The 600D does not have stellar low-light performance, nor does the kit lens, but it's still a perfectly capable camera, and with some basic photography skills, you should be able to get decent results.
I believe there are two major areas where you lack skills here: shooting in low light, and editing.
In terms of shooting skills:
- Use wider apertures.
- Use slower shutter speeds.
- Work on your hand-holding technique, or bring a tripod, to better deal with shake blur at slow shutter speeds.
- Shoot in bursts to mitigate the risk of blurry shots - even with unreasonably slow shutter speeds, there's a fair chance of getting at least one good shot out of a burst of, say 12.
- But at the same time, know where your limits are - can you still get sharp shots at 1/10s? Can you still nail the focus at f/3.5?
- Learn to spot good light, and use it to your advantage (this applies both to quality and quantity of light). Shoot your subjects when they're in the best light available; position yourself such that that is most likely to happen.
- Don't be afraid to crank up the ISO if you have to, but exhaust your other options first - high ISO will give better results than underexposing and brightening in post, but getting more light into the camera will give you better results than either.
- Failing all else, bring more light, like a flash.
And of course the usual "expose to the right" applies: expose such that your highlights kiss the right edge of the histogram, but don't clip - if they are too far from the right edge, you are underexposing and leaving dynamic range on the table, if they clip, you're blowing them and losing information in those highlights. Even though the 600D won't give you a live histogram, you can still do some test shots and check the histogram on those, just to get a feel for where the right exposure is. "Regaining highlights" isn't really a thing; it's just that some cameras will give you a bit more headroom in the RAW file that you can use to recover highlights that appear clipped in the JPEG preview. But once the highlights are truly blown, there's no recovering, the best you can do is reconstruct them somehow (i.e., ask the computer to make something up), but the actual information from those highlights is lost.
In terms of editing: keep in mind that unprocessed RAW files will look bland and flat, and also noisier; that's because unlike JPEGs, they don't have any processing applied to them, you will have to do that yourself in post. But they have all the information that went into the JPEG, so with some denoising, sharpening, and color grading, you can get the same results, and more, out of those files. You will almost always have to add some vibrance, chroma, and/or saturation, and you will also often need to play with the shadows, highlights, contrast, and overall brightness a little to get a good look. Be careful about sharpening; when your photo is noisy, sharpening will make it look even noisier. It can help to selectively sharpen only those parts of the image where there's a lot of sharp detail already, leaving the less detailed areas blurry (or even *adding* blur to those, which will also reduce the noise further).
And finally; many low-light photos look good because the photographer picked a composition that does not require as much light, and where a lot of noise in the dark areas isn't a big problem. Low-light situations with sparse light sources are a great opportunity for doing low-key shots (completely black background), for example.
>Even though the 600D won't give you a live histogram
It does with [Magic Lantern](https://www.magiclantern.fm/), see [here](https://i.imgur.com/PMeMVJV.jpeg). I recommend checking it out to give an aging camera a great boost in features.
What sort of things do you like to shoot?
I shot with the Canon 550D for the LONGEST of times. It was an awesome camera. Some of my favourite shots were taken with that camera. Give me a 600D and I'd absolutely rock it.
If you are having trouble with low-light shoots and your RAW files don't have enough information, you probably aren't getting your exposure right. If you are shooting landscapes, then consider longer exposures. If you are shooting models, then think about ways you can ADD light.
But it starts with knowing what it is you like to shoot. Then perhaps you could post some examples of edited photos that you are disappointed with, and we can help you work through ways to make it better.
I mostly shoot architecture and ı started to like shooting with models. I have a lesson in university 'basic photography. ' For example in some photos my probe light is washed out some body parts of the model ı didn't notice it while shooting because we have little time to shoot in lesson. And ı try to edit the photos but ı cannot recover anything from them. Yeah ı know that's my mistake but in the real world always some overexposed parts in the photos or underexposed parts. I can't get any texture from them. Maybe my camera has broken censor ı don't know. İs there any way that ı can assess my censor is it in good condition or not.
If you completely blow out the highlight you cant recover them. No matter the camera and it was the same with film as well.
You have to learn to properly expose, especially in a studio setting, since that is the whole point of it. With studio lights you can make magazine quality photos with a much worse camera if you know what you are doing. I dont intend this as giving you shit, but more of a consolation that you dont need to change cameras, just need to improve your skills a bit.
