Category: Photography

Generally, a Single Lens Reflex camera will produce better pictures quality than point-and-shoot cameras. But if you only have a low end camera that is non-SLR, how do you enhance the images qualities?

The followings are some useful tips and resources that can improve the image quality and performance of low-end digital cameras.

1. Enhancement of picture output using image editing software

One of the most important method is to retouch and editing the images using Photo-retouching and image editing softwares. If you have commercial programs such as Photoshop, then it's good. However, there are also many free image editing software that can be used to enhance the quality of images.

One of the best free source of camera enhancing tools is from Media Chance at http://www.mediachance.com. The Digital Camera Enhance by them is especially good. Below is a screenshot of Digital Camera Enhance.

This software features the following:

Midtones tuning- if your image is too dark or too bright
De-Noiser - to reduce noise and skin artifacts from the objects on the image.
Color adjustment
Auto balance
Detail Enhancement

Another great tool by them is ColorCastFX at http://www.mediachance.com/digicam/castfx.htm

This excellent tool allows one to correct the colour cast and exposure of digital photos. The screenshot below shows a photo automatically retouched by ColorCastFX. It certainly makes it easier to correct digital photos.

Often when colour casting and exposure is fixed, the resultant image might appear to be grainy or noisy. It is good to run this resultant image through a program that does de-noising to further enhance the image. Again, Digital Camera Enhance has do some de-noising.

Beside these tools, others free programs that are good to have in the arsenal are:

1. GIMP

2. Picasa

This is not an exhaustive listing of softwares available for photo-editing.

2. Ways of reducing Night Lighting problems

There are much differences between day and nightlighting. Usually, low end camera are inadequate when it comes to taking night shots. However, there are several things that we can do to reduce this inadequacy:

1. Use Flash. One way of overcoming it is to use flash to prevent under-exposure. 2. Use Tripod. There are several types of tripod. The least expensive one is made of aluminum tubing and come with rubberised feet and head for fixing camera on. Some of them come with quick release mechanism for fast mounting and dismounting of camera. Tripod will afford some stability and prevent blurry images. 3. Use photo-editing tools for improving results. Again, I find Digital Camera Enhance and ColorCastFX very useful for correcting exposure and colour cast of nightshots usings low end cameras.

3. Energy consumption

Energy consumption is a problem with low end cameras. Usually they will run low on power much faster than their more expensive and energy efficient counterparts. To overcome this problem, bring along extra batteries. To save cost, try using rechargeable batteries. Turn off the LCD display when not in use. Use the optical view finder when the LCD display is turned off.

Well, in a nutshell, these are the some of the tips. Thank you for reading.