Mini-D and the 5dII
C&C always welcome!!!
Yup, finally took the plunge and picked up a 5dII in the last-gasp sales going on right now. Still getting used to the new beast, but since young'un asked (yes, ASKED!) me to take some headshots for her for something, I got a chance to run it through a mini-portrait session today.
Yes, I am in love with full frame. OH yes. :lust
1. Not the best one of her from the session, but for a DOF/bokeh junkie like me this shot is just amazing - the idea that eyes are still sharp when the hair in front that the wind caught is blurred... I just can't do that with my 7d (and believe me, I've tried!!)
2. The 135L doing its thing....
3. And her favorite from the day - this is the one she'll probably use
Yup, finally took the plunge and picked up a 5dII in the last-gasp sales going on right now. Still getting used to the new beast, but since young'un asked (yes, ASKED!) me to take some headshots for her for something, I got a chance to run it through a mini-portrait session today.
Yes, I am in love with full frame. OH yes. :lust
1. Not the best one of her from the session, but for a DOF/bokeh junkie like me this shot is just amazing - the idea that eyes are still sharp when the hair in front that the wind caught is blurred... I just can't do that with my 7d (and believe me, I've tried!!)
2. The 135L doing its thing....
3. And her favorite from the day - this is the one she'll probably use
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I kind of miss the "kitty ears"!
Z
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Number three is a winner for sure. She sure has matured since the first images of her I'd seen when I first joined the forum.
An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
Cool or warm? Very likely still not nailing these - new (to me) monitor + new calibrator, and I'm still not trusting it to be right so I guess and don't always nail it!!
Bwahahahaha.... you know me too well, Bryce
She's an awesome kid. She's had a tough year of the "school of hard knocks" variety - much disappointment through no fault of her own (high school zoning rules and complications) so she's had an awful lot to deal with. The teen years are hard enough without that kind of externally imposed stress, so we're really proud that she's managed to keep going and keep trying her best in spite of it all.
Kudo's to Mini-D (and you & DH's parenting) in her ability to roll with it....
Who is wise? He who learns from everyone.
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#2 more so= moderate blue caste
#3 pretty close on WB= good skin tines and hair
Saturation looks fine on #3. I was wondering how many would post before this was mentioned.
Awesome, so much better!!! I know two new pieces of equipment are just giving you fits. One is hard enough to deal with, but two, ouch. Honestly, I have heard others complain about the 5D balance, just reading through peoples comments on them on the internet, so you might google around, might be some tips on that.
Relooked again, beautiful image, 100% nailed! Blue is gone.
An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
Novice, I shoot raw+awb and rebalance in post, so native 5dII balances shouldn't (in theory) be an issue.
Fwiw, here's the original SOOC. At this end, my first version looks way closer to the original file than the rework, but since y'all say the rework is better, I'll trust that
I swear this is going to make me CRAZY - I've been able to trust my processing since I first calibrated my laptop monitor (and realised that it was a little low contrast, thus not to add too much pop). Now that I'm working on this good monitor and calibrated (had to jump to a Spyder since even with updated drivers win 7+Huey didn't play nice) I don't seem to be able to get anything right. I'll get it in time, I'm sure, but at this point it's driving me NUTS (with shots from either camera)
ETA: yes, the original is slightly underexposed and surrounded by green. It was actually a grab shot right as we went indoors, but I liked the expression so decided to work on it
FF is so awesome. so so awesome. They say its not about the camera but i'm sorry I highly disagree with that statement after purchasing my d800! i haven't touched the d90 since and probably won't ever again!
I'm still tinkering with this - it's sort of become my "great white whale"
Here's a side-by-side of the most recent iteration (I was also messing with the crop - it is the same shot). I desat'd and darkened the yellows of the bg in LR which gave me a little more lattitude with exposure/brightness adjustments, which I kind of like, but I'm intrigued how drastically a curves layer in PS - created with a new black and white point set via the "threshold" command - pushed skin tones back towards cooler
With these two, I see the warm one as ever so slightly too warm, and the cool one as too cool. Is that about what everybody else is getting? FWIW, her hair colour is about right in the cooler one, even if skin tone isn't..... :bash
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Ever notice when you burn or change exposure on a face in LR, areas you just brushed over, hit O to see the overlay, hit again to hide it, some spots are a lighter color in the overlay? Those are areas that have a different tone or exposure, then the other areas where the pink overlays are smooth. Sometimes it's the shine on someones lips, sometimes a hot spot on a cheek or forehead. Even on those areas, only the amount of burning determined by the overall setting is applied. Kind of hard to explain, but open an image and burn their face and you'll see the areas I'm describing. I usually blow the image up 3:1 to get a more precise work area. If you make a mistake on the overlay, mask, just hold down Alt , while brushing out the mistakes. To move the image to continue working it, just hit spacebar and drag with the mouse. Then release the spacebar to go back to editing. If you just lose track and want to clear all changes, on one of the top left buttons, is "reset", it removes all changes from that editing session.
In CS5, burn brushing over a persistent spot, will keep doubling the mask, that always catches me when I switch between the two lol. Every brush stroke doubles the darkness, much less forgiving than LR. Needless to say, I hit edit and step backwards or undo in there alot lol. Anyway, I do most of the work in LR, except when I need to remove a hair or brush, clone a large area. One thing I was practicing on the image in CS5 was, removing the strands of hair from her face. I'm still learning, but I got it done lol.
I'm far from a pro, but learning fast lol.
ETA, I try to limit any brushwork to 10-15%, my experience is much farther than that you make start getting artefacting, which may show up in image upload compression. been there, done that lol.
Great job Melissa! It's a tad bright, but it's a very good compromise on the colour balance
I think her skin tones are just weird in this shot - between all the green and the underexposure and the way the light brought out her current hair colour (!) it's a hot mess. But I still love the shot
Novice, typically, I do my first-pass editing in LR - if the shot needs minimal work, I'll use an eye-bump brush I have, heal out any noticeable blemishes and done. For anything more sophisticated than that - especially skin retouching - I take it into PS, particularly things like that kind of detailed hair retouching. In CS3, I just cloned it out (small brush, alternate which side of the strand you use as the source, and do it on a separate layer to make corrections/adjust opacity). I've just moved to CS6 - which I am LOVING - and the healing brush does an almost no-brainer job on it. I think it was worth upgrading for that alone! The content-aware algorithms make it soooo easy just to heal it right out; I doubt if it took me more than about 60 seconds (including cleaning it up where it crosses her eye).
As for your work, I liked the facial expression on the first. It seemed the most natural. I liked the background blur (and plan to try that full frame feature myself). The only concern I really had was that the pictures seem a little cold. I liked your rework later on in the thread. The colors were much warmer and matched the girl's expression a lot better.
I smitten with #3, but I just cant put my finger on why I feel the crop is too centered. I've played with different crops but can't seem to improve on your choice. Therefore, you win!!
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and 3 is my fav I think
5D II - great - good for ya !
I was thinking about it as well - but still not sure .......
I'm still tinkering around with these - useful for practice. I've got a mammoth bulk headshots shoot coming up as well as a couple of regular ones, so I really need to be getting my game on. I've been so darned busy with other stuff I haven't had enough time to shoot, but hoping this weekend Mini-D may let me practice with her again (especially since we should hit peak foliage too). We'll see....
pp
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