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Why Are My Photos So Hazy?

R0012583 (Medium)(Fruit Spies: The couple are looking for fruits to give as gifts for the Chinese New Year goodwill visits. This is an unedited image straight out of my GX200. Check it out and I think the image is colourful)

I was met with this question from a friend of mine who just bought a new camera. In fact, probably so do you, I have came across photographers grumbling about the hazy colour of photos taken with their cameras. Maybe the GX200 has a tricky in-camera setting which I am not aware of, or maybe it is a more advanced piece of machine, I have read similar questions more often from GX200 users.

Every where has a wherefore. To name a few possible explanations:

1) The sky is hazy.

2) The sun is not shining at the desirable angel.

3) The air is polluted.

4) In case of a night shot, there is heavy light pollution.

5) The exposure combo is not right.

6) The EV has been pulled up for an average scene.

7) The scene is too contrasty and spotmetering is not used.

8) The previous exposure is accidentally locked for a new scene.

9) The metering system is turned away from “multi” and the camera meter is pointed at a scene with atypical lighting in the center.

10)The colour setting is set to “my setting” 1 or 2 which has been adjusted undesirably.

11)The colour setting is set to “soft” (which I like for my taste).

12)The lens may have been pointed to a light source which blind the metering somehow.

13)In case of a photo with flash, the flash output is under- or over-powered.

14)GX200’s way of handling colour is not your cup of tea.

15)The WB setting is upset.

16)You actually have a penchant for vivid this and vivid so that you remembered the scene with the colour of your taste.

17)You have been spoiled by, say, Canon camera’s ultra vividly colourful way of handling the photo.

R0012647 (Medium) (2)(Fruit Baskets: The utter splendid way to give fruit as a gift is to shell out more money for a specially decorated basket to hold the fruit. The Chinese New Year is the big business time for fruit retailers. This photo was post-processed to beef up the otherwise hazy colour)

R0012647 (Medium)(This photo is the striaght-out image with bland colour. There are several reason for this. First, I use the “normal” colour setting, which I like its soft character. Second, the sun was not at the angel to bring out the colours on earth. Third, it is a kiosk next to a busy, polluted road. Fourth, I deliberately turned the EV to +0.7 for the sake of getting more information in the image. In fact, the real scene looked as soft in colour as in this image. The GX200 is quite accurate for its AWB)

Talking about explanation no. 17, the final images taken with cameras of different brands are destined to look differently. Call it character of the image or a matter of taste, this is comparable to the distinctive handling of colours by different films. In fact, I quite like the soft character of GX200’s images; for one thing, it appropriately interprets the skin colour of oriental people to my eye and, for another, the transition of colours is smoother (nice for B&W) and details are better preserved IMO.

So, maybe next time you hear someone ask a similar question, you may ask them to at least check out the above 17 reasons. Better still, ask them to get a habit of reviewing the photos and jotting down their insights. Photographic skill has to be learned and practised to make it perfect. Keep going! Leave a comment if you have discovered some other explanations for a hazy image.

Comments

Cristian said…
The contrast is what I found most often the reason for "hazy" pictures. If the contrast is set to low it will give dull pictures. A quick adjustment in camera or Photoshop and the pictures look great.
Nevin said…
That's another good observation.

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