Camera manual settings and post editing example thread

[Chew Toy McCoy]

This is more of a request from me at this time. I'm camera manual settings ignorant but curious. Same with post editing but I can smash a preset with the best of them. I thought it would be helpful for knowledgeable people to post a photo and then after explain what they did with the manual settings or in post to get the final result. If not something obvious maybe explain why you did it for what result. "I set the aperture to f/2.8" I have no idea what that means. Explain.

Learnin' shit!

 

[rdrr]

This is more of a request from me at this time. I'm camera manual settings ignorant but curious. Same with post editing but I can smash a preset with the best of them. I thought it would be helpful for knowledgeable people to post a photo and then after explain what they did with the manual settings or in post to get the final result. If not something obvious maybe explain why you did it for what result. "I set the aperture to f/2.8" I have no idea what that means. Explain.

Learnin' shit!

I am only responding because the one bit of advice I can give you is... What you learn from the responses, use it daily (even if it is a crappy photo), or if you are like me, the brain tends to forget it. And you are back to square one.

Waiting with as the responses come in from @Katbel, @Eric, and, @Cmaier come in. Just to name a few.

 

[rdrr]

@Chew Toy McCoy

One person I stumbled across on YouTube was Simon d'Entremont. He is a wildlife photographer who has a lot of how-to tutorials on manual settings and editing raw photos. Depending on your style of photography, some of those concepts carry over from genre to genre.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

@Chew Toy McCoy

One person I stumbled across on YouTube was Simon d'Entremont. He is a wildlife photographer who has a lot of how-to tutorials on manual settings and editing raw photos. Depending on your style of photography, some of those concepts carry over from genre to genre.

Cool. I'll have check it out. I used to follow some photography content creators but they seemed to be more about high end gear and for people who already know what they are doing for the most part.

 

[Eric]

The thing is that it's really subjective depending on the photographer and their taste, most will admit to never editing the exact same photo the same way twice as well. It's an art in its own right that takes years to really get good at.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

The thing is that it's really subjective depending on the photographer and their taste, most will admit to never editing the exact same photo the same way twice as well. It's an art in its own right that takes years to really get good at.

In my case I'm coming from a place of not knowing shit from shit. So not really looking for the perfect picture or perfect example, more an example of "I adjusted this and it had this effect on the photo and why I thought that was a good idea".

 

[Cmaier]

welp, as far as in-camera settings, here’s an example of a portrait I took. I set the camera to f2.0, in order to blur the background (smaller numbers keep a shallower slice of the image in-focus). if you look at the path in the lower right corner, you can see how it drifts from in- to out-of-focus as you move farther away from the camera. “Bokeh” (which is more or less fancy talk for “blurry background”) has been the trend in these sort of photos for awhile, but in my case I just wanted to make sure that the cluttered background - trees, streetlight poles, signs, etc.) didn’t distract from my daughter.

This was taken with a 55mm lens, which isn’t ideal for these sorts of photos because you have to get pretty close to the subject - typically you’d use something like a 90mm lens for portraits. But in this case the original photo was actually landscape, with ⅔ of the image off to the right. This was because this was for use in a photo book and I wanted to match the aspect ratio of the page and put text over the right 1/3 of the image. So this is a crop.

As far as editing, I was working from a RAW, so I had to tinker around with the color. She’s wearing a colorful top, so it was a bit of a trade off between skin tone and the bright colors.

 

[Alli]

I just wanted to make sure that the cluttered background - trees, streetlight poles, signs, etc.) didn’t distract from my daughter.

And she's adorable!

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

welp, as far as in-camera settings, here’s an example of a portrait I took. I set the camera to f2.0, in order to blur the background (smaller numbers keep a shallower slice of the image in-focus). if you look at the path in the lower right corner, you can see how it drifts from in- to out-of-focus as you move farther away from the camera. “Bokeh” (which is more or less fancy talk for “blurry background”) has been the trend in these sort of photos for awhile, but in my case I just wanted to make sure that the cluttered background - trees, streetlight poles, signs, etc.) didn’t distract from my daughter.

