8 bit images

[lyla]

I am a total novice.  I need HELP please!

Luminous Landscape refers to bits per image - WHERE does one set the bits per image for one's camera?  

I have bought a Fuji Finepix S9000 ( called S9500 in South Africa) and find it rather complicated to operate.  My images ALWAYS need touch-ups, they never seem to be bright and crisp.  So I started searching for help on the Internet and came across this site, Luminous Landscape.  The following is a quote from the topic on BITS:  

High Bit Rates

Instead of using just 8 bits to represent a single colour we can instead sometimes use 12 or 16 bits. A 16 bit image can handle 65,536 discrete levels of information instead of the 256 levels that an 8 bit image can

PLEASE HELP!!!

[Tim Gray]

You have to choose the RAW capture option in the camera. That will likely be 12bits, but you have no option to set - its either jpg or raw.  Then in the RAW conversion - using the utility that came with the camera (or PS ACR, or Lightroom etc. etc.)  when you convert from RAW to tiff you have the option to save the tif file as 8 or 12 bits - if you save jpg, no option, 8 bit only.

FWIW, shooting in raw isn't going to solve the problem you mentioned.  The strengths of RAW are the ability to extract additional dynamic range from a shot that would otherwise clip in JPG, and adjust white-balance during conversion rather than having it baked into the JPG.  RAW will not deal with "bright/crisp" issues.

[Lisa Nikodym]

To make images more "bright & crisp", read the article on Local Contrast Enhancement here on LL.  The "crispness" is also improved by proper sharpening (the subject of other articles on LL and elsewhere).

Lisa

[61Dynamic]

The primary benefit to high-bit depth images is in editing elbow-room. The additional levels of luminosity a 12-bpc image contains allows for considerable editing in post with minimal image quality degradation.

(note: Most raw files are 12-bpc with some being 14-bpc however, they are always placed inside a 16-bpc file when saving as PSD or TIFF)

High bit-depth images will help you boost contrast (global and local) and maintain quality but your issue of images being too dark, given what you've said, sounds like it could be a issue with exposure. If that's the case, it is a matter of technique and skill with the camera. You can correct exposure issues in post production (especially with RAW) however the image quality will always suffer compared to achieving correct exposure at the time of capture.