Camera Labs

As I'm new to DSLR photography I was wondering what tips there are to achieve bright and colourful photos first time, without the need to do much editing.

I see a lot of photos with really attention-grabbing blues and reds etc. At the moment I find my photos to be quite bland so I have to do a lot of editing in photoshop to enhance the brightness and contrast etc.

Maybe it's because I've not had much of an opportunity to get out in the sun (the weather is rubbish!) to experiment but your advice and tips would be most appreciated.

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Canon 450D, several different lenses and some other camera gear.
Flickr

Hi liethemoon, you can achieve more vibrant and punchy images by increasing the saturation, sharpness and or contrast settings within your camera. If it's more colour you want, then increase the saturation.

As you'll see some cameras, especially those targeted at consumers or beginners, have these settings turned up quite high by default, whereas others have thgem quite low. They're just like the picture settings on your TV - adjust them until you get the result you want.

But remember it's hard to remove once you've applied it, so don't go over the top!

Or shoot in RAW mode, as this lets you make all the adjustments in software later - and it's reversible.

Thanks Gordon. I'll have a play around witht he settings tonight. I assume there is an option to return to the default settings if I make too many changes?

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Canon 450D, several different lenses and some other camera gear.
Flickr

it would help if you told us what kind of camera you've got.

as far as nikons go, there's usually 2 or three buttons with a green dot next to them.

hold all of these buttons and you'll reset the camera to the day it was created- *it does not delete the actuation count, just switches things over to default settings*

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WHO I AM BLOG, WHAT I DO BLOG
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I have a 450D.

I've not tried taking shots in RAW yet so I'll try that when I get home from work.

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Canon 450D, several different lenses and some other camera gear.
Flickr

Yep, you can reset all your settings back to the factory defaults using a menu option.

Go to his flickr, into a picture and then down on the right side it should say what camera it was taken with (:

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Sonyian?

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