This was taken with a 55mm lens, which isn’t ideal for these sorts of photos because you have to get pretty close to the subject - typically you’d use something like a 90mm lens for portraits. But in this case the original photo was actually landscape, with ⅔ of the image off to the right. This was because this was for use in a photo book and I wanted to match the aspect ratio of the page and put text over the right 1/3 of the image. So this is a crop.

As far as editing, I was working from a RAW, so I had to tinker around with the color. She’s wearing a colorful top, so it was a bit of a trade off between skin tone and the bright colors.

View attachment 36722

Great picture and explanation. On phones there are I guess what you would call presets that could get some of the similar results but its good to know how you can get more targeted and refined results.

Also appreciate you sharing having a photo book in mind. As of late I sometimes consider what I would do with a photo outside having it just sit on my phone or a web page. I'm also learning the hard way that what looks good on a screen may not fit well when printed or put in a common size frame. For that reason I have some interest in making custom frames and mats but then usually conclude I already have enough hobbies on my plate without going down that rabbit hole of time and expense.

 

[Citysnaps]

Years ago I started getting interested in photography thinking I wanted to be like Ansel Adams and shooting landscapes. So…. My first real camera was an Arca Swiss 4x5 film camera along with a sturdy tripod. The camera and lenses were totally manual.

While my interest in landscape photography was short lived, it did teach me well learning about lens focal length, aperture, and exposure time. I have no regrets starting that way.

I quickly learned that landscape photography wasn’t for me. And after looking at photo books by Garry Winogrand, Robert Frank, Richard Avedon, Diane Arbus, Elliot Erwitt, Dorothea Lange, and others, I knew urban and people photography was what rang my bells.

So... since then it has been dSLRs, mirrorless cams, and iPhones. And shoot all the time in automatic mode after picking a lens focal length (usually 35 or 50mm) and aperture in RAW mode. 35mm allows me to get the right amount of environmental context for an interesting background when photographing people. You just have to be mindful of shooting too close to your subject, which can result in them having large hands, noses, hats, etc. That's called perspective distortion. So, I step back a few feet to make sure that doesn’t happen.

No regrets on the above, it works well for what I like to shoot. Which is mostly hitting up strangers on the streets in different neighborhoods in San Francisco for some conversation and *making* (not taking) a few portraits. That lead to doing a few photo projects I published.

The nice thing is shooting in RAW and post processing in Lightroom gives me a great deal of flexibility for getting the look that interests me. It’s kind of like shooting with a manual camera, but still having a decent amount of flexibility getting the look that I want after the photo is made.

 

[Eric]

Here is a basic example, I also found one shot at f2.8, particularly good if you are in low light or want to add background blur (bokeh) to your photos.

This is what the shot looks like coming right out of the camera. Shooting for the highlights, meaning we need to ensure the brightest parts of the scene are viewable and not blown out/over exposed. We can always recover light from the shadows, but if highlights are blown you will not be able to get anything back out of it.

Also shot in RAW because it contains way more data than a standard .JPG file. No in camera settings applied at all. Standard for professional photographers who do their own editing.

This is the result, I left just the basic sliders up here so you can see, while I'm using Adobe Lightroom Classic the technique is the same and widely used by most photographers. Raising the highlights and dropping the shadows is a standard, then add whites, blacks, white balance, and contrast to taste.

There's a little more here that goes into masking here but this gives the general idea.

 

[Katbel]

This is more of a request from me at this time. I'm camera manual settings ignorant but curious. Same with post editing but I can smash a preset with the best of them. I thought it would be helpful for knowledgeable people to post a photo and then after explain what they did with the manual settings or in post to get the final result. If not something obvious maybe explain why you did it for what result. "I set the aperture to f/2.8" I have no idea what that means. Explain.

Learnin' shit!

What camera do you have? Which photos are you thinking to take: nature, animal, portraits?

