Work in progress: Self Portraits Redux....

divamum

WITH OFF CAMERA FLASH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D:D The STE2 is fantastic - worked with my 420ex straight out of the box and I am having WAY too much fun with it

As always, C&C welcomed.

Setup was the 420x w/the homemade softbox to camera right, quite close to me, and foamboard reflectors to my left, right and on my lap.

Still having WB issues - I tried and tried and could NOT get a decent custom WB on this; next time I'll have to try without the light behind me on the backdrop, but without that there was ZERO light in the room and the camera didn't want to focus (and I move around enough that leaving it in MF doesn't work very well). I'll have to fix that next time out (these are definitely a continuing work in progress....)

Also, I'm still on an uncalibrated monitor - if colours are out, that'll be why.

I'm pretty pleased overall, especially with the performance of the Selzter Softbox (now in raspberry!), but there's still tons to improve so bring on the comments! :nod



Cropped

Trevlan

divamum wrote:

WITH OFF CAMERA FLASH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D:D The STE2 is fantastic - worked with my 420ex straight out of the box and I am having WAY too much fun with it

As always, C&C welcomed.

Setup was the 420x w/the homemade softbox to camera right, quite close to me, and foamboard reflectors to my left, right and on my lap.

Still having WB issues - I tried and tried and could NOT get a decent custom WB on this; next time I'll have to try without the light behind me on the backdrop, but without that there was ZERO light in the room and the camera didn't want to focus (and I move around enough that leaving it in MF doesn't work very well). I'll have to fix that next time out (these are definitely a continuing work in progress....)

Also, I'm still on an uncalibrated monitor - if colours are out, that'll be why.

I'm pretty pleased overall, especially with the performance of the Selzter Softbox (now in raspberry!), but there's still tons to improve so bring on the comments!



Cropped

DIVA!!!!! Can you honor me with allowing me to proccess a couple of these pictures? You look great, and I'm sure we can make this low key really easy. PLEASE I'm begging!

divamum

Trevlan wrote:

DIVA!!!!! Can you honor me with allowing me to proccess a couple of these pictures? You look great, and I'm sure we can make this low key really easy. PLEASE I'm begging!

:

I didnt' really worry much about "me the subject" in these... I was too busy as "me-the-new-ste2-photographer" and the opportunity to have some real light! So didn't have much makeup on, hair's a bit of a mess and I only close cropped them like this to get rid of that flippin' miscoloured background. So please - have at it and see what you come up with!

Trevlan

What do you think? I'm on my uncalibrated laptop. Looks great on my screen.

divamum

Hee heeee....!! As soon as you said "low key" the penny dropped in my mind and i"ve been sitting here tinkering along similar lines with some "multiply" layers and an even darker/more solid vignette to get rid of that patch of light bg even more - yer a genius!

Did you do it with vignetting or some other method? And also - you have to tell tell me - what did you do to the iris of my eyes? It's very cool

Thanks!!

Trevlan

divamum wrote:

Hee heeee....!! As soon as you said "low key" the penny dropped in my mind and i"ve been sitting here tinkering along similar lines with some "multiply" layers and an even darker/more solid vignette to get rid of that patch of light bg even more - yer a genius!

Did you do it with vignetting or some other method? And also - you have to tell tell me - what did you do to the iris of my eyes? It's very cool

Thanks!!

What I did on this image was quick, nothing spectacular. First I removed some distractions in the skin with the heal tool. Then I applied the image. I used Linear Burn and blended it to 12%.

The extra light spots, I used the burn tool and burned the shadows in.

On the eyes I brighten them up a bit with a little technique I like to use.

I use the dodge tool set to 50% exposure, and select shadows. When I do that, it brings the color out in the eyes more but doesn't look fake. You can do it using midtones/highlits but it looks too processed.
I also burned in the outer part of the eye to make the colors stand out more. This was fun. Thanks for letting me doctor them!

Zanotti

Great shots, super improvement - and some nice PS work as well.

I think you are well on you way!

Congrats!