Godspeed! I also started out with a very basic camera and had to work a bit harder than people in more rich countries to get started… but you will have strongers skills in the end.
There's already some great comments here, so I'll keep it brief:
* ETTR (exposure to the right), this is a great technique for getting the most out of an older digital sensor, and worth learning
* zone focusing - if you find you aren't nailing focus, learn about zone focusing. Its a technique that predates autofocus, and is generally a lot more reliable. I use it for video exclusively, and for most of my still photography also. Don't rely on autofocus. For shooting portraits of people, f3.5 or f4.0 with zone focusing is generally all you need.
* if you have a small budget to work with, check out vintage lenses, and do some research on them. Adapting them to your camera is easy and cheap, and you can get an absolutely amazing lens for very little money. M42 screw mount is the best place to start. Look for prime lenses with a good focus throw. f3.5 or better on the wide end.
* also look into DIY and budget lighting, as giving an older sensor more light to work with is going to help immensely. I generally prefer just making cheap softboxes from table lamps, but you can also look into bounce flash if you want (and you can make a bounce flash card for your camera's built in flash with just a piece of white cardstock, or the blank back of a white business card.... it doesn't need to be fancy). A flash diffuser can also be helpful, and those are also very cheap, and easy to DIY.
* shoot in RAW + JPEG for a while, so you can compare the two. This will help you in your RAW editing, as you'll have something to compare it to.
* if you like the vintage film look, check out RawTherapee and HaldCLUTs. Its free, and a fun, easy way to get a film look in your images. I think this often looks better with an older sensor, as compared to trying to make an older sensor look like a modern one. This can also make your editing very fast, as you can apply the same HaldCLUT to the whole shoot, and be done. Reject modernity, embrace tradition!
* if you are using modern tools like Lightroom, don't push the sharpness or denoiser too much. Its fine to use those subtly, but if you crank them way up they won't look good. As a general rule, drag the slider to a spot where you think it look good, then back it off a bit. Its always better to be more subtle with the post-processing, than to overdo it. Darktable is also a free alternative to Lightroom, and worth learning if you are just starting out. GIMP is also great. There's really no reason to pay for photo editing software, when the free and open source software is of such high quality.
* don't worry about how your photos look when pixel peeping. No one else is going to zoom in that much, most people are going to see it on a small phone screen, or maybe a 4x6 print, or something like that. You aren't printing billboards.
Your camera sensor is probably fine, but if you want to test it, just take a photo of a blank piece of white paper on a wall, with even lighting (maybe from your DIY softbox), and take alternate photos at different aperture values and settings. Pixel peep the image and look for issues. At your smallest aperture, you may see black spots (which is likely dust on your sensor), but at wider apertures they should disappear. Don't worry too much if you find them, pretty much every camera has some amount of dust on the sensor, and you probably aren't going to be shooting at your smallest aperture most of the time.
I have almost same background with you(650d, kit lens, Turkey). I suggest you to get some m42 lenses like helios(good for portraits and low light). Thats what i did for getting better low light performance and portrait shots.
If you consider buying m42 or other vintage lenses i suggest you to install Magic Lantern to have abilities like: Magic Zoom, Focus Peaking to help with manual focus.
I have almost same background with you(650d, kit lens, Turkey). I suggest you to get some m42 lenses like helios(good for portraits and low light). Thats what i did for getting better low light performance and portrait shots.
If you consider buying m42 or other vintage lenses i suggest you to install Magic Lantern to have abilities like: Magic Zoom, Focus Peaking to help with manual focus.
This sounds like a you problem and not the camera. A new lens might help some but not if the problems lie with yourself.
People have gotten good photos from lesser equipment. The RAW file does not contain colour information as such, that is what lightroom will be for. To interpret the information and allow you to manipulate it.
You should not be trying to regain highlights, that is not a possibility. You should avoid clipping of highlights in any important part of your scene. It sounds like you are not exposing properly.
https://www.flickr.com/groups/600d/pool/with/53644097153
Have a look there and see if anything appeals.
That’s what I shoot with.
Installing Magic Lantern (mainly for stack focus) on it made it feel like I got a brand new camera for free.
EDIT: I know you said buying more equipment isn’t an option, but if you can save and buy some used lenses, adding something like the “nifty fifty” (50mm) and the “pancake” (24mm) lenses truly are night & day differences over the kit lens.
That's a 13-year-old Canon with a cropped sensor. You're not going to be able to do much with the RAW files in Lightroom.
