D5100 settings

Elaine66

Senior Member
I cant seem to get the right settings on my D5100. what do you think of this photograph? I took it a few weeks ago on my way to work. I just think I am not getting the best from my beautiful camera.
 

Attachments

  • good morning.jpg
    good morning.jpg
    40.9 KB · Views: 210

gqtuazon

Gear Head
Re: help

I cant seem to get the right settings on my D5100. what do you think of this photograph? I took it a few weeks ago on my way to work. I just think I am not getting the best from my beautiful camera.

I would adjust the vibrance a bit to increase the blue level.


Sent from my iPhone.
 

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
Re: help

Its a nice, well composed photograph, and given the subject matter I think it's just fine, including the metering. With the bright sun you're going to lose the details in the backlit shoreline in your initial exposure for sure. Your histogram looks fine. So, let me ask you this, are you shooting RAW or JPEG, and what, if any, post processing are you doing, and what are you expecting from your camera?

I took your photo and did two quick adjustments. The first was simply adjusting the levels in the photo (ctrl/cmd-L in Adobe products) by moving the midpoint slider towards the dark side, which amplifies the sky.

Sunset1.jpg

This really makes the sky pop.

After that I adjusted the contrast, brightness and vibrance/saturation...

Sunset2.jpg

... which warms the photo up a bit and gives it a bit more "Wow".

These were all very basic adjustments done in Photoshop Elements, and should be available in any decent photo editor, free or otherwise (though the Level adjustments may not be in some). Total work time for each was less than a minute (they are basic adjustments I do to every photo I take, so they are second nature to me - and will be to you eventually).

I'm not sure if that's what you're going for, or what it is you thought you're "missing" from your camera, but I'd be thrilled with this photo. When you look at Flickr or 500px or some other site with shots that inspire you realize that 99% of them didn't come out of the camera looking like that. Some are closer than others, but everything gets tweaked a little and some a lot. The thing about the DSLR is not that photos come out of the camera better than you point & shoot (though they should), it's that the sensors are so much better that the light information you have will allow you to fine tune the image more precisely to what you saw the moment you took it - provided, of course, that you exposed it properly.

If you don't have a good, basic editor then get one. There are good free ones, and some terrific ones that can be had for not a lot of money. From there, learn how to use it - no matter which there are likely many YouTube tutorials.

You've got a great camera, and from what I can see here a good eye. You just have to "finish" the shot.
 

Flugelbinder

Senior Member
Re: help

Hi. In situations like this (if you want to get the exposure right on camera), if you adjust the shutter speed to a faster number, everything will have a darker tone - the sky, but also the wáter. It might also help if you set your ISO to a higher value, since you're not looking at sharpness and noise, but color and atmosphere... I'm all for trying to get as close as posible with the camera. Of course, if you shoot RAW (which you should) you always have to use a post processing software to be able to use your images, but it will make you feel a lot better if you open that file and say "WOW", instead of saying "this is not what I saw"...
 

Elaine66

Senior Member
Re: help

thank you Jake for your kind words. I guess I am expecting too much of myself. I will definitely get something to edit. I used a free editing software (Fotor), but I really want to use photoshop.
thanks again
:)
 

Flugelbinder

Senior Member
Re: help

I would suggest that you try to learn about exposure and start shooting manual. That is the only way (unless you go the pp escape) of having absolute control over your images. :)
 

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
Re: help

Hi. In situations like this (if you want to get the exposure right on camera), if you adjust the shutter speed to a faster number, everything will have a darker tone - the sky, but also the wáter. It might also help if you set your ISO to a higher value, since you're not looking at sharpness and noise, but color and atmosphere... I'm all for trying to get as close as posible with the camera. Of course, if you shoot RAW (which you should) you always have to use a post processing software to be able to use your images, but it will make you feel a lot better if you open that file and say "WOW", instead of saying "this is not what I saw"...

Here's the thing, based on the photo's histogram the exposure is pretty much spot on...

Screen Shot 2014-01-13 at 7.18.33 AM.jpg

Dropping the shutter speed will surely darken the skies and the water, but it will also lose details as seen on the shoreline. Colors will not get more vibrant, only darker. This is not "Brightness" you're adjusting, it's exposure, and from what I can see she can go down about 2/3 stop before she starts losing details. That may be what you are looking for, and it may not.

Using the histogram provided on the camera during image review will help determine if you have or have not exposed an image properly, so even when you're purposefully over/under exposing make sure that you aren't losing light on either end (you can also set your image display to flash on spots that are too bright and/or dark so you know immediately without using the histogram). There are times to compensate for a metering situation that wants to overexpose a photo, for sure, and shooting directly into a light source may be one of them. But let's not confuse the outcomes.

As a beginner, Elaine, if you aren't comfortable shooting in Manual mode you may choose to use the exposure compensation settings instead when a photo comes out brighter or darker than you'd like. If you're shooting JPEG you may also want to learn a bit about the Camera Profiles available on your D5100. Nikon has a Vivid and Landscape profile that will automatically apply some of the basic adjustments I made since they are fairly common to those types of photos. This may give you more of what you want straight out of the camera and eliminate some of the work on the back end.
 
