Improving My Fashion/Runway Photography

BWareBWare Registered Users Posts: 7 Beginner grinner
edited October 26, 2010 in Technique
I've come a long way since my first fashion show during Spring Fashion Week LA 2010, but, after looking at my work I did for the Fall Fashion Week LA 2010, it's clear that I need more skill and savvy to get over the hump.

I'm looking for insightful suggestions for improving the sharpness of focus on my fashion shots. Equally as important is the fact that I want to achieve this goal using f5.6 glass, since my lenses fully cover all relevant focal lengths at this f-stop, thus I'm max versatile.

Here's a link to my galleries of runway shoots for Fall Fashion Week LA 2010...

Link to Fashion Weekend LA galleries

For the purpose of this thread, let's focus on the White Trash Beautiful Fashion Show I shot a couple of weeks ago Sunday...

Link to White Trash Beautiful slideshow

All of the shots in the White Trash Beautiful show were done with a Nikon D300 with a Tokina 12-24mm f4 lens...

-- exposure @ 1/250
-- ISO @ 200
-- temperature @ approx. 3,200k

...and when I brought the images into Lightroom, I had to bump the exposure up about 1-2 stops. As I said before, I want to achieve greater sharpness and clarity using f5.6 glass, as opposed to the f4 glass I've been using in the past with shows.

I've gotten pretty married to my wide 12-24mm f4, so I need to wean myself off of it, and go with my f5.6 arsenal.

All thoughts, suggestions and insights are very much welcome. Thanks in advance...

Comments

  • QarikQarik Registered Users Posts: 4,959 Major grins
    edited October 25, 2010
    your recent shots seem quite solid. Great comps, nice directional lighting, good color and action AND focus. If you are having to bump up the exposure that much then noise might be concern but I don't see much noise either. The fashion weekend shots seem a touch soft overall and sometimes you lose portions of the subjects in the darker backgrounds.

    I am not sure why you want to normalize to 5.6? Is that for telephoto purposes? At telephoto 5.6 you would have to bump the exposure another stop and your AF may not be so good in the lower light and shutter speeds might be concern if your flash can't reach?
    D700, D600
    14-24 24-70 70-200mm (vr2)
    85 and 50 1.4
    45 PC and sb910 x2
    http://www.danielkimphotography.com
  • IcebearIcebear Registered Users Posts: 4,015 Major grins
    edited October 25, 2010
    BWare wrote: »
    All of the shots in the White Trash Beautiful show were done with a Nikon D300 with a Tokina 12-24mm f4 lens...

    -- exposure @ 1/250
    -- ISO @ 200
    -- temperature @ approx. 3,200k

    ...and when I brought the images into Lightroom, I had to bump the exposure up about 1-2 stops. As I said before, I want to achieve greater sharpness and clarity using f5.6 glass, as opposed to the f4 glass I've been using in the past with shows.

    I've gotten pretty married to my wide 12-24mm f4, so I need to wean myself off of it, and go with my f5.6 arsenal.

    You lost me there. You said your shots were 1-2 stops underexposed using f4, and you think you want to go to f5.6? I'm missing something. Unless you're asking what you should do with your ISO . ? . ?
    John :
    Natural selection is responsible for every living thing that exists.
    D3s, D500, D5300, and way more glass than the wife knows about.
  • BWareBWare Registered Users Posts: 7 Beginner grinner
    edited October 25, 2010
    @Icebar:

    Thanks for the reply. What I am saying, in effect, is that I have more versatile glass to use in the f5.6 range than I do in the < f4 range. It would be interesting to see if I can get good shots using f5.6 glass under similar circumstances. Not suggesting f5.6 as a remedy to underexposure so much as I am wondering if I can get sharp photos using glass for which I have 28-300mm fully covered.

    Using my 12-24mm f4 exclusively, I suffer greatly when trying to shoot subjects at back of the runway. Cropping really brings out the noise in those pix.

    BTW -- I do wonder if I could get away with the extra grain with an ISO bump-up to, say, 800 ISO...I'm very afraid to go past 400 ISO...

    @Quarik:

    Thanks for your comments, too. I should've said this earlier, but I DID NOT use flash for any of the shows -- all runway lighting. See my comments to Icebar regarding going to f5.6...
  • IcebearIcebear Registered Users Posts: 4,015 Major grins
    edited October 25, 2010
    If you have ACR 6.1 (I think that's the latest) you can push your D300 to 1600 anyway. I use mine at 3200 and get perfectly acceptible results. I don't know what your ultimate use is so I can't really advise you, except to say that ISO 200 is asking a lot of an f5.6 lens under those conditions.
    John :
    Natural selection is responsible for every living thing that exists.
    D3s, D500, D5300, and way more glass than the wife knows about.
  • BWareBWare Registered Users Posts: 7 Beginner grinner
    edited October 25, 2010
    Icebear wrote: »
    If you have ACR 6.1 (I think that's the latest) you can push your D300 to 1600 anyway. I use mine at 3200 and get perfectly acceptible results. I don't know what your ultimate use is so I can't really advise you, except to say that ISO 200 is asking a lot of an f5.6 lens under those conditions.