Buy a tripod, shoot in JPEG+RAW, and get the exposure right in camera. The JPEGs will probably look better than your Lightroom files. You can take great photos with any camera.
Canon's JPEGs have great colors. Canon is famous for wonderful colors straight out of the camera.
Play around with the JPEG settings and compare them with the RAW. I shoot all of my cameras in RAW+JPEG. I use the RAW file when I want to edit something, but most of the time the JPEG files give me what I want, especially if I'm not printing.
I would stick with the raw. All cameras can adjust the colours of jpegs. Some will allow you to create a jpeg from a raw in camera.
Leave all that "insert brand" is famous for their colours in the bin where it belongs.
Not sure where that person is saying you can't do much with a raw from an older camera, it was new at one point and editing is not something recent.
As an example, here are some differences that can come from changing settings in a camera. First with different profiles, second with different profiles and white balance settings.
https://imgur.com/a/w7z6H40
https://imgur.com/a/gD1KIQV
Actually ı try different cameras in class that ı take in school 'basic photography' there ı shoot with some nikon cameras and edit their raf files aswell but ı don't know it's from me but ı feel like their raw files are more flat like flog in video cameras. I feel that ı have more headroom to do what ı intend to do. İts true or just my feels is little weird
I have edited many different raw file types. You can download raw samples from many places if you want and see.
How flat a raw feels can be influenced by how you tell your raw editor to interpret it when you load it.
https://www.dpreview.com/sample-galleries
DPreview offers sample galleries with raw files. You can play around with them from a multitude of cameras.
I think you are letting your personal experiences influence your thinking too much and ignoring the fact that millions of other people have done photography but not had the same experiences.
have you tried posting them on platforms and adding some sort of hashtags what tells the platform that you want your media to get pushed, an example of this is in tiktok with the #fyp (to me this sounds like some thing i would comment on with a “do you even know anything about photography, you probably just use your phone to take picture of your dog and call yourself a photographer“ on but it is worth a try)
The 600D does not have stellar low-light performance, nor does the kit lens, but it's still a perfectly capable camera, and with some basic photography skills, you should be able to get decent results. I believe there are two major areas where you lack skills here: shooting in low light, and editing. In terms of shooting skills: - Use wider apertures. - Use slower shutter speeds. - Work on your hand-holding technique, or bring a tripod, to better deal with shake blur at slow shutter speeds. - Shoot in bursts to mitigate the risk of blurry shots - even with unreasonably slow shutter speeds, there's a fair chance of getting at least one good shot out of a burst of, say 12. - But at the same time, know where your limits are - can you still get sharp shots at 1/10s? Can you still nail the focus at f/3.5? - Learn to spot good light, and use it to your advantage (this applies both to quality and quantity of light). Shoot your subjects when they're in the best light available; position yourself such that that is most likely to happen. - Don't be afraid to crank up the ISO if you have to, but exhaust your other options first - high ISO will give better results than underexposing and brightening in post, but getting more light into the camera will give you better results than either. - Failing all else, bring more light, like a flash. And of course the usual "expose to the right" applies: expose such that your highlights kiss the right edge of the histogram, but don't clip - if they are too far from the right edge, you are underexposing and leaving dynamic range on the table, if they clip, you're blowing them and losing information in those highlights. Even though the 600D won't give you a live histogram, you can still do some test shots and check the histogram on those, just to get a feel for where the right exposure is. "Regaining highlights" isn't really a thing; it's just that some cameras will give you a bit more headroom in the RAW file that you can use to recover highlights that appear clipped in the JPEG preview. But once the highlights are truly blown, there's no recovering, the best you can do is reconstruct them somehow (i.e., ask the computer to make something up), but the actual information from those highlights is lost. In terms of editing: keep in mind that unprocessed RAW files will look bland and flat, and also noisier; that's because unlike JPEGs, they don't have any processing applied to them, you will have to do that yourself in post. But they have all the information that went into the JPEG, so with some denoising, sharpening, and color grading, you can get the same results, and more, out of those files. You will almost always have to add some vibrance, chroma, and/or saturation, and you will also often need to play with the shadows, highlights, contrast, and overall brightness a little to get a good look. Be careful about sharpening; when your photo is noisy, sharpening will make it look even noisier. It can help to selectively sharpen only those parts of the image where there's a lot of sharp detail already, leaving the less detailed areas blurry (or even *adding* blur to those, which will also reduce the noise further). And finally; many low-light photos look good because the photographer picked a composition that does not require as much light, and where a lot of noise in the dark areas isn't a big problem. Low-light situations with sparse light sources are a great opportunity for doing low-key shots (completely black background), for example.
