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Photo advice Please??

Chelsealove

Active member
Hello All,

I am having trouble taking a good photo of my Chelsie, I have enjoyed all of the beautiful photo's of the various puppies on this forum and have been impressed by how professional some of the photography is.

I have a new digital compact camera 7.1 megapixles. I have trouble taking photo's of my Chelsie because the flash makes her eyes glow green, however if I turn the flash off the photo's are too dark. Red eye reduction is no help either. Is there a trick to taking a good indoors photo of your puppy? From what I have seen some of you know what you are doing and as a reward you have beautiful photo's of your pups. Id like to have that too before she grows up!

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you
Chelsies Mum :snap: h*lp
 
Hi Chelsie

If you have the ability with your camera, set the ISO up high as this will give you a fast shutter speed, enabling you to capture indoor images without the use of a flash. This will only work during the daytime and of course open up windows & blinds to allow as much natural light in as possible.

You will need to consult your camera manual for all this jargon as your camera & mine will certainly be very different.

For the ones where you use flash & get red eye, you can get rid of this by manipulating the image in your graphics package. If you've got Photoshop or PainShop, great.... if not, you will almost certainly have received a light graphics package with the software that came with your camera. Again, this will require reading of your software manual.
 
Indoor flash photos with a point and shoot camera will look ugly at best in my opinion. Photos without flash look the best, but not always possible due to the limitations of 'compact' cameras. Pick a bright day, open your curtains, stick your (preferably tired or sleepy so she doesn't move around) pup next to a window/open door and shoot away..Oh, and make sure you keep the camera steady, e.g. hold the camera and then rest your hands firmly on something solid like a chair/box.

Or make things easier by taking her outside to a shady yet still well lit spot.

I take photos of my pup with an expensive digital SLR camera, so don't feel too dissapointed if your photos down turn out looking 'professional'.
 
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In a nutshell PATIENCE!! Make sure you have a fresh memory card with lots of space on it, a spare battery and then just snap away, some of my best photo's have been one's I just "snapped" off without thinking about it! I once entered what I thought was a horrid picture into a competition (not a dog pic!) and was amazed when I not only won 3rd prize, but the 2 winners above me were "Professionnal" photographers! :yikes:

Finally the red eye, most software these days includes an option to get rid of red eye, just play around and have some fun, but don't do what I did when I took some pics of Tasha the other week and reformat your card before you even uploaded it! :lol: :sl*p:

Good Luck!!
 
Unfortunately the "redeye fix" option in most software doesn't seem to work on dogs. The only way I've found to fix it is to use photoshop or similar software to manually remove the eye tint.

Here's a tutorial on how to fix "pet eye" in photos.
 
Thanks for that tutorial link and the advice on the thread; I often have this problem!
 
Paintshop Pro is very good for treating photos spoiled by red eye, but I don't have it on my pc and can't find my disk, so can't post any new photos, at the moment.

This photo was fixed using a Paintshop Pro redeye remover.

003mewhat.jpg
 
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And for those of you who are too broke to fork out for one of the 'big' packages, give the Gimp a go. It's very powerful and very functional- and free. You'll need to learn the interface, which is only really an issue if you're already accustomed to Photoshop etc. Anything you want to do, just google it- eg, 'gimp red eye removal' and you'll almost certainly get a direct link to a page giving you clear step by step instructions to do what you want. I was using Adobe Photoshop Elements, and took a long time to get used to Gimp precisely because of Photoshop... now, I prefer the Gimp.
 
To start with, The mega pixels on a camera are Sh*t-all. My mum and i do wedding photography and we know an exceptional amount about cameras. The mega pixel is basically a way of being competitive between people that own cameras. You know like "My camera has 6 mega pixels" "well mne has 7.1". You can take an exellent photo without having a large amount of mega pixels.

As mentioned by another person a camera's ISO function sets the light sensitivity of the camera's image sensor (this is similar to the speed rating of film cameras). ISO settings are often rated at 100, 200, or 400 but go as high as 800, 1600, and even 3200 on some advanced models. A lower ISO setting is used when capturing overly bright scenes, since it reduces the light sensitivy of the image sensor. This is ideal when shooting at the beach, on a ski slope, or under the midday sun. A higher ISO settings is often used when shooting under dimmer conditions (cloudy days, indoors, etc.) since it increases the light sensitivity of the image sensor. As brightness in a scene is decreased the camera tries to compensate by slowing the shutter speed which in turn lets in more light but increases the risk of motion blur. To prevent this, you can increase the ISO or sensitivity of the camera, which allows the camera to select a higher shutter speed, thus reducing motion blur.

Another thing to try would be to position your pooch infront of a window and take the picture away from the light (so your dog will have whats known as "Natual Light" instead of the very bright white flash that comes on most cameras.) this will decrease the chances of getting "red eye" in your pictures and leave you with a great shot all round.

Good luck!!
 
Unfortunately the "redeye fix" option in most software doesn't seem to work on dogs. The only way I've found to fix it is to use photoshop or similar software to manually remove the eye tint.

Here's a tutorial on how to fix "pet eye" in photos.
Thanks for this information.:)
When I scanned in all my old puppy photos (from before I had a digital camera) I tried to fix the red eyes with the scanning software, which made the photos look worse. I'm going to re-scan them and try this out. Or Lisa, I may try Gimp. Thanks!
 
a photog on t.v. said try to get in close, now closer to your subject. also if you get down on the ground you can get some cute shots. I always admired the pics on here of pup's picture taken from above looking down on them when they sit. now that I finally have my pup I have this shot of my own pup so very cute!
 
To start with, The mega pixels on a camera are Sh*t-all. My mum and i do wedding photography and we know an exceptional amount about cameras. The mega pixel is basically a way of being competitive between people that own cameras. You know like "My camera has 6 mega pixels" "well mne has 7.1". You can take an exellent photo without having a large amount of mega pixels.

As this person said, megapixels really do mean nothing. I get MUCH betetr photos from my old 4.0 megapixel camera compared to my new 10 megapixel!
 
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