Any Tips For Taking Pics At The Beach?

[ruthless]

I often find Chopper and Angel come out very dark when I take pics of them on the beach and it's hard to adjust them in Photoshop to get any detail. Any pointers?

[kja]

Two quick ones to try...ymmv and there are lots of other ways...

1) use a flash to light your subjects. Not the easiest thing in the world with moving doggies!

2) use your manual modes and expose for the darker dogs. You may find this blows the sky etc, but it's the trade off.

[Guest Tess32]

Try and find the most neutral/in between colour so you can metre of that. If you don't have spot metering on your camera, zoom in or walk up to that colour if you can and work out the exposure that way.

OR, carry a grey card!

[rubiton]

Ruthless what sort of a camera are you using? What the camera (if set on auto) is doing is it exposes the image for the overall image ie the sand. Because sand it light and reflective it underexposures the image.

If you are using a SLR/DSLR it can be overcome using manual setttings (eg 400 ISO, 1000 speed, F8 or F11 aperture). if its a point and shoot not sure maybe try to get photos closer to the water where the water colour fill up the background around the dogs not the sand.

[ruthless]

It's a Canon 30D.

[rubiton]

Excellent camera - try the settings I suggested and change your aperture up and down from there or try changing your expsore (shutter speed) up and down too til the image looks right (and read up on how to use the exposure meter inside the view finder - basically you want to change the settings til thats in the centre if you zoom right in on the dog).

Also before you go out take pics in the yard where you can get the colour right and adjust the brightness if need be on screen on the back of the camera - I find that the factory setting is too dark to see the image properly outdoors. Once you know what looks right on the screen you can adjust settings when out to make sure the images arent too bright or too dark.