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03/08/01

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Intro to Digital Photography Course

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Week 2 - Page 1

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  1. These are a series of photos I took of two of the people I work with, Kim and Bill. They were chatting away about some work stuff, when I meandered over and asked if they would mind me snapping off a few shots. Kim was a little self-conscious, but Bill just smirked and then proceded to try to ignore me.

  2. These shots were taken in normal mode, AF, with and without flash. I noticed that I had to play around with the zoom and the flash selections to get decent coverage from the flash.

  3. The Nikon Coolpix 800 has five flash modes: auto-flash, no flash, force-flash, slow-sync, and red-eye reduction.

    • Auto-flash - Camera fires flash whenever lighting is poor.
    • No flash - Flash will not fire even when lighting is poor.
    • Force-flash - Flash fires whenever photo is taken.
    • Slow-sync - Auto flash combined with low shutter speed. (Tripod recommended with this mode.)
    • Red-eye reduction - Pre-flash lamp fires before the main flash to minimize the “red-eye” effects a flash can sometimes cause.

  4. There are a variety of other settings on this camera that can be used to affect the lighting in the photo. In manual mode, the contrast/brightness can be adjusted prior to a shot. The internal exposure metering allows selection of center-weighted, spot, or matrix TTL metering. The exposure sensitivity can be selected to simulate ISO 100, 200, or 400 in conventional film cameras. The white balance can be set manually for sunny, cloudy, incandescent, fluorescent, and flash, if preferred. So there's alot I have to explore to fully utilize this little camera's talents.

* BEFORE * * AFTER *
Original
Original 1200 x 900

No flash, normal mode, AF, at about 6 feet. A tad blurry due to the long aperture time.

 1200 x 900
1200 x 900
800 x 600

Adjusted the color balance because of Bill's sweater and Kim's hair. Applied sharpening, contrast adjustment, and resized twice.
Original
Original 1600 x 1200

No flash, normal mode, optical zoom-in, AF, at about 6 feet. Still slightly blurry due to no flash.

 1200 x 900
1200 x 900
800 x 600

Used sharpen tool, but could not get the lines real sharp without inducing alot of distortion. Adjusted contrast, sometimes the contrast brings the lines in clearer. Resized twice.

Original
Original 1600 x 1200

With flash, normal mode, no zoom, AF, at about 4 feet. A little more focused. I was shooting at a downward angle. Notice how the flash makes the space behind Kim darker.

 1600 x 1200
1200 x 900
800 x 600

Sharpened, tweaked color balance, adjusted contrast, resized twice.

Original
Original 1600 x 1200

With flash, normal mode, no zoom, AF, at about 4 feet. Kim looked into the camera for this shot. Her eyes reflected the flash a little.

 1200 x 900
1200 x 900
800 x 600

Used soften tool on the glint in Kim's eyes, tweaked color, sharpened, contrast adjusted, resized twice.
Original
Original 1600 x 1200

No flash, normal mode, no zoom, AF, at about 6 feet. I was down on one knee shooting slightly upwards. Very dark, but both Bill and Kim posed for this one, so it wasn't too blurry.
1200 x 900
800 x 600

Sharpened, tweaked color balance, alot of contrast/brightness tweaking, resized twice. Not a bad shot after fixing it.
Original
Original 1600 x 1200

With flash this time, normal mode, no zoom, AF, at about 6 feet. Still on one knee shooting slightly upwards. And still very dark, (possibly weak batteries were affecting the flash distance?), but there is some red-eye evident.

 1200 x 900
1200 x 900
800 x 600

Sharpened, tweaked color balance, alot of contrast/brightness tweaking, red-eye adjustments, resized twice. Not a bad shot after fixing it.
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