Portrait of a Tree Climber Cat

Ever had a day when every cat photo you take is a total disaster? That was my thought when I downloaded the captures of our tree climber cat Toulouse! The downloads looked like black ink – terrible. How could I put them right? Let me tell you.

Don’t be in a Hurry

I was, but to be fair, I had to act quickly as Toulouse almost seemed to fly up the tree like he had wings. I grabbed my DSLR for a chance of some potentially cute, fun shots! But this happened…..

As you can see from the first capture, the cat and the tree are almost impossible to see. But, as I had shot the photos in Camera Raw I hoped I might be able to rescue some of them when I downloaded the photos to my computer.

It is important to get the exposure within at least one stop of the ‘correct’ in-camera exposure. This is because if an image is overexposed the highlights ‘blowout’ and the detail cannot be rescued. [The same applies to under exposure – detail is lost]

Digital Camera

Why Camera Raw Saved the Day

If you look at the quote from Digital Camera, this is why my photographs were under exposed. I was more than one stop away from a good or correct exposure setting. Thank heavens for Camera RAW when I totally fluff the settings on my Canon!

RAW saves each cat photograph as data, not as an image. You can imagine it looking a little bit like computer printouts full of figures you can’t figure out. Shooting this way means I was able, this time, to adjust the images in Affinity Photo afterwards.

TIP: The one thing RAW cannot do is take photographs using Continuous or Burst mode because there is so much data being processed the camera ‘trips over its own feet’ and stops taking photos.

Check out cheeky Toulouse

To rescue this cat photo from blackness I had to:

• Increase the brightness substantially.
• Sharpen the clarity of the cat photo a lot.
• But, I realised that the editing was worth it.

Look what Toulouse was doing! Not only is he surrounded by gorgeous dappled leaves, he is sticking out his tongue!

I was able to take a lot of photos but only a couple are worth sharing. I also want to share this second cat photo because it shows a cat’s intensity as it navigates along a branch using all its tree climbing skills. I had half my attention of focusing the camera and half ready to catch him if he fell.

Again, I had to edit like a crazy person as the original was sooty black but, with adjustments to exposure and sharpness a rather fun and dramatic image appeared.

Why were the photos so dark?

I had left my camera set to Shutter Priority after practising some movement shots of Toulouse the previous day.

Of course, I didn’t check to see if I had my favourite Aperture Priority on which might have helped. If I use Shutter Priority I find I need to bump up my ISO to 400 or even 800 for a decent cat photo, whether it is a tree climber or not.