Ask me what you want.

[waterrockets]

Originally Posted by travln1

First post!

May I ask what your "go to" lens is? Which do you prefer? If you could only have one lens, what would it be?

And secondly, in the shot of your daughter taking a photo of her doll...is this typically the distance you would sit at when photographing? Which lens would you use in this scenario?

Thank you so much for being so generous!

While I'm interested in the answer as well, I thought I'd mention something I learned as I was just getting into this: many of the images posted in POTN have Exif data in them. So, if you look at an exif viewer, you might be able to see what lens was used in a shot, in addition to all the settings...
Like these two shots:
24-70mm f/2.8L
85mm f/1.2L

[mosi2]

Originally Posted by mercersmoments

Ahhaa ! What a cute little man you get to photograph !!!

That last one is just so cute ! Love it !

I am using photo shop CS4, I have just upgraded to CS5 - Though it's still waiting to be installed onto my computer - I must do that soon.

If you can get hold of CS3, CS4 or CS5 - you will be very happy

You can do very basic editing in photo shop, to keep a natural feel to your photos.

I have done a very quick edit for you, just to show what a few simple adjustments can do to enhance a photo

I did a curves adjustment to lighten the photo & I took some yellow out. I used a levels layer to add some blacks & and a brightness/contrast adjustment too.







I usually do my de saturating ACR with a RAW file, but this time I did the following :


Layer - new adjustment layer - black and white

Play round with the sliders and adjust to taste then click layer - flatten image.

Have a play and see how you go

Amazing..it looks bright but not pale..sorry, it may silly question, how to took the yellow out? btw, what a funny little boy, I love when he wear costume, seems like mini batman lol

[daniboo]

Originally Posted by mosi2

Amazing..it looks bright but not pale..sorry, it may silly question, how to took the yellow out? btw, what a funny little boy, I love when he wear costume, seems like mini batman lol

Hehehe! Thanks a bunch!

I was wondering how she took some yellow out, as well! I downloaded GIMP last night, and was toggling with some adjustments.....

[nemesis47]

On Gimp... Go to Colors -> Color Balance... play with the sliders on Adjust Color levels.

[Lyssi]

Thank you for sharing all of this wonderful information.

My questions are about focusing. I find that when I use f/2.8 I run the risk of having one eye slightly out of focus which ruins the portrait. I tend then to always use f/5.6 to be safe and of course don't get as much blur as I'd like with the background, as a result.

1. Where do you place your focus point, on one eye or between the eyes?

2. Do you focus and reframe with children or use the appropriate individual focus points of the viewfinder rather than the centre focus point ?

3. I wondered too if perhaps I am not keeping my camera parallel enough when I'm taking the picture and that is why both eyes are not equally sharp? Tricky when the kids are moving about outdoors.

Any advice here would be appreciated

[mercersmoments]

First post! May I ask what your "go to" lens is? Which do you prefer? If you could only have one lens, what would it be?

And secondly, in the shot of your daughter taking a photo of her doll...is this typically the distance you would sit at when photographing? Which lens would you use in this scenario?

Thank you so much for being so generous!

I love my 24-70 2.8L - It's very much my all rounder. So if I was only allowed to have one lens in the whole world it would be the 24-70 !

The photo of my daughter taking a photo of her doll : Yes this is the distance I use if the strobe light is on - and I can switch between my 85 1.2L & my 24-70 2.8L.

The reason there's a good distance between the light and my subject is so I can use f/2.3 or 2.8 without my light blowing out the subject - the light is turned to the lowest power and is far away enough for me to still be able to use it as off camera flash and use wide apetures to give me my blurred backgrounds and take away that hard harsh oversharp look that studio lights can give - which I don't like on babies

When using just the light from the window, I bring my subjects closer & use the 24-70.

hope this helps And welcome to POTN - We are an awesome, friendly bunch ! lol

While I'm interested in the answer as well, I thought I'd mention something I learned as I was just getting into this: many of the images posted in POTN have Exif data in them. So, if you look at an exif viewer, you might be able to see what lens was used in a shot, in addition to all the settings...
Like these two shots:
24-70mm f/2.8L
85mm f/1.2L

Yes this is correct - most images you can run through an exif data viewer to see what settings and lens the person used.

I used this exif data viewer :
http://regex.info/exif.cgi

Amazing..it looks bright but not pale..sorry, it may silly question, how to took the yellow out?

