lack of colour/impact in photo question

real_484

hi there

have a canon 30d with a with a 17-85 efs lens. I am not happy with the quality of photo's I am taking. They seem to lack colour, look dull and have no real impact. I have tried increasing the colour saturation, taking on full auto, increasing the sharpness, monitor calibration, using different online development (snapfish adn photobox) but still not happy, am i missing something in the set up of the camera.

mikeanywhere

Go into your menu on the camera and look to see what the camera is set to ie portrait, landscape or neutral. Each version has the ability to change certian features ie contrast etc depending on what it assumes you are shooting at.

Are you shooting RAW or JPG??

real_484

hi mikeanywhere,

shooting on standard,
sharpness maximum
contrast, +1 above centre
saturation +2 above centre
Colout tone +2 above centre

all in jpeg 3504x2336

GhostInTheRuins

Any examples you could post?

real_484

Hi GhostInTheRuins

have make two sets in my flickr account, one for the canon 30d and one for a point and shoot camera I used before and really feel like going back to. Here are tow that look ok on screen but very dull and washed out when printed

GhostInTheRuins

They look okay to me. Maybe not enough contrast, but a quick adjustment of the levels easily fixes that.

Could it be your printer?

Edit: Didn't see the attachments, it's hard to tell anything from that boat picture because it's really, really bad quality.

PonderStibbons

They look fine on-screen to me too. I thought it might be the colour profile, but they seem to look the same in Internet Explorer so it's unlikely to be that. Make sure you're using sRGB for the web, and whatever the printer specifies if you're getting them printed. One thing you seriously need to do is change your JPEG compression, as it's horribly high at the moment and the photos are full of artifacts and look terrible. This could be happening either in-camera or when you're resizing for the web. If you're worried about size, I would recommend reducing the dimensions and lessening the compression significantly.

AnCatDubh

+1 to 'they look good to me' (non calibrated display)

so if they're busted in any way i probably should throw my camera in the bin

They seem to lack colour, look dull and have no real impact.

The first appears to me to have good saturation and while the seaside scene in the second has little in terms of contrast, it would appear to me that it is the nature of the scene being captured.

Honestly, they don't look bad at all

Xiney

You could try getting a circular polarizing filter, it will help cut out reflection (which tends to be white) and make colours "pop"

It will also make your blue skies bluer.

coylemj

From a non-technical point of view can I point out that virtually nothing in either photo is in sharp focus.