonh (Oct 26, 2003)

hmm. this discussion has got me itching to buy a new camera sometime soon. May have to hold off a bit for the CO2 system...Right now I just have a crappy 2MP Nikon that is actually not even mine, it's my parents', lol. I guess I should probably return that to them one of these days. Stupid hobbies and expensive gadgets :icon_roll


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## hoffboy (Feb 20, 2005)

One quick thing to add to this great thread. File under 'basic advice that's easy to forget' : when using a tripod, also use the shutter delay timer. This helps minimize vibration caused by your finger triggering the shutter button.


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## unirdna (Jan 22, 2004)

hoffboy said:


> File under 'basic advice that's easy to forget' : when using a tripod, also use the shutter delay timer. This helps minimize vibration caused by your finger triggering the shutter button.


Now that one, I knew . And I'm so thankful that my new camera allows adjusting the delay to as little as one second. The set, 10 seconds on my old one just killed me :hihi:


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