I selected layer - new adjustment layer - selective colour- yellow and adjusted slightly then flattened image by selecting layer-flatten image.

Then i selected layer - hue &saturation - clicked the colour picker - clicked on his chin where there was colour cast - then adjusted until the colour cast was toned down a little. Then flattened image.

Thank you for sharing all of this wonderful information.

My questions are about focusing. I find that when I use f/2.8 I run the risk of having one eye slightly out of focus which ruins the portrait. I tend then to always use f/5.6 to be safe and of course don't get as much blur as I'd like with the background, as a result.

1. Where do you place your focus point, on one eye or between the eyes?

2. Do you focus and re frame with children or use the appropriate individual focus points of the viewfinder rather than the centre focus point ?

3. I wondered too if perhaps I am not keeping my camera parallel enough when I'm taking the picture and that is why both eyes are not equally sharp? Tricky when the kids are moving about outdoors.

Any advice here would be appreciated

1. Where do you place your focus point, on one eye or between the eyes?

I usually toggle to the bridge of the nose for a front on portrait & to one eye (the closest to the camera) on a more side on portrait.

So this photo - she is slightly side on - the focus was on her left eye - or the "front" eye in this shot

you can see one is clear than the other, but it still looks fine because of the angle. This was shot on 2.8 (and in AV - I was having a lazy day) so I expect some softness in the other eye and in other parts of the photo - though I do like the look it gives. If you bump to 3.2 you will still get nice smooth backgrounds, but your overall focus point will be a bigger area and you are more likley to get both eyes in focus.

Do you focus and re frame with children or use the appropriate individual focus points of the viewfinder rather than the centre focus point ?

Both, sometimes with the 24-70 at 2.8 it misses focus, and I know when it is, so I use the centre focus point, focus and recompose, if I am quick enough - kids are fast movers ! lol But I do prefer to toggle to the area rather than focus and recompose. So 90% of the time I am a toggler - lol

If all else fails, use the centre focus point lock the focus and recompose. They say that the sweet spot on the 24-70 is at 50mm 3.2 with the centre focus toggled, and I have tried this - and it's true !

I wondered too if perhaps I am not keeping my camera parallel enough when I'm taking the picture and that is why both eyes are not equally sharp? Tricky when the kids are moving about outdoors.

No it's probably more to do with the focus point and aperture (and shutter speed - slow shutter and kids don't mix)- You can turn the camera upside down and as long as your focus point is in the right spot you'll still get in focus pics

Try the sweet spot settings - keep your shutter speed around 1/200 and post some samples I think on your 17-55 you could try 40mm f/3.2

[4-ever-blessed]

Hi Seona in the photo of the cute little boy that you took the yellow out, how does one avoid having too much yellow? often my photo's will have too much of one colour usually an orange tinge. is it just because I'm choosing auto white balance?
thanks

[daniboo]

Originally Posted by 4-ever-blessed

Hi Seona in the photo of the cute little boy that you took the yellow out, how does one avoid having too much yellow? often my photo's will have too much of one colour usually an orange tinge. is it just because I'm choosing auto white balance?
thanks

Hehehehe! That's my son, Caden! I'm a proud mama!

[mercersmoments]

Hi Seona in the photo of the cute little boy that you took the yellow out, how does one avoid having too much yellow? often my photo's will have too much of one colour usually an orange tinge. is it just because I'm choosing auto white balance?
thanks

Lots of things can cause colour casts. In that photo there was yellow flowers that caused it, manual WB will help, but colour casts are just one of those annoying things you get, and it's hard to stop them.

I had a child in a green t shirt and he ended up with a green shaddow under his chin, I had to use layers in PS shop tone it down.

try shooting a white bit of paper and then setting your camera, using the white image to set as your custom WB. See if that helps you

[4-ever-blessed]

try shooting a white bit of paper and then setting your camera, using the white image to set as your custom WB. See if that helps you

thanks I'll have to look up how to do that

[waterrockets]

Originally Posted by mercersmoments

Lots of things can cause colour casts. In that photo there was yellow flowers that caused it, manual WB will help, but colour casts are just one of those annoying things you get, and it's hard to stop them.

I had a child in a green t shirt and he ended up with a green shaddow under his chin, I had to use layers in PS shop tone it down.

try shooting a white bit of paper and then setting your camera, using the white image to set as your custom WB. See if that helps you

Thanks for all this wonderful advice. I've been lurking in this thread for some time and appreciate it -- I'm sure many silent others are as well...

