Photographers hear this all the time. After viewing my NY Aquarium pictures, my co-workers asked me “Did you use PhotoShop?” Here’s the LONG answer to that common question.
For the picture below, I used my Canon 20D. It’s an 8MP D-SLR camera that’s 7 years old!!! When it was released in 2004 it was voted “Camera of the Year”. I paid almost $2Gs for it. At the time, it was the most expensive purchase I had ever made. I previously owned 2 used cars that were less than that camera — an 89 Plymouth Colt ($1000) and an 86 Chevy Camaro ($1200). I kid you not.
Here’s the picture I downloaded from the camera:
I shot in Manual mode, which means I set my own ISO, shutter and aperture — ISO 800, 1/125s and f/2.8 respectively. I set the Contrast, Saturation and Sharpness on my camera to 0 because I don’t want my camera to decide how I want my picture to look. I used a Canon 24-70L lens @24 mm I rented with a list price of $1,400. Basically, the only thing I leave in AUTO is the color balance because I can always adjust that later. I over-exposed the picture (too bright). So I made the following adjustments:
- Exposure -1.00
- Contrast +50
- Vibrance -25
- Saturation +50
- Sharpening +75
- Lens Vignetting -50/50
Using some RAW presets I downloaded for free, these adjustments literally take less than a minute to make depending on how picky I want to be. Here’s the result:
So to answer their question… Did I PhotoShop this picture? YES. But I started with a good shot using a great lens on a camera I’ve spent years learning how to use.
