That's it! I'm spitting the dummy...

[Gulpa]

I had a really unhappy end of the day yesterday... The day at work was full of stress and worry, but finally the work was over so I took the camera and went for a walk through the City in a bit of night photography exercise.

I spent 3 hours walking around and taking photos (I took almost 300), but when I got home I discovered that I must have accidentally pressed the ISO setting button and set it to 800 95% of the photos turned out crap! Too grainy for anything

To add salt to my wound I realized that my monitor's colors are not calibrated - it's a bit on the dark side. That means that anytime I work on the colors of the image - it's likely that the final result of the image is not how I see it on my screen -> possibly paler or more washed out

I read about this and apparently there are colorimeters or calibrators which are used by professional photographers to calibrate the monitor colors.

Is there a way to calibrate the colors without buying those expensive tools? I am not a pro and I do photography for the love of it - but I'd still like to have "true colors" on my monitor when I work on the photos...



PS: at least I learned, now, the lesson of always checking the camera settings before I start taking photos

[Japaslavian]

There are several inexpensive monitor calibrators that go a good job.
I can recommend the Pantone Huey
http://www.pantone.com/pages/product...ct.aspx?pid=79

Not super high-end professional quality, but it gets the job done well, and sounds more like something that would work for you. It's nice to because it is always plugged in, so it will adjust your monitor's brightness when the light in the room changes (much like the new Macbook Pro's do). Works for both CRT and LCD monitors.

And for $89 it is very affordable.

[DCramer]

I was playing with custom curve feature a few weeks back. the next day had a shoot and forgot to set it off custom and only noticed when i got back home to check the pics.

i feel your pain.

[wulf]

Don't forget that you can check your pictures on the LCD during your shoot. Even with the fact that the LCD screen might be small and hard to read in bright light, you can use tools like blinking highlights and histogram overlays to avoid getting a whole batch of under- or over-exposed images.

Instant feedback is one of the beauties of DIGITAL photography so remember to take advantage of it.

Wulf

[DCramer]

Originally Posted by wulf

Don't forget that you can check your pictures on the LCD during your shoot. Even with the fact that the LCD screen might be small and hard to read in bright light, you can use tools like blinking highlights and histogram overlays to avoid getting a whole batch of under- or over-exposed images.

Instant feedback is one of the beauties of DIGITAL photography so remember to take advantage of it.

Wulf

that is true - i use it sometimes when i can take my time. otherwise i turn off preview to conserve power

[Gonzo13]

This doesn't help you now but after I do shooting that requires me to change setting on my camera ISO, WB I change it back to what is an all around setting after I download the pictures. For me it's ISO 400, Av Mode, Auto White Balance, and I set the Aperture to around 5.6 to 8.0. The settings are usually good enough to capture sudden events at family functions, or the Wife and dog. Can't help you with the color correction stuff though.

~Gonzo13

[Quo Fan]

When I started shooting digital, I did the shoot and look thing. I think I missed a great number of shots doing that. Now I do a review when I have a little break and make minor adjustments.

[Mr Guy]

Seriously, though, if you took 3 hours of pictures at ISO 800 and all of them were unusable, than all of them were also underexposed. I don't think any modern camera should produce pictures that are completely unusable at 800, exposed properly.

[sk66]

Here's a site that describes how to do a basic calibration visually.

Mac's have a decent visual calibration tool in them (if you enable advanced options).

Nikons have a "quick reset" function which returns all basic settings to thier defaults. Hold down Qual and +/- buttons until lcd blinks and you'll be starting from a known point.

[Gulpa]

Thanks, guys, on your advices... I will start doing random shot checks when I start taking photos.


sk66 - thanks for the link. I'll give it a go.

Originally Posted by Mr Guy

Seriously, though, if you took 3 hours of pictures at ISO 800 and all of them were unusable, than all of them were also underexposed. I don't think any modern camera should produce pictures that are completely unusable at 800, exposed properly.

Well, you're right - not all of them are entirely unusable. However, I can't use them for the purpose I intended, due to the graininess of the images. You don't notice it as much in the bright parts of the images, but I was shooting at night and most of the photos have mainly dark\muted areas.

I'll pick the ones that are not too messed and play with filters to achieve other effects, though.

I was mainly pissed off at myself (and my clumsy fingers! ) for pressing the wrong button.