Regarding lighting color, one trick I've found is to always shoot something white or gray, full-frame if I'm somewhere with strange light (elemetary school cafeteria, for instance). I just switch to manual focus for the shot, fill the frame with a gray surface, and shoot (out of focus is probably better).

Then, when I get home to DPP, the first thing I do is go to that shot and adjust the RGB levels so that all three of the peaks perfectly overlap, which makes it "perfectly gray." Then copy that recipe to clipboard, and paste the recipe to every image I shot at that location. All the faces and clothes now look completely natural. Of course, this requires shooting in RAW...

One thing though, I've found that there are color casts that I want to keep. Children blowing out a candle in low light, for instance. The yellow coloring is just how it's supposed to look

[travln1]

Thank you! I love the 24-70 f2.8, too.

May I ask one more question? Regarding the bean bag chair: you said you folded it over on itself. How so? I'm having a hard time envisioning it.

Thank you so much for being so generous!

[Looony2nz]

Hi, ! 2 questions. Please tell me what you mean by a "crop camera". I've heard the term, but don't know what that really means.

and. when you say you toggle the focus point to the eye area , is this something you can only do on manual settings. My husband shoots with the auto focus most of the time and he says if he were to focus on the eye area, the rest of the pic would be out of focus?
so confused
thx

[howzitboy]

what a great thread! thx Seona for sharing!

[mercersmoments]

Thanks for all this wonderful advice. I've been lurking in this thread for some time and appreciate it -- I'm sure many silent others are as well...

Regarding lighting color, one trick I've found is to always shoot something white or gray, full-frame if I'm somewhere with strange light (elemetary school cafeteria, for instance). I just switch to manual focus for the shot, fill the frame with a gray surface, and shoot (out of focus is probably better).

Then, when I get home to DPP, the first thing I do is go to that shot and adjust the RGB levels so that all three of the peaks perfectly overlap, which makes it "perfectly gray." Then copy that recipe to clipboard, and paste the recipe to every image I shot at that location. All the faces and clothes now look completely natural. Of course, this requires shooting in RAW...

One thing though, I've found that there are color casts that I want to keep. Children blowing out a candle in low light, for instance. The yellow coloring is just how it's supposed to look

Yep, yep and yep ! Totally agree

Thank you! I love the 24-70 f2.8, too.

May I ask one more question? Regarding the bean bag chair: you said you folded it over on itself. How so? I'm having a hard time envisioning it.

Thank you so much for being so generous!

It's an "L" shape bean chair, so imagine half the top folding onto the bottom half - ok that's confusing - lol, I'll take a photo of mine today and post it ASAP

Hi, ! 2 questions. Please tell me what you mean by a "crop camera". I've heard the term, but don't know what that really means.

and. when you say you toggle the focus point to the eye area , is this something you can only do on manual settings. My husband shoots with the auto focus most of the time and he says if he were to focus on the eye area, the rest of the pic would be out of focus?
so confused
thx

A crop camera is not full frame. I think any EOS cameras below the 5D are a 1.6 crop body. It basically makes your lenses closer than what they are. LOL There's my basic take one it - but here you'll find more

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full-frame_digital_SLR

Not to sure what camera your husband is using, but on my 5D2 I can toggle the focus in all modes except the green square (which you should never use cause that's naughty, lol)

he says if he were to focus on the eye area, the rest of the pic would be out of focus?

That depends on your aperture - if you use say a fairly wide aperture then yes you will have sharp eyes/face and soft every where else - like this photo : (But I still like the look it gives)

Shot on f/2 natural light - under a tree, no extra lighting/reflectors.

exif here :

Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Lens: EF50mm f/1.2L USM
Exposure: Manual exposure, 1/350 sec, f/2, ISO 200
Focus: At 65cm




I always toggle to the eye area when focusing - sharp eyes are very important to me, it's the first thing I notice about people

when I photograph more than one person I use a larger f/ stop number - or smaller apeture - less light.

Like this photo - I used the centre focus point and f/4 - used one 500 watt strobe with softbox set to low - and 1.2 meters away from the people - with natural light from a window to their right

Exif here :

Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Lens: EF24-70mm f/2.8L USM
Shot at 45 mm
Exposure: Manual exposure, 1/125 sec, f/4, ISO 160
Focus: At 1.9m

what a great thread! thx Seona for sharing!

Thanks for reading I'm pleased that people are getting something from it