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Fun Pictures with Sony . . . .

S

Shelby Lewis

Guest
Hey now mister! I did post pictures and I did it with YOUR camera. :p
Sorry Bill... missed it, lol. BTW... that second shot is great. Look at those eyes!

Hope your liking it. What a fantastic camera.
 

dhsimmonds

New member
Bill, that must have been a struggle with a lively (and pretty) little girl as your subject and using MF and stop down metering! Try begging or borrowing a Zeiss ZA 80/1.4 or a 135/1.8 AF lens as a comparison.........erh, you might not want to give it back though!
 

fotografz

Well-known member
Yupp :)

Somebody post another purdy pidjure please.
Don't know about the pictures, but the subject was "purdy".

Last Saturday's wedding: the Bride's family was from Spain, and her Grandfather danced an energetic latin dance with the Bride ... he is 86 years young.

BTW, I'm a "United Nations" of cameras ... so for this one time upload I picked the photo to show, not which camera was used ;)
 

jonoslack

Active member
Guess I'm to blame for "muddying the waters", lol. :D

Someone post something, please... or else I'll put something else up. :ROTFL:
HI Shelby - you go for it. The one thing that's true is that we all love your pictures (whatever they're taken on).

Wayne, it's difficult to do comparisons with the same Zeiss lenses, as the ZF lenses are quite different from the Sony Zeiss lenses.

Douglas suggested that the difference was that while increasing the high ISO attributes the colour differentiation suffers.
 

helenhill

Senior Member
FOTOGRAFZ:
What a Fantastic Wedding Series....

I love the Bride playing Seductress with the Fan
The next one of the Flower Girl and her boredom at having her done
Grandpapa Sruttin on the Dance Floor
and
Is it) The Groom Smoking a Cigar...Those are Stellar shots to my Eye...Cool
 
S

Shelby Lewis

Guest
wow marc... these are fantastic. I'm only saying this because I'm not familiar with a broader spectrum of your work, but these are a step up from anything else I've ever seen you post. Also... is your b/w conversion new? This one is so contrasty yet still very detailed in the shadows. That's a hard thing to accomplish.

Kudos!
 
S

Shelby Lewis

Guest
from a wedding a few weeks back... not nearly as compelling a family as marc's post, lol. I was the second shooter, so mostly shot candids and details all day.





250D closeup lens on (i think) an 85/1.8... not very happy with the sharpness of this combo


guest of honor


cheers! shelby
 

fotografz

Well-known member
wow marc... these are fantastic. I'm only saying this because I'm not familiar with a broader spectrum of your work, but these are a step up from anything else I've ever seen you post. Also... is your b/w conversion new? This one is so contrasty yet still very detailed in the shadows. That's a hard thing to accomplish.

Kudos!
Thanks Shelby (and everyone else: -).

Pretty much representative of my work Shelby. But your observation is a good one, and goes to the point of switching systems and the time it takes to nail the exposure settings and how to process afterwards ... which takes time IMO. I'm finally getting the 3 systems down better and syncing them to do what I want.


The M8 is a no brainer (cigar and hairspray shots, which are pretty much just straight conversions), the D3X converts pretty easily, and I'm getting better at the A900 which requires more work to make B&W ... the midtones that make for such great subtile color rendering flatten out in B&W unless the light is pretty contrasy ... then, in contrasy light I found I need to hold the highlights and the midtones/shadows get dicey. But it's coming together. Should have done this learning curve over the winter instead of during wedding season :ROTFL:

I think you are in the midst of doing the same thing now with going back to Canon. Just take another peek at Jeff Ascough's 5D work if there's any doubt. :thumbup:

Oops, here's an edit showing a couple of A900 B&W conversions shooting with the ZA 85/1.4:
 
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wayne_s

New member
Marc,

Nice shots and processing!
Any chance to see the original A900 color shots out of the camera before all the processing? I am assuming that both the color shots above are from the A900?
 

MoJo

Registred Users
Ok, speaking of BW conversions, here is one from one of my color shots at Las Golandrinas, converted to BW. I don't honestly know which one I like better, different feelings to each one.

-Josef
 

fotografz

Well-known member
Marc,

Nice shots and processing!
Any chance to see the original A900 color shots out of the camera before all the processing? I am assuming that both the color shots above are from the A900?
No problem Wayne. Here is one of them. The original was shot available light with the 85/1.4 @ f/1.4 This version posted here is straight out of Lightroom as a ProRGB 16 bit Tiff 360 ppi original file ... then converted to sRGB, 8 bit resized to 1000 pixels with no sharpening except the default I have set in LR. No Photoshop work.