    I primarily use Lightroom 2.x and ACR 5.0...is there something in ACR 6.1 that helps to mitigate grain that isn't included in Lightroom?

    Bumping up to ISO 1600 would be a beautiful thing...
  • IcebearIcebear Registered Users Posts: 4,015 Major grins
    edited October 25, 2010
    Oh, yes! Night and day Brother. The least expensive, and generally best all around way way to get it is to upgrade your LR to LR3. I have no idea whether you can upgrade LR2 to ACR 6. Oh, my. Prepare to be gobsmacked. And it's actually ACR 6.2 now.

    I claim no particular expertise, but here's a set I shot at ISO 3200 with the D300. They may not be of the quality you need for runway work, but seriously, I don't think noise is an issue.

    If you really need top quality images to sell, you're kidding yourself with the f5.6 glass anyway. You should be looking at the 24-70 f2.8. Just sayin' . . .
    John :
    Natural selection is responsible for every living thing that exists.
    D3s, D500, D5300, and way more glass than the wife knows about.
  • QarikQarik Registered Users Posts: 4,959 Major grins
    edited October 25, 2010
    okay I see what you getting at. A few points:

    1) You can easily get a away with iso 800 with out any image degradation on the D300. iso 1600 starts to get a touch noisy. Anyway it BETTER to up the iso and rather then make up for it in post. Go ahead an shoot 800 and you won't have to adjust for exposure as much. This give syou all sort sof lattiude in shutter speed as well.

    2) LR3 as excellent NR over LR 2.X..as good as stand alone type programs FYI

    3) 12-24mm is pretty decent glass, if you planning to use 70-300mm for the far end of the runway, for example..the 5.6 may be okay..but you may not get the same results just because of nature of the lens..it's just not as good.
    D700, D600
    14-24 24-70 70-200mm (vr2)
    85 and 50 1.4
    45 PC and sb910 x2
    http://www.danielkimphotography.com
  • pathfinderpathfinder Super Moderators Posts: 14,703 moderator
    edited October 25, 2010
    You will definitely get more noise shooting ISO 200 in camera, and then raising the ISO sliders in LR2 to the equivalent of ISO 800, than shooting ISO 800 properly exposed in the camera at the time of shooting.

    If noise is an issue, NoiseWare is a great plug in to deal with it, but LR3 is almost as good, and easy peasy when editing images in LR3. The improvement in the Raw conversion engine in LR3, over that in LR2, will blow you away. It certainly did me. I would only use LR2, ACR 5.* under protest now. LR3, ACR 6.2 is just that much better, like Icebear said.

    Try some frames at ISO 800 with LR3 and see if you don't agree with us.

    I shoot white lenses so beware of what I say, but my 7D has no fear of ISO 800 or 1600 if shot properly, and edited in LR3 or ACD 6.2
    Pathfinder - www.pathfinder.smugmug.com

    Moderator of the Technique Forum and Finishing School on Dgrin
  • BWareBWare Registered Users Posts: 7 Beginner grinner
    edited October 25, 2010
    Hey...thanks for all the sage tips and clues. I think the next runway shoot I do, I'll experiment with f5.6 and higher ISO (800, maybe 1600 ISO). Kinda see what I get and make adjustments from there.

    For the record, I do have a Nikkor 80-200mm f2.8 (non-VR) lens, but it doesn't allow me to pack light when I get out and about. There's something quite special to me about packing light and being nimble.

    All in all, I think I'm ready for a good experiment on this issue -- especially if I can shoot a fashion show at some poorly-lit nightclub at f5.6. If I can get away with it there, then I can get away with it anywhere.

    Again, thanks for sharing...
  • angevin1angevin1 Registered Users Posts: 3,403 Major grins
    edited October 26, 2010
    BWare wrote: »
    it's clear that I need more skill and savvy to get over the hump.

    I'm looking for insightful suggestions for improving the sharpness of focus on my fashion shots.

    Equally as important is the fact that I want to achieve this goal using f5.6 glass, since my lenses fully cover all relevant focal lengths at this f-stop, thus I'm max versatile.


    All thoughts, suggestions and insights are very much welcome. Thanks in advance...

    It Looks as though you had a pretty good area for shooting there at the White-Trash shoot. You do not mention Flash?? Was that allowed? Did you use it? I'm guessing you didn't use flash.

    Me: in the same situation, with your glass...I'd have used flash, and the 80-200mm f/2.8 and used the Shutter-Speed to keep ambient where-ever I wanted it for effect. Granted, a lot of lenses will resolve better stopped down, but then you lose a short DOF which a lot of folks like. As far as the being-nimble thing goes.....And you are by no means the first person to mention it....There are trade-offs to be suffered for stellar imagery. Of course all of us have gotten decent and acceptable shots with a cheap lens, but nothing trumps a really great lens!
    tom wise
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