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Fun Pictures with Sony . . . .

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Shelby Lewis

Guest
Edward... nice stuff... you really know how to get detail out of the 100 macro. The color is especially nice (and neutral) as well.

Fine stuff!
 

edwardkaraa

New member
Shelby, thanks, even though I credit the camera (and raw converter) for the color.

Jorgen, I don't use any particular tools to hold the reflectors. Since jewelry is small anyway, I tend to improvise with nearby objects, or fold the paper in a way to stand on it's own :D
 
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Shelby Lewis

Guest
Quick workups from a bridal session this afternoon... what a cutie!!!











Cheers!
 

Terry

New member
Shelby - she is quite photogenic and you did a great job. I may be in the minority but I like the last one the best. :clap:
 
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Shelby Lewis

Guest
Shelby - she is quite photogenic and you did a great job. I may be in the minority but I like the last one the best. :clap:
Thanks... last one is EASILY my favorite. Kinda has that fashion magazine vibe going on.

Glad I'm not crazy for liking it! :D

Thanks Again!
 

Eoin

Member
Lovely work Shelby, you seem to have found your groove very quickly with this setup. I like 4 the best also, seems like there is a texture to it. The 2nd shot is also interesting, I like the muted colours.:thumbup:
 
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Shelby Lewis

Guest
Lovely work Shelby, you seem to have found your groove very quickly with this setup. I like 4 the best also, seems like there is a texture to it. The 2nd shot is also interesting, I like the muted colours.:thumbup:
Thanks a bunch. I often add noise to my photographs to give them more texture... ie #4.

The a900 has been the easiest camera to "find my groove with" of any that I've ever owned. It's such a simple camera to operate. :thumbs:
 

jonoslack

Active member
HI Shelby
more lovely shots - like everyone else, I like the last one best.


We were shutting in a neighbour's chickens last night - it was nearly dark. I had the 135 at f1.8, and ISO1250 set. as I had to keep the shutter speed up (they were moving) I ended up underexposing by about 2 stops - I processed them, and really they look fine - I haven't tried printing, but I imagine an A3 will be okay.





Of course, these kinds of conditions are where you really do see nasty noise and colour - it's always worse than shooting things at high ISO in good light.

These were processed in Capture one, then the black and white in silver efex pro.
 

jonoslack

Active member
Nice Steven
I like the first and last best - is that an albino killer whale? or a dolphin?

did you sit in the 'wet seats'?
 

kuau

Workshop Member
Thanks Jono,
I like the last one the best myself. I think it's a albino killer whale but don't quote me on that. Yes I sat in the "Soak Zone" and gotted soaked. It was fun. It was my first attempt with the 70-300, overall very happy with it, focuses fast, seems sharp to me at F8,
I screwed up the shamu shot, I was on aperture priorty which was a mistake. Should have used shutter priority. I would have shot manual but the light kept changing from sun, to cloudy. Oh well live and learn.
Steven

Steven
 

wayne_s

New member
Thanks for the info. I need to play around with Portraiture plug-in trial version.
I assume that this plug-in helps speed up alot of the standard photoshop skin retouching
workflow and very useful if you are retouching alot of pictures for a shoot.
Interesting about the downsizing for web making the skin look even more plastic.
Does any plug-in provide some sort of standard uniform skin texture which you could blend-in after the blurring to get rid off the plastic look without using noise to texture it?
A recent cover of Vogue had some famous supermodels on front and the skin texture after blurring looked very nice and not plastic.

BTW, like your recent wedding shots, looks like the CZ135 and Siggy 50 are a great combo along with CZ 24-70. How do you find the Siggy 50 colors compared to your CZ lens colors? Not as saturated?

Yep... standard "beauty" retouching... and when downsized for web, retouched skin always gets too smooth for my taste. I did use Imagenomic's Portraiture plug-in to create a smooth skin mask on a separate layer... then added a smidge of noise to keep it from looking too plastic (although I think it still does... need to back it off a bit)... plus the usual dodge and burn as well as a bit of cloning/healing. Nothing to the eyes and lips yet.

The skin was the only thing smoothed... the background is all zeiss :D
 
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Shelby Lewis

Guest
I assume that this plug-in helps speed up alot of the standard photoshop skin retouching
workflow and very useful if you are retouching alot of pictures for a shoot.
Interesting about the downsizing for web making the skin look even more plastic.
Does any plug-in provide some sort of standard uniform skin texture which you could blend-in after the blurring to get rid off the plastic look without using noise to texture it?
A recent cover of Vogue had some famous supermodels on front and the skin texture after blurring looked very nice and not plastic.
The thing I like most about portraiture is it can create a smoothed mask of just the skin on a separate layer... in beauty retouching you often keep a retouched, but not smoothed, version of the skin on another layer. Later on after smoothing the hell out of the "smooth skin" layer, you then bring back the original textured skin layer often by using the high-pass filter in linear light layer mode to create a texture map of sorts (just on the skin). Some people will use use the noise tool. The smoothing layer is more for color uniformity than for smoothness.

A good rule of thumb in fashion/beauty is to make it look perfect enough that it "could be attained with perfect makeup on the perfect model" :D

You know... looks real, but it's not reality. I have to admit, that for high school seniors, to a certain extent, plastic is ok :eek:

BTW, like your recent wedding shots, looks like the CZ135 and Siggy 50 are a great combo along with CZ 24-70. How do you find the Siggy 50 colors compared to your CZ lens colors? Not as saturated?
Color on the siggy is great... not really yellow like some of the older lenses were. Of course, the a900 handles yellows and greens so well, it may be less noticeable on it. I can say, though, that the focus accuracy on the zeiss at ANY distance is stunning... not so on the siggy. It shifts (or my copy does) to the back at longer distance... but is great inside 10 feet or so.
 
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Shelby Lewis

Guest
...speaking of seniors.. a shoot from last night.

broad shade and a silver reflector...


here's a 100% crop... you can see me on a ladder :D


big softbox just out of frame... ambient underexposed just enough to retain some color in the stained glass windows (her mom is the music director at the church)
... little bit of vertical perspective correction in ps as well


single strobe with a beauty dish... in trying to keep the dramatic sky from blowing out, I think this becomes a bit to "pasted in" looking


Natural light... a touch of silver reflector


Natural light... mom just out of the frame camera-right holding a reflector over her to throw a swath of shade over her


cheers!
 
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Shelby Lewis

Guest
Superb Shelby, Did you use your CZ-135mm wide open for some of these?

Steven
Thanks!

The first two natural light shots are at f2... and I usually do stop it down to f2 (not sure if it's any improvement over f/1.8, lol).

The last shot is at f/2.8

The two strobed shots are with the siggy 50/1.4... first at f8, second at f/11 (actually in pretty bright sunlight)
 
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