Z

jeffreaux2

:lurk

divamum

Zanotti wrote:

Great shots, super improvement - and some nice PS work as well.

I think you are well on you way!

Congrats! Z

A classic case of, "Gives us the tools and we will finish the job" - half the problems I had last time vanished in a puff of off-camera-flash. Seriously!

Thanks so much for the kind words (and your prior, very helpful comments and examples) - everybody's encouragement is what has made this photographic learning process not only possible, but so much *fun*. It's like I'd been starving for years, and suddenly people are giving me these five course meals to digest! I haven't been this excited about something new in a long, long time... lust

divamum

jeffreaux2 wrote:

:lurk

rofl

(I have to say that the popcorn icon is one of my favorites - makes me grin every time somebody uses it!)

jeffreaux2

divamum wrote:

rofl

(I have to say that the popcorn icon is one of my favorites - makes me grin every time somebody uses it!)

Well normally...ya know....Id add my two cents....but it looks like you are doing okay without my fortune.

Im thankful that you are not only excited about it, but also find it easy to use.....and it really is...isn't it!!!

I told ya so!!!

Scott_Quier

WOW - What a difference

divamum wrote:

A classic case of, "Gives us the tools and we will finish the job" - half the problems I had last time vanished in a puff of off-camera-flash. Seriously!

Madeleine - I feel I'm a little late to the game but I have to sleep sometime!:D

The improvement you have realized just by getting the flash off-camera is nothing short of amazing. The light in these is just stunning! You have

• Nice complimentary shadows on your face
• Beautiful light shining off your hair - really brings it to life
• The catchlights in your eyes - well done!

Getting the softbox close to you is what gave you that very, very nice soft light - Nice!

I would love to see you could accomplish with a second light. You need some light coming from behind you, camara left to bring some life to your hair on that side.

White balance - there at least 2 different ways you achieve this and they both start with finding a nice, neutral gray or white. Some say that a sheet of copy paper will do the job, but I find such to have been processed to a little blue. Once you find that, take a picture of that such that it fills most of the center of your viewfinder.

Once you have that image, you can

• Go into your camera menus and set the CWB using that image
• Shoot RAW and don't worry about setting the CWB in the camera. Us that above reference shot during post. In ACR, you use the WB tool to click on the reference sample. Now, select all the rest of the photos and synchronize the WB - done!

divamum

jeffreaux2 wrote:

Well normally...ya know....Id add my two cents....but it looks like you are doing okay without my fortune.

Im thankful that you are not only excited about it, but also find it easy to use.....and it really is...isn't it!!!

I told ya so!!!

Heeeeheeeeee ! :giggle.

You seem to get a lot of "I told you so's" across my development! (and I love it - if it weren't for y'all prodding me to do this stuff I'd still be thinking, "Nah, that's too hard for me lil' ol' me" and not moving along this fast!!) Love it. And am very grateful!!

divamum

Thank you thank you! It's the time y'all spent c&c-ing the last batch that really made it possible to use the new tools effectively, so renewed thanks!

Scott_Quier wrote:

getting the softbox close to you is what gave you that very, very nice soft light - Nice!

Yeah, I'd seen some shots which had a close softbox as the setup so figured I'd try it. Limiting though the small size could be, I think my seltzer box is a success!

I would love to see you could accomplish with a second light. You need some light coming from behind you, camara left to bring some life to your hair on that side.

Trying to get me to spend more money, huh??!!! roflActually, round. Right now, a calibrator and glass (at the moment I'm shooting almost exculsively with the 50 1.8 - I love it, but it IS limiting at times) have to come first....

Once you find that, take a picture of that such that it fills most of the center of your viewfinder.

Once you have that image, you can

• Go into your camera menus and set the CWB using that image
• Shoot RAW and don't worry about setting the CWB in the camera. Us that above reference shot during post. In ACR, you use the WB tool to click on the reference sample. Now, select all the rest of the photos and synchronize the WB - done!

Thanks for the second method - I only knew to do it through the camera, so having a pp way of doing it is really useful.

