Candice portrait

I've submitted portraits in a few other threads and have gotten some good feedback. I've used just about all the suggestions I've gotten so far to good effect.

I am still having an issue with the lighting. Reason #1: I don't have adequate lighting. I've been using 250W photofloods and umbrellas. I don't think these have the power or flexibility that I need, for what I want to do at least.
Reason #2: Even if I do get more powerful strobes or go the strobist route, I will need to diffuse the light better than the umbrella can. Thinking about throwing together a home-made softbox tomorrow.

Anyhoo, these pics were shot with my Tokina 28-80 f2.8 and Canon 50mm 1.8. I did use a monopod on most of these shots so I could avoid going up to ISO800 in less than premium lighting. Shot in RAW with minimal PP.

I truly appreciate any advice, criticism or other comments you guys can give.

1.

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I really like #4. That's your best shot in the series, in my opinion, for these reasons:
- It's a classic fashion pose that goes way back.
- The hot spots are minimal
- The lighting is good and has good 3-dimensionality.

Ask yourself these questions about #4 and #6:
- How do you like the lighting and the shadow on the neck?
- Does it look natural?, Why not?

Do you like the expression in #6? Why not?

What do you think causes the large hot reflections in the lips of #1,2,3,& 5? What can be done about it?

What is the minimum focal length that should be used in a 1.6 crop camera? Did you follow that rule in #2?

First of all she is GORGEOUS!! I am no expert (as a matter of fact I still have trouble operating my camera, so take the following with a grain of salt).

1. a good portion of her face is cut off.
2. No eye contact however im thinking this is what you were going for. But it seems as though the only thing in focus is her right eyebrow.
3. Again the face being cut off. This is just my personal opinion though.
4. I would prefer if more than her eye was in focus
5. Smile looks a little forced. And the eyes are not in focus. It seems as though the nose is in focus.
6. My favorite! Face seems to be evenly lit, in focus, and well composed.


A lot of these seem to be a little dark with shadows on either side of the face. These are all just my subjective comments. I could be totally wrong. Great work, and again a beautiful model!

EDIT: Listen to the guy above me. LOL!!!!

I personally like #6 best and perhaps thats because I think most of her face is sharp and in focus. #4 second, composition is really good and I love the crop but I think a longer DoF would be better. Nice job.

#4 was my favorite of the shoot. That shot actually came about when I was mentally reviewing the criticisms you gave from the last shoot, where I posted a shot that created double chins. Can't have a double chin when you're looking up, right?

I never even looked for that. Good spot for a reflector or a small second fill?

Hmm... even though you lead me to the 'why not' question... I actually do like it. I was going for an emotionless pose. What do you see there?

Two things: freshly applied lip gloss that has the consistency of vasoline and hard light from the umbrellas. Can be rectified by not using lip gloss under lights or maybe using better diffused light.

I know you shouldn't go too wide or you start to distort facial features. I don't know what that number is however. That shot is at 40mm, which would equate to 64mm full frame sensor equivalent. Does it look distorted to you?

Robert, thanks a bunch for the criticisms - they are a big help.

Pretty hot, isn't she?

Point taken. A year ago I would have said the same thing. At the moment I am concentrating more on filling the frame than making sure I get everything inside of the box. A year from now I might go back.

Yes, I asked her to look down for that shot. I was shooting wide open at that point, so that eyebrow seemed like a logical focus point at the time. A little smaller aperture may have been called for on that shot, especially since there is no eyeball to make pop.

Yeh, f/4 probably would have been better there. Wait until my 85mm 1.8 comes in today... it might get worse before it gets better on this one. I do have to agree with you though. Shooting wide open was a lot easier with my current crappy lighting setup though.

Definitely missed focus or my hand was shaking for that one. Probably shoulda chunked it. I liked the pose though.

I think that one has a DOF more in line with what you are looking for in #4...

My lighting has a long way to go. I've been shooting for almost 3 years now, and this is my first time trying studio lighting. It's hard! Thanks for the comments.