Compared to the final one that I posted above where I toned the red back a bit, as I found the flowers distracting and her skin tone more red than it really was in this version.
 

wayne_s

New member
No problem Wayne. Here is one of them. The original was shot available light with the 85/1.4 @ f/1.4 This version posted here is straight out of Lightroom as a ProRGB 16 bit Tiff 360 ppi original file ... then converted to sRGB, 8 bit resized to 1000 pixels with no sharpening except the default I have set in LR. No Photoshop work.

Compared to the final one that I posted above where I toned the red back a bit, as I found the flowers distracting and her skin tone more red than it really was in this version.
Cool, Thanks alot Marc!
Are you doing your coversions to B&W in LR or PS?
If LR, do you have your own LR presets for B&W shots for the Leica and for the Sony. Or do you start off with one of the general presets like B&W White High Contrast and modify it slightly? Have you tried Silver Efex Pro, even though it looks like you don't need it? ;)
 

APY_JR

New member
I've really enjoyed the conversions from Nik Silver Efex Pro.

Great B&W plugin (CS3 & 4) and plenty of presets to get you started at the click of a button.

Albert


 

fotografz

Well-known member
Cool, Thanks a lot Marc!
Are you doing your conversions to B&W in LR or PS?
If LR, do you have your own LR presets for B&W shots for the Leica and for the Sony. Or do you start off with one of the general presets like B&W White High Contrast and modify it slightly? Have you tried Silver Efex Pro, even though it looks like you don't need it? ;)
Wayne, workflow for weddings tends to be more speed centric, and I find LR to be the swiftest solution with the least over-all compromises. I dump all the images from all cameras used (sometimes including my assistant's Canon 5D) into one "time synced" file in Lightroom ... which allows me to use different camera's at will yet, keep the sequence of the day.

My "speed objective" is to say out of other post programs as much as possible.

Because Lightroom V2.4 has some very useful tools (like the grad tool with effects), I often use it for B&W ... either the straight desaturate slider & strong contrast selector (which often works for Leica and Nikon files), or the Greyscale and use the color sliders to help separate the tones ... which is often helpful with the A900 files. Sometimes the presets work, but require tweaking anyway, so I just do it myself as described above.

Does Nik Silver Effects have a preset plug-in for LR? I'd consider it if it did.

I already have Nik Define 2 in PS, and will open a noisy shot in PS to work on it ... which I can do directly out of LR, but it's a step I'd rather not do very often ... and I do a lot of B&W conversions.
 

APY_JR

New member
Wayne, workflow for weddings tends to be more speed centric, and I find LR to be the swiftest solution with the least over-all compromises. I dump all the images from all cameras used (sometimes including my assistant's Canon 5D) into one "time synced" file in Lightroom ... which allows me to use different camera's at will yet, keep the sequence of the day.

My "speed objective" is to say out of other post programs as much as possible.

Because Lightroom V2.4 has some very useful tools (like the grad tool with effects), I often use it for B&W ... either the straight desaturate slider & strong contrast selector (which often works for Leica and Nikon files), or the Greyscale and use the color sliders to help separate the tones ... which is often helpful with the A900 files. Sometimes the presets work, but require tweaking anyway, so I just do it myself as described above.

Does Nik Silver Effects have a preset plug-in for LR? I'd consider it if it did.

I already have Nik Define 2 in PS, and will open a noisy shot in PS to work on it ... which I can do directly out of LR, but it's a step I'd rather not do very often ... and I do a lot of B&W conversions.
Hi Marc,

You can choose from the installation menu whether to install Silver Efex Pro into PS, Lightroom or Aperture.

Here's a link to the Nik page where you can peruse the various manuals.

http://www.niksoftware.com/silverefexpro/usa/entry.php?view=intro/styles.shtml

I also found while I was there that Nik has created a bunch more presets for the program that can be downloaded and imported also:) Very cool!

Albert
 

wayne_s

New member
Hi Marc,

You can choose from the installation menu whether to install Silver Efex Pro into PS, Lightroom or Aperture.

Here's a link to the Nik page where you can peruse the various manuals.

http://www.niksoftware.com/silverefexpro/usa/entry.php?view=intro/styles.shtml

I also found while I was there that Nik has created a bunch more presets for the program that can be downloaded and imported also:) Very cool!

Albert
Albert,

I loaded my version for PS. But I am wondering if I can load it for LR2 and have the software work for both PS and LR2?
Nice B&W portrait. Which preset did you use?
 

woodyspedden

New member
Hi Marc,

You can choose from the installation menu whether to install Silver Efex Pro into PS, Lightroom or Aperture.

Here's a link to the Nik page where you can peruse the various manuals.

http://www.niksoftware.com/silverefexpro/usa/entry.php?view=intro/styles.shtml

I also found while I was there that Nik has created a bunch more presets for the program that can be downloaded and imported also:) Very cool!

Albert
But the neat thing is you pay only once and get to use it in all three programs if you desire.

Woody
 
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