Last edited:

Flugelbinder

Senior Member
Re: help

I guess it depends where you want your image to go... Would you rather have detail on the trees, or have a gorgeous sky with a great reflection? Would love to know the shutter speed, but I believe that one, or two thirds of a stop would be enough to bring the blue and get the orange reduced to a smaller spot...
 

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
Re: help

I would suggest that you try to learn about exposure and start shooting manual. That is the only way (unless you go the pp escape) of having absolute control over your images. :)

Do you REALLY want to start this again?! Post processing is an "escape"?! I suspect far more successful and revered photographers than I would have a field day with that, particularly coming from someone whose photos we've barely seen. I find it rather funny, and oddly hypocritical, how your quote talks about adapting and yet you seem to be the most unadaptable of human beings. Unless you are looking at Kodachrome sides projected on a wall, every great photographer in history has post-processed - it's called printing!! And some printing is FAR more involved than other printing. And this extends to the digital darkroom. And heck, even slides are post processed - it's called developing, and yes, you can screw that up. So let's just drop the charade. I get it, you think it's a crutch. Yes, it can be a crutch. But to label it as such every time it's mentioned - particularly by me - is getting old and more than a bit ridiculous, particularly when we're addressing a question from a new photographer with a perfectly exposed image asking if there's a problem with her camera!!
 

Flugelbinder

Senior Member
Re: help

Do you REALLY want to start this again?! Post processing is an "escape"?! I suspect far more successful and revered photographers than I would have a field day with that, particularly coming from someone whose photos we've barely seen. I find it rather funny, and oddly hypocritical, how your quote talks about adapting and yet you seem to be the most unadaptable of human beings. Unless you are looking at Kodachrome sides projected on a wall, every great photographer in history has post-processed - it's called printing!! And some printing is FAR more involved than other printing. And this extends to the digital darkroom. And heck, even slides are post processed - it's called developing, and yes, you can screw that up. So let's just drop the charade. I get it, you think it's a crutch. Yes, it can be a crutch. But to label it as such every time it's mentioned - particularly by me - is getting old and more than a bit ridiculous, particularly when we're addressing a question from a new photographer with a perfectly exposed image asking if there's a problem with her camera!!

Not "starting" anything and quite frankly I'm getting a tad tired of you're name calling. I'm just expressing a point of view. I have changed/adapted, as I now use pp... Just still get my images right when the exposure is captured and do almost no editing, if any... You, on the other hand, keep pushing pp onto people. Will that make them better photographers? If "perfectly exposed" images was what we were looking for, there was no need for manual mode... Elaine, there's nothing wrong with your camera! Enjoy your photography... or your post processing... ;D
 

Scott Murray

Senior Member
Re: help

I cant seem to get the right settings on my D5100. what do you think of this photograph? I took it a few weeks ago on my way to work. I just think I am not getting the best from my beautiful camera.
There is nothing wrong with your camera, you have specific settings within your camera that will enhance certain types of photography such as 'Landscape'. Also there are a variety of filters available that will allow you a much better exposure across the whole photo such as a Circular Polarising filter, this would have brought out the sky much more. Also you can get Graduated Neutral density filters (square or round) which can be ideal for sunset photography and getting the exposure that you want. Other options are to fix it up in a photo editing program, as most of the time you cannot turn back the clock and re-do sunsets. But you can learn from previous attempts. Being new to photography I would be keeping your camera in Aperture mode or Shutter speed depending on what you are photographing, then when you take a photo check out the settings which the camera used and then decide if you would like the photo darker or lighter. Then adjust your settings to suit in manual mode. I hope this makes sense.
 

Steve B

Senior Member
Re: help

As Scott said this would have been a good image to use a GND (Graduated Neutral Density) filter on. Since you have a pretty straight horizon line a hard edged one would work best. With the sky at the top and the lake at the bottom and the back lighting about the only way you are going to be able to pick up detail in the trees is to use HDR. You could also experiment with multiple GND filters stacked to darken the sky and the lake. Don't be too critical of yourself. I have ended up with a lot of captures like this and as Jake showed there is still a lot you can do to make it pop.
 
Re: help

thank you Jake for your kind words. I guess I am expecting too much of myself. I will definitely get something to edit. I used a free editing software (Fotor), but I really want to use photoshop.
thanks again
:)

You should try the Free software that came with your camera. ViewNX2. It was designed for your camera and works with RAW files also. You should be shooting RAW if you aren't already.

Nikon Imaging | Global Site | ViewNX 2™
 

fotojack

Senior Member
Re: help

This would be my version , using a free program called Irfanview. Just basic colour corrections, saturation, gamma, and brightness tweaks:

good morning.jpg

But according to the histogram, this was pretty much dead on as far as exposure is concerned. Enjoy your camera and stop being so hard on yourself. :)
 
Top