I did set a custom WB, but on this occasion it was a total wash, even though it's worked fine on other occasions. I took a picture of the white sheet background in the light to be used (ie no other ambient) and tried to set the WB off that... and on different tests it would either set the wb REALLY blue or REALLY green. Previously, the xsi has done very well with this, but this time it just couldn't seem to get it right. I admit that I shot these as jpgs because I actually only expected them to be tests (read: forgot to reset from the snaps I'd taken the previous day... whoops!) - I really didn't think they'd come out as well as this - but I do find that the xsi is pretty forgiving about adjustments as long as it isn't significantly *underexposed* (at which point, noise city), but on this occasion I guess the temps between that backlight and the flash were just too different from each other to get both right in one shot. So I took the "make lemonade" solution - crop the bg out altogether

Thanks for the input - as always, much appreciated!!

jeffreaux2

divamum wrote:

Thank you thank you! It's the time y'all spent c&c-ing the last batch that really made it possible to use the new tools effectively, so renewed thanks!


Yeah, I'd seen some shots which had a close softbox as the setup so figured I'd try it. Limiting though the small size could be, I think my seltzer box is a success!



Trying to get me to spend more money, huh??!!! roflActually, round. Right now, a calibrator and glass (at the moment I'm shooting almost exculsively with the 50 1.8 - I love it, but it IS limiting at times) have to come first....



Thanks for the second method - I only knew to do it through the camera, so having a pp way of doing it is really useful.

I did set a custom WB, but on this occasion it was a total wash, even though it's worked fine on other occasions. I took a picture of the white sheet background in the light to be used (ie no other ambient) and tried to set the WB off that... and on different tests it would either set the wb REALLY blue or REALLY green. Previously, the xsi has done very well with this, but this time it just couldn't seem to get it right. I admit that I shot these as jpgs because I actually only expected them to be tests (read: forgot to reset from the snaps I'd taken the previous day... whoops!) - I really didn't think they'd come out as well as this - but I do find that the xsi is pretty forgiving about adjustments as long as it isn't significantly *underexposed* (at which point, noise city), but on this occasion I guess the temps between that backlight and the flash were just too different from each other to get both right in one shot. So I took the "make lemonade" solution - crop the bg out altogether

Thanks for the input - as always, much appreciated!!

The right way to make lemonade out of that WB mismatch situation is....


Forget the flash.....set a custom wb to go along with the lit background and whatever other ambient spill is in the space. Then....use a gel to "match" the temperature of the flash to that of the other light source. Then everything jives. Unless I am using flash in daylight, I am generally using a gel on it. Even...and especially outdoors in the shade....and also in incandescent envioronments.

divamum

Is there a gels chart somewhere? I actually have a friend who's a theatrical lighting designer, and I bet he could easily get me a couple of specific ones if I know which to ask him for (I've seen y'all mention CTO etc, but I'm not sure how those match up to the theatrical names/numbers etc).

Thanks!

jeffreaux2 wrote:

The right way to make lemonade out of that WB mismatch situation is....


Forget the flash.....set a custom wb to go along with the lit background and whatever other ambient spill is in the space. Then....use a gel to "match" the temperature of the flash to that of the other light source. Then everything jives. Unless I am using flash in daylight, I am generally using a gel on it. Even...and especially outdoors in the shade....and also in incandescent envioronments.

Zanotti

OK, I took a shot at some PS work on these lovely self portraits. (I did ask prior permission )

Its a little tough with the lower rez photos you posted. I did try and update them from your site, but they are right click protected.

Anyway, keeping the "Diva" in mind I did some Diva processing. I am no where near as good as many on this site, but here's a go:










Z

jeffreaux2

divamum wrote:

Is there a gels chart somewhere? I actually have a friend who's a theatrical lighting designer, and I bet he could easily get me a couple of specific ones if I know which to ask him for (I've seen y'all mention CTO etc, but I'm not sure how those match up to the theatrical names/numbers etc).

Thanks!

A selection of 1/4 CTO, 1/2 CTO, 3/4 CTO, and Full CTO should be suitable as a selection for "most" of your needs to match a flash to common interior type lighting.