What am I doing wrong?

[cakeville82]

I have a Canon Rebel XS EOS (I have no idea how to use it other then point and shoot)
I am trying to take a decent picture of a cake I made.
I tried indoors and the lighting was horrible so I tried out doors and it's equally as bad.

I'm clueless, if anyone can give me any pointers or tips that would be awesome.
I bought the new camera to imporve my pictures but it's useless if I don't know how to use it or what I'm doing.
Thanx!

 

[subscuck]

For starters, what is it about this pic you don't like? I'm a pastry chef and to me this looks, circus-colorwise, pretty typical of this type of cake (sorry, I went to Le Cordon Bleu, so my outlook is very traditional). It's a little soft, and I would have moved slightly to left to get more of a 3/4 view. But I don't know why you find this pic bad. Sooo... You need to tell us what you were going for versus what you got.

 

[Vinny]

I have to say that the cake is awesome!!! Who cares if the photos don't come out good! .

It looks like the camera didn't focus on anything in particular. I don't know Canon but there may be be a box in the lens that either is there all the time or "pops up" or light up when the shutter release is pressed 1/2 way down to show where it is focusing on. The other thing is does the lens have a manual focus control and it is in manual.

Not to sound stupid here but the manual really may be the best thing to read as it will give you all the info to use the camera correctly. I sat down with the manual and my camera and if there was something I didn't understand I read whatever and played around with that particular function.

 

[subscuck]

Here's a very quick edit. It is a nice cake, btw, just not my thing...

 

[Steve01]

That's a great cake.

The photo looks flat.
What mode are you using Auto, P, etc.
Do you know what color space is?

If you're shooting in full Auto the color space is automatically set, in every other mode it can probably be changed.

What's it set at, your choices will probably just be "Adobe RGB", and sRGB.

If it's set to Adobe RGB the images will tend to look a little flat on your monitor right out of the camera.
If you're going to post the images on line and view them on the computer set the Color Space to sRGB and see if that helps.

 

[vtf]

A Canon Rebel is a nice entry camera. If you shot in RAW you just didnt process it enough. Im not sure how involved you wish to be with the camera but my suggestion is always to read the manual first then practice over and over then read the manual again. Practice on adjusting the ISO, Aperature and shutter speed. I did an edit on the picture, sharpened it some, brought the colors up, straightened and cropped. As stated above Id probably wouldve shot at a 3/4 angle. Awsome cake BTW.

 

[KmH]

......I bought the new camera to imporve my pictures but it's useless if I don't know how to use it or what I'm doing.
Thanx!

Digital SLR photography is a lot more involved than just point and shoot.

To improve your pictures you'll need to learn how a camera, a lens, and a photograph work.

Exposure is controlled by the shutter speed, lens aperture, and the image sensor ISO. Depth-of-field is also controlled by lens aperture, subject to image sensor distance, lens focal length and subject to background distance.

Since photography is a visual art, there are considerations relative to how the subject(s) are arranged in the image frame. That is called composition and some study of the other visual arts is very helpful.

 

[Vinny]

What did you guys do to sharpen up the photo? As you can see I thought it was out of focus a touch.

 

[subscuck]

A little smart sharpen in PS.

There really is a difference between soft and OOF. Soft generally means in focus, but because of settings in camera, or cheap glass, it appears slightly OOF, but will sharpen right up in post. OOF can't be sharpened. Not really, anyway.

 

[Vinny]

Thanks for the info! I don't have PS but will try it in my software. Now that you pointed it out, it does look soft vs OOF as I originally thought.

 

[Vinny]

Thanks for the tutorial! My software doesn't have smart sharpen and it looks like my software doesn't work quite as well as PS but it did sharpen up the picture.

 

[subscuck]

Thanks for the tutorial! My software doesn't have smart sharpen and it looks like my software doesn't work quite as well as PS but it did sharpen up the picture.

Looks good from my house. I did a little curves adjust on mine as well.