Comparing the DOF on #6 to the other shots, it'd be hard to argue with you on that. Thanks for the comments!

6 is the best IMO. I really don't like 1, 3 [She has no chin] and 5 [weird expression].
BTW, I feel like these pictures are a little yellow.

I just started shooting RAW with this shoot, so I can change the WB easily. I need to learn how to do this. I used the eyedropper tool and did a custom WB off of that in ACR - and I didn't like the result.

I don't know if I should be adjusting WB to make the light look like it did to my eye when I was shooting or if I should be going for some "standard" color response regardless of type of light used. I need to figure this out though.

Thanks for your comments.

lhoney2 wrote in post #5998028
#4 was my favorite of the shoot. That shot actually came about when I was mentally reviewing the criticisms you gave from the last shoot, where I posted a shot that created double chins. Can't have a double chin when you're looking up, right?
I never even looked for that. Good spot for a reflector or a small second fill?

No suggestions on "how" to avoid it - just recognize for the moment that it is undesirable. We're concentrating on your ability to see.

She seems to have just said, "It's time for you to go find another girl friend..."

Whatever it takes, it's better than doing it in PP.

No, because the rule of thumb has a safety factor. The rule has always been around 85 mm for 35 mm formats. Therefore with the 1.6 crop factor cameras a 50mm focal length would seem to be the guideline.

When you are using your studio setup, are those lights tungsten lights? All of the images have an orange cast to them. The image I opened in PS (image 6) was in AdobeRGB 1998 and, when opened in PS was even more profoundly affected by this cast. I do not know what the color is of the blouse or the background, but doing some crude curve moves in Lab, using the sclera (white of the eye) as a reference, the background appears to be a relatively neutral gray and the blouse appears to be a light pinkish maybe? Do you WB your camera or shoot a WB reference under the lighting conditions you have set up?

Attached is an sRGB profiled edit with the curve moves applied to give you an idea of what I'm talking about - the left half of the image is the original, the right is the rough edit. Maybe you were just looking for CC on the composition, etc. and not the color - if so, I apologize.

Also - why do you want to diffuse the light even more? At some point you need some shadow definition - otherwise, you can shoot in open shade and WB appropriately for that. You may also want to consider shooting against a more dramatic background. Your model has a nice combination of dark hair and fair skin and light eyes. Maybe a dark or black background with some more modeled lighting, including a slight rim light to separate her hair from the dark background.

As far as the framing goes, I'm not feeling the cropping of the face. Filling the frame is fine, but cutting off the face doesn't seem to work for these shots, save the dramatic angle of 4.

Keep at it. I'm interested to see how you progress with this subject. Good luck, have fun!

Kirk

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No need to apologize, this is good information for me. This shoot was the first time I've shot RAW. Your image shows a very striking difference. I think I have a bad eye for color. so your split image is effective for me.

I know how to set a custom white balance in camera, although I don't use it. Would it be better for me to shoot an 18% grey card as my first frame, then run some type of batch WB correct in PS, since I am shooting in RAW? Can you tell me how to set the white balance of all the files in a folder for instance?

My thinking is that if I can make the light less harsh, I can put the lights closer to my subject. Right now, if I put the lights close enough to my subject to provide the amount of light I'd like for exposure, the light is too harsh - giving me troublesome hotspots. When I back the light up, the amount of light I'm getting makes my exposure troublesome. So I think my problem with the lighting right now: lack of skill/experience, cheap lights (250W photoflood), and I don't think the shoot-through umbrella is good either. Before I buy or make any modifiers I'm going to try another shoot first.

I read what looks like a pretty good lighting method in a book last night - Start with a light camera right, hitting your subject at a 45 degree angle relative to the floor. Move that light so that it casts a shadow off the nose to the top of the lip. Then add a fill light slightly camera left to soften the shadows. Sound reasonable?

After reading the critiques hear and reexamining the photos, I agree that the cropping of the face in 1 and 3 is bad. I should have shot those two in portrait orientation instead.

