flash used and face tones correction in ps2

[bphillips330]

I was at my wife's brother's wedding this weekend. I was not the main photographer, but was just snapping pictures trying to master the xti with bounce flash and 430 ex. I shot in manual at iso 1600, full manual with shutter speed at 100-125, and iso at 4.5 - 5.6 (kit lens ) I tried using the 50 mm some for lower f- stop, but such limited depth of field with 1.8 wide open, so I figured I would get better results with kit lens as I could move the zoom around some.
Not the reason for the post though, I used bounce flash with flash stepped up to + 2 or +3 and seemed to work pretty well. Really high ceilings in the church.

The problem I am having, I know this probably problem with flash photography in darker rooms, is that the skin tones are very white. Not ghost white, but you can tell they don't look very natural. Two questions.

1. what could I have done to get better exposure with more natural skin tones with 430 ex, kit lens (until I upgrade to tamron or other 24mmish - 100mmish+) to get better skin tones

2. With cs2, I am slowly learning how to use this powerful program. Sort of figured out levels, trying to figure out curves with slight s curves. How, or what is the best way to adjust skin tones. I know there is a color thing which you can slide red green and blue, but I can't see how that brings skin tones back to correct tone. I have seen I can lower or darken the tone, but that will cover entire picture, I want to just lower tone on skin, which would entail me painfully selecting skin outline and leaving off rest of picture, maybe through some sort of mask?? Is there an easier to select certain colors (magic wand is close but too selective) and change just those tones? Sort of like changing mid tones or bights or shadows but just selecting say this skin tone?

[tim]

Shoot RAW adjust the white balance. If you already show JPG open in levels, select the dropper at bottom right, click on something white like a shirt. If it doesn't work hit undo (control-z) and try a different object.

[bphillips330]

Shoot RAW adjust the white balance. If you already show JPG open in levels, select the dropper at bottom right, click on something white like a shirt. If it doesn't work hit undo (control-z) and try a different object.


I forgot to mention that, i did shoot in raw.

[tim]

Change the white balance/color temp and things should look better, unless you over exposed the image.

[Jonathan Consiglio]

For me, I shoot weddings in Manual at ISO 200 in RAW with a 580 bounced or a friend's Qflash. For skin tones, I'll do an overall Levels, then Lasso and feather the skin. For this you can use a wand and feather around 50 + or -. Now, I use Selective Color or Color Equilizer plug-in from The Image Factory and clean up the skin tone. If any highlights are blown, I'll select that area, feather around 100+ and use a curves layer. That'll get it on the right track, then I'll tweak from there. They sell a Pantone meter that will give you the Color #'s for what you meter. You can correct with Pantone in the Color Picker and enter that number. On eof these days I'll pick this up if I can remeber what it's called! Hope that helped. Of course, all of this is after using White Balance and Calibrate in RAW....

[TheSteveMadden]

...I used bounce flash with flash stepped up to + 2 or +3 and seemed to work pretty well. Really high ceilings in the church.

The problem I am having, I know this probably problem with flash photography in darker rooms, is that the skin tones are very white. Not ghost white, but you can tell they don't look very natural. Two questions.

1. what could I have done to get better exposure with more natural skin tones with 430 ex, kit lens (until I upgrade to tamron or other 24mmish - 100mmish+) to get better skin tones



High ceilings and bouncing do NOT mean you have to up the FEC on SpeedLites, as the ETTL will automatically measure the amount of flash reaching the subject no matter what path it takes and adjust output accordingly.

The white skin is probably overexposure due to the excessive FEC. For weddings with fair skinned participants and white dresses, you might need to bump FEC to +2/3, but that should be as far as you go.

"White" skin might also be due to a Flash white balance on a subject mostly illuminated by tungsten ambient.

As long as the red channel isn't blown on your skin tones, you might want to drop the exposure in conversion by -1 and play with the white balance.

<<Here>> (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=242032)is an example of overexposure and incorrect white balance on skin tones. which is correctable.

[bphillips330]

High ceilings and bouncing do NOT mean you have to up the FEC on SpeedLites, as the ETTL will automatically measure the amount of flash reaching the subject no matter what path it takes and adjust output accordingly.



