How do I get better colours?

Question

I have recently bought my first DSLR. I live in dreary Great Britain so the weather isn't amazing and pictures can look a bit dull. This morning there was an amazing orange sky at sunrise and wanted to take a picture but when it came out, the oranges looked nowhere as good as in reality.
I hear filters can help define colours, brighten them, darken them and make them a lot more powerful.
Which filters would you recommend for my Canon 450D (Rebel XSi if you're American)

Thanx in advance

Answer 1

There are a number of things you can do:



1) On page one of your menu you should see a option called "parameters" you can tweak the saturation and contrast.



2) Change the WB. A daylight balanced shot generally looks cooler. Use cloudy or shade WB profiles to get a warmer image.



3) Attach a circular polariser (CPL, Cir-PL) to your lens. This can have the effect of saturating the blues in the sky, and giving a little extra contrast. Be careful with uneven polarisation. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ciao_chao/3853306529/ shot with CPL mainly for control over the water.



4) Correct exposure and use of HDR imaging. At sunrise and sunset situations try not to shoot towards the sun because you will have exposure issues. You can consider using Auto-exposure bracketing to get three images to merge into HDR to try and preserve both shadow and highlight detail. If in doubt underexpose a little and drag highlights out. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ciao_chao/4246383902/ example of a gentle HDR.



5) Use of Graduated Neutral Density filters (ND grad). This has the effect of increasing the dynamic range of an image by reducing the brightness of certain areas. Good when you have bright sky and poorly lit ground.



6) Shoot RAW and do correction in post processing. If you make sure you don't burn out the sky you shouldn't loose any detail. You can change the WB the saturation and even the hue of the different tones. You can drag out underexposed dark areas so it looks more like how you saw it. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ciao_chao/4056512786/ this image needed a lot of dark tones correction to get the pavement to show up at all.



7) Shoot colour negative (print) film. Film has much better highlight range, and therefore you can hold a lot more highlight detail when shooting towards the sun. Also no worries about dirt on sensor, or damaging it. You get a new one every click of the shutter.



Edit - this was shot in cloudy WB http://www.flickr.com/photos/ciao_chao/4344079027/

Answer 2

I also live in, as you put it, dreary GB, but I dont have that trouble.



Get to know your camera and take it off AUTO.

Before you start spending money on filters, find out exactly what your camera is capable of.



Someone has already said about white balance.

90% of the time, mine is either set on cloudy or shade.



Shoot in RAW if you have editing software to deal with it.



Join (totally free) http://www.redbubble.com/ then you can join the following groups which will be a great help to you.



http://www.redbubble.com/groups/canon-450d

http://www.redbubble.com/groups/rebel-group

http://www.redbubble.com/groups/for-the-love-of-canon



If you are interested, message me and I will send you a link to my profile.



Hope this helps.

Answer 3

Post-fix in Photoshop or a similar program (GIMP is free) It's a lot cheaper and easier than filters and the like.

Answer 4

Blue

Answer 5

apart from using cokin type filters which really effect exposure times, i shoudl think most folks use photoshop or paintshop pro to fix their images...



England is dull and grey / brown at the moment, its winter... and remember, where you meter the scene, effects how it looks... but, you can fix it in photoshop... thats what its for..



and manually, to boost colour saturation, i would underexpose the shot by half a stop, sometimes a full stop... but this was in teh 35mm days... these days i dont use a darkroom and have a 22 inch monitor...

Answer 6

Polarisers are good. Make the sky pop.



A good bet might be having a fiddle with the white balance if you are shooting in RAW. If you arn't then shoot in RAW then fiddle with the whtie balance.

Answer 7

Try a circular polarizer.



Most of the world expects nothing but dreary B&W's from the UK this time of year, glad that you captured at least something of a ray of hope. :}