I am having a blast. My wife and kids are having fun with it too. There's something about spending a half hour photographing your wife that is very healthy for your relationship...

Side note: I just got my 85mm 1.8 in the mail today, along with 3 books: Portrait Photographer's Handbook, Understanding Exposure and Light: Science & Magic. I'll post another series up soon, hopefully improved.

Thanks for the in-depth critique Kirk. If you can give me a few quick pointers on batch processing WB off of a reference shot under the lighting, that'd be awesome.

Cool Lonnie - if you shot RAW, you are 90% of the way there. Depending on the software you choose to process your RAW images, there may be slight differences in the method, but the idea is to shoot a gray reference (gray card, WhiBal card, Colorchecker, whatever you choose). Because you shoot RAW you can change the white balance in post to suit your lighting conditions, or even change it dramatically to affect the moodiness, warmth, etc. - ie, an "artistic" white balance adjustment. Usually this is performed by using an eyedropper tool in the application and clicking on a known neutral portion of the image. This setting can also be adjusted in some apps if you know the actual color temperature of your lights, although if you are shooting through something or bouncing the light or mixing it with other light, then this method may be less accurate. Of course, most apps also give you a choice of several "preset" white balance settings (Daylight, Shade, Tungsten, Flash, etc.) - if your floods are tungsten, maybe try selecting that choice and see what's what.

Once you have the WB you like, you usually can copy and paste, or synchronize that WB setting across a selection of images, automatically updating the WB setting in a batch manner. In Lightroom and CS3 Camera Raw these changes are straightforward. Google using some judicious keywords and you can probably see some video tutorials, etc. I really don't use Canon's DPP, but I imagine it is a similar process (a DPP user can chime in here).

In Lightroom:

Twaek the WB in your reference image. Then, in the Develop Module, go to "Settings > Copy Settings" and you will be presented with a window with a bunch of checkboxes. Check the "White Balance" checkbox (deselect all of the others if you do not want to apply the bunch of other choices from the reference image to all of the other images) and click the "Copy" button. Now the WB settings can be pasted onto the batch of images you choose.

You can also use the "Sync..." function. Choose the batch of images you want to adjust together (or "Synchronize"). On the first image (the reference image) do your WB adjustments. Then, with all of the images selected, click on the "Sync..." button in the lower right corner of the Develop module and the same window with all of the setting choices previously mentioned above will come up - choose WB only (unless there are other adjustments you want to propagate across all of the images) and then click the "Synchronize" button and that WB adjustment will be applied to all of the selected images.

The batch adjustment is similar in Adobe Camera RAW, you just need to select and open multiple images in ACR and then do the WB tweak. Do a little search in the help system for the specifics. In general, select multiple RAW images from the "Open" menu and they will all appear as "slide" previews in the left portion of the ACR window. Choose the reference image, tweak the WB. Then select the remainder of the images and the "Synchronize" button will appear in the upper left corner, above the image previews. Click Synchronize and a window with all of the setting choices will appear as above. Choose WB and Synchronize.

With RAW, you don't necessarily need to shoot a WB reference to set your camera WB prior to shooting. All of the adjustment can be done in post, but you still need a reference. Keep at it and read some of the informative posts on the forum regarding calibrating your monitor so you can accurately visualize the color of your shots. Even with "accurate" WB, you can always add or subtract to your taste - if you like a little warmer appearance than the "correct" WB, go ahead and lower the color temp a little. However, you need an accurate representation of the image on your monitor so you can make those kind of decisions accurately.

Have fun!

Kirk

PS - read this blog, specifically:

http://strobist.blogsp​ot.com/2006/03/lightin​g-101.html

Good info Kirk. I did a quick edit of one of the photos. I set the white balance off of the eye like you did. I also had a little fun with saturation on the eyes and lips.

I do think I will usually go a tad warmer than "real" with the WB.

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Shazam! There you go, you've got the idea.