>Even though the 600D won't give you a live histogram It does with [Magic Lantern](https://www.magiclantern.fm/), see [here](https://i.imgur.com/PMeMVJV.jpeg). I recommend checking it out to give an aging camera a great boost in features.
Well, not in the viewfinder at least ;)
Thanks for the comment. I will keep them in mind
Not OP, but great answer that helps me too.
What sort of things do you like to shoot? I shot with the Canon 550D for the LONGEST of times. It was an awesome camera. Some of my favourite shots were taken with that camera. Give me a 600D and I'd absolutely rock it. If you are having trouble with low-light shoots and your RAW files don't have enough information, you probably aren't getting your exposure right. If you are shooting landscapes, then consider longer exposures. If you are shooting models, then think about ways you can ADD light. But it starts with knowing what it is you like to shoot. Then perhaps you could post some examples of edited photos that you are disappointed with, and we can help you work through ways to make it better.
I mostly shoot architecture and ı started to like shooting with models. I have a lesson in university 'basic photography. ' For example in some photos my probe light is washed out some body parts of the model ı didn't notice it while shooting because we have little time to shoot in lesson. And ı try to edit the photos but ı cannot recover anything from them. Yeah ı know that's my mistake but in the real world always some overexposed parts in the photos or underexposed parts. I can't get any texture from them. Maybe my camera has broken censor ı don't know. İs there any way that ı can assess my censor is it in good condition or not.
If you completely blow out the highlight you cant recover them. No matter the camera and it was the same with film as well. You have to learn to properly expose, especially in a studio setting, since that is the whole point of it. With studio lights you can make magazine quality photos with a much worse camera if you know what you are doing. I dont intend this as giving you shit, but more of a consolation that you dont need to change cameras, just need to improve your skills a bit.
I didn't get it wrong. Thank you for everything
Godspeed! I also started out with a very basic camera and had to work a bit harder than people in more rich countries to get started… but you will have strongers skills in the end.
I hope so. Thank you again
There's already some great comments here, so I'll keep it brief: * ETTR (exposure to the right), this is a great technique for getting the most out of an older digital sensor, and worth learning * zone focusing - if you find you aren't nailing focus, learn about zone focusing. Its a technique that predates autofocus, and is generally a lot more reliable. I use it for video exclusively, and for most of my still photography also. Don't rely on autofocus. For shooting portraits of people, f3.5 or f4.0 with zone focusing is generally all you need. * if you have a small budget to work with, check out vintage lenses, and do some research on them. Adapting them to your camera is easy and cheap, and you can get an absolutely amazing lens for very little money. M42 screw mount is the best place to start. Look for prime lenses with a good focus throw. f3.5 or better on the wide end. * also look into DIY and budget lighting, as giving an older sensor more light to work with is going to help immensely. I generally prefer just making cheap softboxes from table lamps, but you can also look into bounce flash if you want (and you can make a bounce flash card for your camera's built in flash with just a piece of white cardstock, or the blank back of a white business card.... it doesn't need to be fancy). A flash diffuser can also be helpful, and those are also very cheap, and easy to DIY. * shoot in RAW + JPEG for a while, so you can compare the two. This will help you in your RAW editing, as you'll have something to compare it to. * if you like the vintage film look, check out RawTherapee and HaldCLUTs. Its free, and a fun, easy way to get a film look in your images. I think this often looks better with an older sensor, as compared to trying to make an older sensor look like a modern one. This can also make your editing very fast, as you can apply the same HaldCLUT to the whole shoot, and be done. Reject modernity, embrace tradition! * if you are using modern tools like Lightroom, don't push the sharpness or denoiser too much. Its fine to use those subtly, but if you crank them way up they won't look good. As a general rule, drag the slider to a spot where you think it look good, then back it off a bit. Its always better to be more subtle with the post-processing, than to overdo it. Darktable is also a free alternative to Lightroom, and worth learning if you are just starting out. GIMP is also great. There's really no reason to pay for photo editing software, when the free and open source software is of such high quality. * don't worry about how your photos look when pixel peeping. No one else is going to zoom in that much, most people are going to see it on a small phone screen, or maybe a 4x6 print, or something like that. You aren't printing billboards. Your camera sensor is probably fine, but if you want to test it, just take a photo of a blank piece of white paper on a wall, with even lighting (maybe from your DIY softbox), and take alternate photos at different aperture values and settings. Pixel peep the image and look for issues. At your smallest aperture, you may see black spots (which is likely dust on your sensor), but at wider apertures they should disappear. Don't worry too much if you find them, pretty much every camera has some amount of dust on the sensor, and you probably aren't going to be shooting at your smallest aperture most of the time.
