Newbies, do you take nicer photos with your old compact or your new DSLR?

[sharenmun]

I'm asking cos' I just came back from my first trip with my new DSLR and realized I'm not as satisfied with my photos as when I used to take them with my old compact.

Ok, I should add that it was overcast everyday and in snow conditions. So that probably didn't make for great pics in the first place. But other than that, I think it was also because I was too pre-occupied with fiddling with the dials, perhaps a little over-doing it. Sometimes I was tempted to just switch to the Auto mode (I was using Av mode, btw).

Am I the only one who feels like that? :think:

 

[night86mare]

you need to get used to the dslr.

also, if you are using default settings, the color will be subdued compared to your compact - compacts tend to add very aggressive post process in-camera, saturation and contrast wise. you might want to fiddle with the settings and get something to your taste, or pick up photoshop if you haven't already.

you can produce nice pictures with both, but the dslr will allow you to do more than what the compact can do.

 

[giantcanopy]

There is a little learning curve with the DSLR because now u r fine tuning various aspects of creating the picture such as shutter speed, aperture, iso, white balance etc .. . it is also the ability of these fine tunings apart from other advantages that allows u to control more aspects of the picture compared to a point and shoot. ( which of course can back fire if not well done )

Thats why should shoot more and try + experiment first before going overseas trip to shoot, so that u just need to concentrate on creativity and capturing moments because the other manual controls becomes second nature

btw snow can be abit challenging to shoot too

ryan

 

[SeAnCoLd]

Like nightmare said, compact cameras often do a lot of the post processing for you. If you use faithful/neutral (canon) settings on your dslr, it won't do any such processing. Just post process the picture taken with yur dslr and do some light post processing like adjusting contrast, saturation and sharpness. You should get equally good looking pictures.

 

[geraldkhoo]

you can take great photos with a compact camera... or a DSLR... and i've seen great photos from a phone camera too!

photography is not simply anyhow point and shoot... you have to think before you shoot. i find that one important aspect is the composition of a picture. maybe you take some time to study on picture composition and try shooting with your newfound knowledge.

when i started out, before i took a picture, i ask myself...
- what can i say about the picture? is there a tagline i can use?
- can i put one word to describe the picture?
- does the picture communicate what i want to say?
- how can i better take the picture to communicate the message? e.g. a different angle? different perspective? zoom in more? zoom out more?

also, i gave time to studying other people's pictures... and if i like a picture i see, i will ask myself why i like it... then try to do the same.

give it a try and see how your pictures turn out

 

[wildcat]

I'm asking cos' I just came back from my first trip with my new DSLR and realized I'm not as satisfied with my photos as when I used to take them with my old compact.

Ok, I should add that it was overcast everyday and in snow conditions. So that probably didn't make for great pics in the first place. But other than that, I think it was also because I was too pre-occupied with fiddling with the dials, perhaps a little over-doing it. Sometimes I was tempted to just switch to the Auto mode (I was using Av mode, btw).

Am I the only one who feels like that? :think:

When I first switched to DSLR, I was on auto mode for a lot of times. There's nothing wrong wth that. It's a bigger learning curve because you can fiddle with so many more things with DSLR and so many things can go wrong. Auto will help in the learning process.

Also PnS have "better" in-camera processing because they need to cater for the masses who will never bother to do any post processing outside of the camera. Thus, the camera maker that makes your picture looks the best straight out of the camera, wins the most market share. But they aren't really "better"... you just have to learn to use the DSLR

 

[heshanj]

i immediately felt a huge improvement when i got my dslr a few months back. i always felt my compact camera photos werent that great - maybe thats coz i was using a not-so-good cybershot.. but i still felt a huge difference.. so i cant relate to wat TS's point

 

[luntut]

some pple i know, they get damn good images with PNS, but give them a DSLR, everything comes out either too dark or too bright.

some pple i know, they have a natural talent in DSLRs. first time with it, they are making amazing shots already.

it all boils down, if you are technical enough a person or not. not going to go too much into this too, it will just get too boring.

 

[kenny888]

hi there,

i'm a newbie, and i have this problem too. the problme of compact camera giving much more vivid photos than dslr. what i did was i use aperture mode for dslr and then shoot exactly the same spot with both dslr and my canon ixus. and the result is that the photos produced by ixus was far more vivid than dslr. the colors are nicer but dslr was pretty dull.

i've read the other postings, so u guys are saying that we should play around with the setting? settings as in the camera settings that allows us to set contrast, saturation, etc is it? is that what u guys mean?

seriously i was pretty shocked with the image quality of my dslr when i did a side by side comparison. can someone advise pls? so its about playing with the camera settings?