Just a curious question. I know ettl will adjust flash accordingly, but how does it do that. Do you have to hit the fel (i think that is the button) that will burst the flash for better metering. i would think that the flash would meter as picture was taken and adjust for next picture. But then wouldn't the next picture be metering for the next picture in a vicious circle.

I did read the flash bible, i guess i should re read it. Correct me if i am wrong, but i remeber something about a preflash that fires miliseconds before picture is taken. Is that true. In that instance, wouldn't distance play a huge part in that equation. Large church, high ceilings. I noticed when i was shooting with +1, the histogram still left side heavy and the parts for highlights barley went past the middle of histogram. I found that with raising the flash all the way in a couple of steps, that the histogram got better and the pictures were not so dark. But again it is so hard to see on a 1 inch lcd!

Looking at the pictures on my computer, very grainy, i know that is problem with iso 1600, how do i smooth that out while not loosing to much detail, bluring out faces and stuff. How on iso 200, can you get enough light to see picture. or is that the benefit of raw, it might be a little dark but you can bump that up in post processing. To flip that around, i know you can only rescue plus or minus 1-1.5 stops worth of info (i read that somewhere).

Thanks for all the help. I am trying to master slr digital. I am an old b&w shooter with manual cameras back in high school.

[In2Photos]

Just a curious question. I know ettl will adjust flash accordingly, but how does it do that. Do you have to hit the fel (i think that is the button) that will burst the flash for better metering. i would think that the flash would meter as picture was taken and adjust for next picture. But then wouldn't the next picture be metering for the next picture in a vicious circle.

I did read the flash bible, i guess i should re read it. Correct me if i am wrong, but i remeber something about a preflash that fires miliseconds before picture is taken. Is that true. In that instance, wouldn't distance play a huge part in that equation. Large church, high ceilings. I noticed when i was shooting with +1, the histogram still left side heavy and the parts for highlights barley went past the middle of histogram. I found that with raising the flash all the way in a couple of steps, that the histogram got better and the pictures were not so dark. But again it is so hard to see on a 1 inch lcd!

Looking at the pictures on my computer, very grainy, i know that is problem with iso 1600, how do i smooth that out while not loosing to much detail, bluring out faces and stuff. How on iso 200, can you get enough light to see picture. or is that the benefit of raw, it might be a little dark but you can bump that up in post processing. To flip that around, i know you can only rescue plus or minus 1-1.5 stops worth of info (i read that somewhere).

Thanks for all the help. I am trying to master slr digital. I am an old b&w shooter with manual cameras back in high school.



Yup you are right. ETTL fires a pre-flash after the shutter is pressed and before the shutter is opened. So ETTL is done for each and every shot. If you press FEL it will fire the pre-flash and use that for the flash exposure (if the shutter is pressed within the designated time, IIRC 16 seconds). Distance can be obtained from certain lenses but only if the flash is pointed forward (same with focal length although with focal length all lenses report). In a large church with high ceilings the flash may not be powerful enough to illuminate the whole scene.

[René Damkot]

Correct me if i am wrong, but i remeber something about a preflash that fires miliseconds before picture is taken. Is that true. In that instance, wouldn't distance play a huge part in that equation. Large church, high ceilings. I noticed when i was shooting with +1, the histogram still left side heavy and the parts for highlights barley went past the middle of histogram. I found that with raising the flash all the way in a couple of steps, that the histogram got better and the pictures were not so dark. But again it is so hard to see on a 1 inch lcd!

First: The display is pretty useless for judging exposure. In dim surroundings, it's *much* too bright, even when turned all the way down.

Second: The preflash is used to meter the light, distance and/or ceiling height have *nothing* to do with it.
As long as the flash is powerfull enough, it will put out what it thinks is needed. If you add +2 FEC, you will basically get an overflashed image (if the flash is powerfull enough). Just curious: You aren't confusing FEC with EC are you?

Third: The histogram is supposed to be on the left side if large parts of the image are dark. Different histograms for different subjects...

Last: Post some examples!