Sunday, May 6, 2012

Fixing Focus


Getting cracking photos of your fish is quite an important part of fly fishing. It is awesome being able to share the surreal landscapes, magical streams and endlessly blue oceans of our fishing experiences. And let’s not mention the being able to email all our friends the latest bus we landed - we love to stroke our egos don’t we?

When taking photos with your own camera, it’s easy. You know the settings, understand the focal lengths and know how to manipulate its nuances to get the best picture. It gets a little more complicated with a DSLR. But you learn the camera like you learn the action of your rod coupled with your line.

But when it’s your turn to have the pics taken of yourself, be sure to check that the settings are correct before handing the camera over. After he snapped his rod today, my old man was relegated to cameraman. I didn't realise the focus was still on manual and after 30 odd photos of a bonefish; Photoshop worked hard to sharpen, clear and fix the images. 

Dad has now had a lesson and a practice session in the basics of using my Nikon. Hopefully the next round of photo taking will be more of a success...

After Photoshop was employed - all shots were edited in Camera RAW (if you have a DSLR get Photoshop and start shooting in RAW format) - the photos are clearer and sharper. The simple steps to cleaning up your potentially lost images are below.

Step 1: In the details tab, pump up your sharpening, radius of sharpen and detail of sharpen.
Step 2: In the basic tab, play with contrast and clarity.

While this is a great way to salvage photos where your subject is a bit further away, your close-up shots will probably stay blurred. And in general this is not a magic way of making those blurry photos suddenly magazine cover quality. But it may just keep some memories a little clearer!



Above and below: The before and after Photoshop



Left photos are prePhotoshop and right is cleaned up. As mentioned, this isn't going to turn your photos into magazine covers but they'll look a lot better in your albums!



Always a great memory: sending it back...

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