CANON’S DPP SOFTWARE
The Canon Magazine 87
EOS S.O.S
Te Mat a Peak
STEVE JOHNSTON, VIA EMAIL
SAYS... This photo of Te Mata Peak was
taken near Havelock North on New
Zealand’s North Island. I took this shot
with my Canon 60D and 10-22mm wide
angle lens. My only opportunity was an
early morning shot, but it was overcast
so I nearly cancelled the trip. However I
persevered and as I climbed up I broke
through the clouds into glorious sunlight.
There were three suitable locations to
shoot from and I had to run to each in
order to beat the rapidly rising sun at
6am. Moral of the story – if things don’t
look too good, give it a try anyway!
BRIAN SAYS... Absolutely the right
attitude for landscape photos, Steve,
and a fabulous image that creates
thoughts of a mythical location beyond
our world. The light on those distant
mountains is truly superb, and the
clouds lower down look like long
exposure moving water. The most
interesting area of the shot is those
mountains, and therefore I suggest a
crop to make them the largest element
in the scene. I would also walked in front
of the foreground rocks and taken an
alternative shot as their cooler shadow
tones don’t add to the photo for me.
There’s a timeless quality to the photo
that is only broken when you see the
corner in the road on the right side.
RATE MY PHOTO
Get
critiqued!
Email photos to
EOSSOS@
futurenet.com
with the subject
‘Rate My Photo’
Lens Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM
Exposure 0.5 sec, f/14, ISO200
BRIAN SAYS... The gamma adjustment
is a tool for adjusting the brightness and
contrast in your photos. There are three
ver tical bars that correspond to the
shadows, mid-tone and highlights of your
image. To see the effect I suggest you try
the auto button to adjust your own Raws
first. Activating the highlight and shadow
warnings will show you when you’ve gone
too far. Then move the central value to
lighten and darken the image. These
controls adjust the gamma curve, similar
to a histogram but with greater range.
There’s a pair of horizontal bars you can
move to adjust the black and white max
values. The horizontal scale is
logarithmic to be provide more precision
in shadow adjustment.
01 AUTO EXPERIMENT
Start with the AUTO button, then adjust
the shadow and highlight, either with the
vertical lines or simply by adjusting the
numeric values directly to experiment a
little bit.
02 SLIDERS
In the advanced section of sliders below
the gamma adjustment, are the
contrast, shadow and highlight controls.
These refine the gamma curve shape, to
recover highlight and shadow info.
03 GAMMA ADJUSTMENTS
At the top and bottom of the gamma
adjustment the horizontal bars adjust
the black and white points for the curve.
They can be used to reduce the tonal
range in an image for a matte-look.
How do you use the
gamma adjustment in DPP,
and why is the scale so
much wider for the
shadows?
Tom Peters, Leicester