From the time that I can recall, the digital image straight out the digital camera, were generally speaking flat, lifeless, not interesting, plagued by color casts, typical inconsistent color rendering on a camera to camera basis, often over sharpened, often with signs of to much noise reduction and on and on the list goes. I think it is difficult to have a more depressing, but true, introduction to an article on digital photography. The few Olympus enthusiasts like myself, that still dare to voice public opinions generally believe the Pro Grade E5 DSLR has the best quality out the camera JPEG image. That said I recently saw a few E5 images that were absolute stunning but I also saw many that have much of the above described trademarks. What are the causes for differences between the one and the next image?

Figure 1 - The above image was taken with a Canon 7D and is not edited

Looking at the above image description, I can hear many Canon supporters say, now what is wrong with this image Siegfried? For one, let me tell you a small secret, the 7D is one of the worst dynamic range performers I ever owned and believe me I tried a few cameras. Don't get me wrong, it is a great camera and I love the 7D, but it is far from being the perfect camera. If I owned an E5 today I would not switch over to a 7D and the simple reason is they both have wonderful strength's plus not so exciting weaknesses. If you read about these two models on the top review websites then you would simply believe the 7D is by far the better one of the two. Before I get carried away, lets continue talking about the images we get from digital camera bodies.

The above image (Figure 1) I will for example not use myself as it is, plus I would not forward it to any of my clients without spending some time on it in Photoshop. Again I hear voices saying, but I refuse to spend time in-front of the PC, I want them good out-the-camera. The good news is that it is possible to get great images out-the-camera but and again I start with a BIG "but"…….. Yes it is true, when you take the time to correctly set-up your camera plus you take the time to really dial in the correct exposure settings, only then the chances are that the image will not look like the one above. The worst possible mistake many forum trained hobby photographers does is to dial in "corrective" camera settings. These are adjustments that alter the camera sharpness, image noise settings, brightness, saturation, all settings that could typically damage JPEG files.

Allow me to add one more aspect to the above discussion. I believe that folks that rely too much on the camera image processing engine, that those photographers never really grow to develop their own photographic signature. What signature do you refer to Siegfried? In today's competitive market it is critical for each photographer to develop his or hers own photographic signature. What in your images identify with your own style and how does people know that this is an image from the photographer, Markus, for example? The only way to achieve that ability to recognize an image style is to develop a unique image style of your own. To do that you need to master a minimum amount of image editing techniques or alternatively you really need to master you camera and the setting up your camera for a particular image or scene.

Consider the following example. I came to you and asked you to take a great looking portrait image of me. If you are not comfortable with how you will ask me to stand and pose during the shoot, what settings you will use, how you will apply your external flash unit, if you had only the slightest fear or concern doing the shoot then you are not ready getting the most out your camera. If your answer was yes you're OK taking the image then my next question is, will you over or under expose? Those who prefer to get the right image out the camera should really consider getting to better know a package like Aperture 3 on Mac or Photoshop Elements. Personally I make use of the following strategy. I do use carefully selected images out my camera and I do prefer to use the bulk of my images directly out the camera. You will be surprised at how well printed images look which are directly out the camera. Less than 20% of the images I take I carefully edit to get the result I want.

Figure 2 - Image cropped and edited in Photoshop Elements

How can one develop this signature we talked about in the previous paragraphs? There are various ways to do develop an own signature, for example one can decide to do only one type of photography, something like wedding photography, macro photography or portraits. Doing that people will associate you with the type photography you do most. Another option is to adapt one or more specific styles of photography which will tell clients that it is your work. These different styles could be the classic HDR type look, some photographers use a special way of over saturating images, it could be the use of unique in-camera filters and on and on the list goes. Finally one can add a physical name or signature to the bottom left or right of the image. I think a good example of somebody we all know well and who successfully adapted a unique image style is Simon. Just by looking at Simon's portrait work in our forum and one could guess who the photographer is. In conclusion one can say the image in figure 1 is typical a mass type image and therefor straight out the camera. In figure 2 one start having a closer look because its clear that this image has a unique signature and most probably come from an more experienced photographer.

Figure 3 - Olympus E-PL2 image not edited

Olympus is known for its good JPEG files or the JPEG image-out-the-camera image. These Olympus out-the-camera images are typically colorful, they are reasonably true in color and they have good levels of image details or image information. Having said that it is also true that the above E-PL2 or it could even be an E5 image belongs to the mass-image category and it therefor does not offer anything unique that will allow the customer to link the image to the photographer.

Figure 4 - EPL2 imaged edited in Elements

The final image (figure 4) I edited or changed aggressively to show you what can be done. This image was not edited using special HDR software or any special technique that requires higher levels of experience. In reality, a basic 4 steps procedure was applied to the above image. As said I over processed the image on purpose and I like to invite you to spend a few minutes to really study the two pictures (Figure 3 & 4). By doing that you will see that picture 4 has a lot of potential and that is the result of using the right editing technique. It also has a few problem areas one should avoid, more about that in my next article.

In my next article I will discuss a few of these "high power" techniques that can help you to develop your own unique signature. Happy shooting…..

Siegfried