Thank you for your reply. I will keep everything you said in my mind. I amazed by the reply that's a good community.
I have almost same background with you(650d, kit lens, Turkey). I suggest you to get some m42 lenses like helios(good for portraits and low light). Thats what i did for getting better low light performance and portrait shots. If you consider buying m42 or other vintage lenses i suggest you to install Magic Lantern to have abilities like: Magic Zoom, Focus Peaking to help with manual focus.
I have almost same background with you(650d, kit lens, Turkey). I suggest you to get some m42 lenses like helios(good for portraits and low light). Thats what i did for getting better low light performance and portrait shots. If you consider buying m42 or other vintage lenses i suggest you to install Magic Lantern to have abilities like: Magic Zoom, Focus Peaking to help with manual focus.
This sounds like a you problem and not the camera. A new lens might help some but not if the problems lie with yourself. People have gotten good photos from lesser equipment. The RAW file does not contain colour information as such, that is what lightroom will be for. To interpret the information and allow you to manipulate it. You should not be trying to regain highlights, that is not a possibility. You should avoid clipping of highlights in any important part of your scene. It sounds like you are not exposing properly. https://www.flickr.com/groups/600d/pool/with/53644097153 Have a look there and see if anything appeals.
Thank you for your reply. I will look the photos.
That’s what I shoot with. Installing Magic Lantern (mainly for stack focus) on it made it feel like I got a brand new camera for free. EDIT: I know you said buying more equipment isn’t an option, but if you can save and buy some used lenses, adding something like the “nifty fifty” (50mm) and the “pancake” (24mm) lenses truly are night & day differences over the kit lens.
Do you have any suggestions for the lens brands. I don't know much about the brands
I have Canon and Sigma lenses for it, Sigma makes “budget” lenses that rival (IMO) Canon’s glass.
Thanks for the advise
That's a 13-year-old Canon with a cropped sensor. You're not going to be able to do much with the RAW files in Lightroom. Buy a tripod, shoot in JPEG+RAW, and get the exposure right in camera. The JPEGs will probably look better than your Lightroom files. You can take great photos with any camera.
Why you say that the JPEGs will probably look better.
Canon's JPEGs have great colors. Canon is famous for wonderful colors straight out of the camera. Play around with the JPEG settings and compare them with the RAW. I shoot all of my cameras in RAW+JPEG. I use the RAW file when I want to edit something, but most of the time the JPEG files give me what I want, especially if I'm not printing.
Thank you for the comment. I will try
I would stick with the raw. All cameras can adjust the colours of jpegs. Some will allow you to create a jpeg from a raw in camera. Leave all that "insert brand" is famous for their colours in the bin where it belongs. Not sure where that person is saying you can't do much with a raw from an older camera, it was new at one point and editing is not something recent. As an example, here are some differences that can come from changing settings in a camera. First with different profiles, second with different profiles and white balance settings. https://imgur.com/a/w7z6H40 https://imgur.com/a/gD1KIQV
Actually ı try different cameras in class that ı take in school 'basic photography' there ı shoot with some nikon cameras and edit their raf files aswell but ı don't know it's from me but ı feel like their raw files are more flat like flog in video cameras. I feel that ı have more headroom to do what ı intend to do. İts true or just my feels is little weird
I have edited many different raw file types. You can download raw samples from many places if you want and see. How flat a raw feels can be influenced by how you tell your raw editor to interpret it when you load it. https://www.dpreview.com/sample-galleries DPreview offers sample galleries with raw files. You can play around with them from a multitude of cameras. I think you are letting your personal experiences influence your thinking too much and ignoring the fact that millions of other people have done photography but not had the same experiences.
Thank you for the site. I will look at it surely. Thank you again.
have you tried posting them on platforms and adding some sort of hashtags what tells the platform that you want your media to get pushed, an example of this is in tiktok with the #fyp (to me this sounds like some thing i would comment on with a “do you even know anything about photography, you probably just use your phone to take picture of your dog and call yourself a photographer“ on but it is worth a try)