Christening shots

MikeK

This past weekend I took photos of my nieces Christening. To keep it unintrusive and get a better angle past everyones head, I shot from a balcony at the back of the church. I used a Canon 40D with Canon 400 f/5.6L. The lighting was tough, wide open I still had to set ISO at 1000 to get a measly 1/60s shutter.

I shot RAW and did some minor adjustments before opening into PS. The images seemed overly saturated in the reds. I then ran the images through Neat Image which cleaned them up nicely but desaturated them a LOT. I was displeased at first, but it may have done me a favor. I then set the white and black points in a curves layer and it actually seemed OK to me. A slight contrast boost and sharpening and here's a couple samples.

I am worried the color balance is not quite right, and would like some feedback on color, saturation, etc.

Thanks!
Mike

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Flyinggina

What a beautiful baby! Nice sharp photos too.

My monitor is up for recalibartion, but the skin tones look ok to me in the second photo. There is a strong magenta cast on the woman's face in the first one. The first one also looks a bit too dark to me on my monitor.

You might want to post both pictures in the Finishing School forum for some good advice on whether, why and how to fix them.

Also, check out this tutorial on skin tones.

Good luck!!

Virginia

Rocketman766

These shot look very nice here, but not on a calibrated monitor so I can't comment on skin tones or reflections.

Were you able to use a flash? I understand you were in a balcony and may have been a bit far for that, but I have to ask. Reason? I was asked to shoot a friends baby christening this weekend. I have never taken photos in a church and was curious about using a flash.

MikeK

Virginia - Thanks for the tips, I will look into those techniques.

No, I did not use a flash. It would have been a lot easier if I could have set up lighting and/or been closer, but I was trying to be discrete so I shot from the far back of the church in a balcony. That made it a lot tougher but I think the shots will come out pretty good with a bit more color correction.

Now if I didn't care about being obnoxious (or if this was a smaller/private ceremony) I would have set up a few synchronized flashes down near the action

divamum

I think you did really well in that lighting! The baby is beautiful.

Did you run your noise reduction on the red channel? Perhaps Rutt or PF or one of the other processing gurus can clarify, but I remember reading somewhere that often one channel is noisier than the others, and if you run your noise reduction on that channel you can not only improve details, but also adjust color casts... I think...

My only nit is the crops:

#1 stray arm on the right - I'd probably clone it as best as I could and/or see if a vignette or fill layer could melt it away a bit more.

#2 Church bulletin on the left. You could clone it out, but I think a tighter crop (maybe even to a portrait orientation?) could be nice anyway - there's a lot of extra space to the right which doesn't show enough to set context and could be lost without regret, I think.

MikeK

Excellent suggestions on the crops, I will try those ideas. What you said about the noise makes sense as well, it does seem to be heavy in the reds.

Thanks!

sara505

With all due respect, I gave this a crack. I found the arm detracting from the center of attention, and now the bulletin is gone, too.