I have a Canon S10 which works great!!!. My only problem is..When I see a beautiful red sunset here in Montana and take a photo, it doesn't come out very red in the photo. How do I get the end results to come out like my eyes see it?

-- Glenn Patch (GEPatch@aol.com), December 28, 1999

Answers

Maybe you centered the viewfinder on a bright area of the sky, and the resulting colors were washed out (i.e. only light red). Next time try first pointing the center of the camera to a darker area, i.e. near the ground, & press the shutter release down half-way to record that intensity level, then point the camera as you really want to compose the shot and press down fully.

Also, with that shot you already have, you can redden it more in any decent image editing program, like Adobe Photodeluxe, etc. -bruce

-- bruce komusin (bkomusin@bigfoot.com), December 29, 1999.

You make a white balance.Buy a Kodak Grey card and make a shot of it(in the sunset light, of course).If your camera hasn't got a custom white function , you open the shot with the grey card in Phshp ,open Levels,double-click on midtones ,click on the greycard,and set the values in rgb to the same value. Click Ok. Open the "real" sunset pix , click Command+alt+l and you've got it! Happy NewYear

soeren

-- Soeren Steffen (stefdnk@hotmail.com), December 29, 1999.

Glenn
Actually, white ballancing will be most effective on pure white paper - your camera may struggle a bit on a neutral grey card.
Most wash outs of sunset/sunrise picture occur due to overexposure - exposing for the dark areas of the photograph will result in an overexposed area where you want the color most.
What your eye sees, and what the camera sees are quite different due to the lattitude your eye accepts versus what the camera can handle. My reccomendation is to bracket your exposures (take several pictures at different exposures) - hey it's digital so you're not wasting film.
I think you'll find that exposing entirely for the sky will make everything else too dark, and exposing for the dark areas will wash out the colors you wish to capture - but start at one of these extremes and shoot about 5 or 6 shots along the way to the other.
One of those pictures will be perfect - trust me.
Des

-- Dan Desjardins (dan.desjardins@avstarnews.com), December 29, 1999.

Actually, contrary to the other suggestions, I think you want to do exactly the opposite of setting the white balance as suggested. The problem is that the camera is trying to compensate for the red color in the sky, leaving it washed out. To preserve the red, use the "daylight" white balance setting, which will have the camera interpret everything as if it were under normal daylight. The result will be a *really* red sky. (The comments about exposure were on the mark though - you should definitely try bracketing the exposure a fair bit, since an over- exposure of the sky itself would really wash out the colors as well.)

-- Dave Etchells (hotnews@imaging-resource.com), January 03, 2000.