Why you shouldn't delete crappy photos you take with a digital camera.
December 18, 2010 at 9:58 pm
I was out on Virginia Water Lake yesterday (literally walking on the lake since it froze over) taking pictures. I haven't uploaded them yet, since I'm still sorting through them all, but there was one in particular I thought I'd share because at the time I considered deleting it.
There is a nice man-made waterfall near to the lake, so I thought I'd take a few pictures of it. By this time, it was getting pretty dark, so I was quickly messing around with settings on my camera to try and compensate (I don't use a flash outdoors, especially in the snow; it makes the photos look unnatural). The photo I was going for was a 10 second exposure (meaning the shutter lets in light for 10 seconds rather than the usual fraction of a second), so that the water on the waterfall would blur for a nice effect, and also brighten up the picture (more light = more bright...duh).
However, it was just too dark, and I didn't set the exposure compensation properly, so the picture was still a dark mess; utterly unusable. I considered deleting it at the time, but thought better of it, and decided I would see what I could do in an image editor back home.
So I got back, and the first thing I did (in iPhoto) was increase the exposure so the picture brightened up, whilst reducing the contrast a bit. I increased the shadows setting to brighten up a few of the remaining dark bits, and finally went crazy with the temperature setting, moving it from the horrible blue it was to a more realistic warm red. The result was a photo that looks like it was taken on a bright sunny day, rather than the overcast and gloomy one it was.
Here is a before and after:
![[Image: waterfallr.jpg]](https://images.weserv.nl/?url=img530.imageshack.us%2Fimg530%2F7497%2Fwaterfallr.jpg)
So yeah, the next time you take a crappy photo, don't delete it. Get a big memory card so you can store thousands of photos, and keep it until you get home, where you may be able to turn it into a perfect memory. Remember, the LCD screen on the back of most digital cameras will make every photo you take look worse than it does on the computer screen anyway, so use it as a way of making sure you got the general photo you were aiming for; don't use it for quality control.
There is a nice man-made waterfall near to the lake, so I thought I'd take a few pictures of it. By this time, it was getting pretty dark, so I was quickly messing around with settings on my camera to try and compensate (I don't use a flash outdoors, especially in the snow; it makes the photos look unnatural). The photo I was going for was a 10 second exposure (meaning the shutter lets in light for 10 seconds rather than the usual fraction of a second), so that the water on the waterfall would blur for a nice effect, and also brighten up the picture (more light = more bright...duh).
However, it was just too dark, and I didn't set the exposure compensation properly, so the picture was still a dark mess; utterly unusable. I considered deleting it at the time, but thought better of it, and decided I would see what I could do in an image editor back home.
So I got back, and the first thing I did (in iPhoto) was increase the exposure so the picture brightened up, whilst reducing the contrast a bit. I increased the shadows setting to brighten up a few of the remaining dark bits, and finally went crazy with the temperature setting, moving it from the horrible blue it was to a more realistic warm red. The result was a photo that looks like it was taken on a bright sunny day, rather than the overcast and gloomy one it was.
Here is a before and after:
So yeah, the next time you take a crappy photo, don't delete it. Get a big memory card so you can store thousands of photos, and keep it until you get home, where you may be able to turn it into a perfect memory. Remember, the LCD screen on the back of most digital cameras will make every photo you take look worse than it does on the computer screen anyway, so use it as a way of making sure you got the general photo you were aiming for; don't use it for quality control.