 

[zapper10]

hi guys,

I did have the same problem when the first time took photo with SLR. The picture from the auto mode somehow never turn out great. So I started learning using P mode ( at least i dun need to bother with shutter speed and aperture first) and play with white balance, color mode and expossure. Now, I think I can get better picture with my SLR compare with my compact. Hope, it helps

 

[mynameisgreg]

TS I know exactly what you mean! when i first started out the photos were not as satisfying, until I took a look at my old PnS photos, and then I realised i might have set the bar too high..
it could also be becuz the weather was really cold so its harder to take the photos you want. The camera will also tend to underexpose in snowy conditions so either correct it there and then or PP them. I notice PnS cameras dont really have this problem.

 

[kenny888]

so in conclusion, whats the solution to taking more vivid pics using dslr? ixus pics seriously much more vivid. sooo i gotta play with the settings like saturation, contrast all these instead of using the default settings to solve the less vivid colours problem? haa.

 

[ZerocoolAstra]

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seriously i was pretty shocked with the image quality of my dslr when i did a side by side comparison. can someone advise pls? so its about playing with the camera settings?

You serious??
Take a look at some of the galleries on Clubsnap. Most were taken with DSLR (unless specifically mentioned). Don't tell me you can do better than that with your Ixus?

If you're talking about colours only, set the saturation etc to Vivid or something like that.

 

[spheredome]

This is normal during transition to dSLR. Compact has higher DOF than dSLR, so getting front and back sharp is easy. And bec of the tiny sensor, image are harsh and sharper while dSLR are softer overall. Which is why they are call P&S. Bec of their tiny lens, the chances of blown pics are lesser. dSLR does more metering and receives more light, thus the fluctuation is there but once you know the behaviour of your camera, will know.

Oh, a good lens does help a lot.

 

[kenny888]

yeap i'm serious, when i did a side by side comparison, ixus has better colours, i'm just refering to a very ordinary shot at a foodcourt thats all. i did that just to test out hows the colors thats all lolx. hmm okie tks for the replies.

 

[night86mare]

i've read the other postings, so u guys are saying that we should play around with the setting? settings as in the camera settings that allows us to set contrast, saturation, etc is it? is that what u guys mean?

seriously i was pretty shocked with the image quality of my dslr when i did a side by side comparison. can someone advise pls? so its about playing with the camera settings?

1) iq-wise, unless you are don't know doing what, dslr should be better

2) color wise, dslr output tends to be more neutral and looks more natural. massaging it in post process, or changing incamera settings is what you need to do, depending on whether you want to post process or not.

 

[pchmj]

I was using pns all along, recently got a m4/3. All along I was satisfied with the pns pics, find it to be good (Fuji F11/F200). Now with the m4/3, I look back at the pics taken previously with pns, the difference is so big, colours of m4/3 are more natural, better dynamic range, more details retained and good high ISO performance. I'm just an amateur and can easily see the difference, no need to pixel peep. Using mostly P mode with no adjustments to exposure usually.

The vivid colours are due to post-processing in the camera, sometimes pushing it too much to make subjects look unnatural.

Fuji F200 has one of the best jpeg among pns and I can already see the difference clearly, for ixus it should even be more obvious...

 

[hoho85]

imho, DEFINITELY dSLR, when used correctly.

pns like my old ixus can only capture rather "flat" images, regardless of how good the composition.
pns also more noisy at night, even at iso 400.. sometimes cant even control the point to focus on.
the sensor size is incomparable to dSLR..

dSLR provides more control..more versatile.

 

[voux]

when i first migrated from P&S to SLR, started with using P(rogramme) or Auto mode. photos turned out worse than P&S... was so darn disappointed then!

it took abt 6 months of regular shooting before I started to understand the A, S & M modes and how adjusting the aperture size, shutter speed affected the resulting image.

never looked back since

 

[ZerocoolAstra]

yeap i'm serious, when i did a side by side comparison, ixus has better colours, i'm just refering to a very ordinary shot at a foodcourt thats all. i did that just to test out hows the colors thats all lolx. hmm okie tks for the replies.

hmmm... personally after using a DSLR, I'm extremely reluctant to pick up my ol' PnS anymore... yes, the colours may seem more "vivid", but actually I much prefer the output of my DSLR. Mind you, out of sheer laziness, I shoot in JPG on my DSLR, so the photos have already been 'processed' in-camera. I can make 'em like my PnS (albeit much sharper ) with saturation, contrast etc turned way up, but the colours are way weird and an instant turn-off.

I guess each person has his own preference for colours, etc.
But I certainly believe that you can make the colours from your DSLR match those of the ixus through playing with the settings.