This one has been taken RAW, in a bright light, f5, ISO 125, exposure 1/200 s.
Beside cropping it, no other adjustments were necessary.

 

[Katbel]

Another example I posted today

This one has a low light so I had to adjust ISO 400 aperture f6.3 and a fast shutter speed 1/1000 because a bird can fly away faster than your time to set up the camera. But being on a branch and waiting for me to go away and get to the nectar I had time... For this one I went manual, and took several shots because I liked the bokeh effect of the light filtrating through the branches but for other flying birds I saved a setting with a shutter speed of 1/4000 on a customizable camera button .

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

What camera do you have? Which photos are you thinking to take: nature, animal, portraits?

View attachment 36748
This one has been taken RAW, in a bright light, f5, ISO 125, exposure 1/200 s.
Beside cropping it, no other adjustments were necessary.

Using an iPhone 16 for now but I’m also assuming the iPhone will take a good all purpose photo by default but that’s maybe not the shit you are looking to get. As an example I started another thread stating the default setting for night photos tends to look like a night vision camera trying to get as much detail in low light as possible but that may not be the picture you are trying to get. Maybe you want more black and dark tones where there is less light as opposed to it making it look like the photo was looking like it was taken at dawn instead of midnight when you took the photo.

I was shocked to find out that some night scenes in movies are shot in daylight but are changed to night in post.

 

[Katbel]

Using an iPhone 16 for now but I’m also assuming the iPhone will take a good all purpose photo by default but that’s maybe not the shit you are looking to get. As an example I started another thread stating the default setting for night photos tends to look like a night vision camera trying to get as much detail in low light as possible but that may not be the picture you are trying to get. Maybe you want more black and dark tones where there is less light as opposed to it making it look like the photo was looking like it was taken at dawn instead of midnight when you took the photo.

I was shocked to find out that some night scenes in movies are shot in daylight but are changed to night in post.

Phones in general are getting much better at taking photos but there are few things still impossible for them to shoot well or at all, like a good bokeh , depth of field, lens versatility, image quality etc beside the price.
The pros are the iPhone is pretty much always with you while a camera requires a bag, lenses, sometimes tripod and the willingness to carry it if you don't have a specific purpose.
You can easily find some comparisons taken with iPhone and mirrorless cameras
Here's one https://www.howtogeek.com/iphone-vs-digital-slr-how-does-an-iphone-stack-against-a-real-camera/

 

[Katbel]

I had the time to do a comparison , using today's great light
First one taken with iPhone 15Pro in macro mode :
the iPhone is good at shooting the sun, slightly slanted this one , I guess there is some in camera adjustments, I read somewhere
Aperture f2.2, Exposure 1/1277, focal length 2.22mm

Second : same subject shot with a SonyA7R and a macro lens 90mm
Aperture f5.6, Exposure 1/400, ISO 100

Third one
Still a SonyA7R and a macro lens 90mm
Aperture f5.6, Exposure 1/800, ISO 100

 

[Cmaier]

I had the time to do a comparison , using today's great light
First one taken with iPhone 15Pro in macro mode :
the iPhone is good at shooting the sun, slightly slanted this one , I guess there is some in camera adjustments, I read somewhere
Aperture f2.2, Exposure 1/1277, focal length 2.22mm

View attachment 36780

Second : same subject shot with a SonyA7R and a macro lens 90mm
Aperture f5.6, Exposure 1/400, ISO 100
View attachment 36773

Third one
Still a SonyA7R and a macro lens 90mm
Aperture f5.6, Exposure 1/800, ISO 100
View attachment 36774

iphone has a real tendency to compress the dynamic range (and of course depth of field is completely different in the iphone vs sony shots). Lovely photos from the A7R, though.

 

[Katbel]

iphone has a real tendency to compress the dynamic range (and of course depth of field is completely different in the iphone vs sony shots). Lovely photos from the A7R, though.

Thanks, I hope you got some of the clarifications you were looking for .