In most of the country, fall is over, except in the South where the fall colors are still vibrant. I plan on shooting through the end of the November fall scenes in Georgia. Nothing to me is more beautiful than fall scenery; sometimes just a shot of leaves can create a pleasing fall palette of tones. Here are some tips to capture fall colors with a digital SLR Camera:
- Set your picture style to landscape. The default setting is typically standard. The landscape setting with rendered blue to a vivid and deep color, green to vivid and bright color. This style also uses a stronger sharp setting to bring out details in mountains, trees, and anything else in the distance. This is a simple setting to change and can be found in your camera’s manual
- Underexpose slightly. I find that when I underexpose a scene by as little as 1/3 stop, the tones are deeper and richer. This is true for reds and other jewel tones. To underexpose, you will need to shoot in manual mode and set your shutter speed to a faster speed to slightly underexpose.
- Finally, shoot in RAW. When you shoot in RAW you record all of the data from the sensor. This gives the highest quality files. JPEG records 256 levels of brightness, and RAW records between 4,096 to 16,384 levels! This is described with the term “bit”. JPEG captures in 8bit, and RAW is either 12bit or 14bit. When you shoot RAW, you’re able to do that processing yourself like adjusting the white balance, contrast, sharpness, and vibrance. All of those factors will result in an awesome image produced the way you want it to look.
And that’s it. I hope you enjoyed today’s blog. If you would like to subscribe to my weekly blog, please fill out the form on the right. Comments are always welcome.
For more information on How to Shoot in Manual Mode and How to Process Raw Images check out my online course: How to Shoot in Manual Mode.
