dave.gt
Well-known member
Thank goodness the women in my family are not so vain. They seem to accept themselves for who they are with equanimity.
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Thank goodness the women in my family are not so vain. They seem to accept themselves for who they are with equanimity.
Hmm. I think it is the lens more than the medium (and its resolution or whatever) that sets the look you're after. With my Leica cameras, I've spent a lot of time, money, and energy finding and picking the right lenses that satisfy my desires. I use them on film as well as digital capture bodies, and I get the same or very similar image qualities right out of the camera. The same will go for my Hasselblad 500CM and its lenses, I'm pretty sure ... If I buy an X1D, the first thing I complement it with is going to be the Hasselblad XV Lens Adapter because I know what my V system 50, 80, 120, and 150mm lenses produce. They're not "state of the art" or even recent ... the Makro-Planar 120mm f/4 is the most recent of them and it's easily 28 years old. I'm pretty confident that they'll render very similarly on the digital sensor.Sorry, you and I have not communicated very well on this one... my apologies. But your film image is the softer look they would prefer.
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I prefer to get close to their desires SOOC rather than spend an hour on each image in post processing.
In thinking back, I never had that problem with film. Hmmm... again, it seems that may be one solution.
BINGO!!! Stanley wins! All I need to do is limit how much processing time I want to handle and just shoot film or use my D3100 14mp the rest of the time.This thread is hilarious!
I’ve always been fascinated by portraiture; so last year I bought some Elinchrom lights and modifiers and requested some of my friends to allow me to immortalize them in living color.
Most of my acquaintances are on the upper side of eighty; when they saw my huge Hasselblad 50-110mm staring them in their faces they universally freaked. I told them don’t worry!
I promised them that...”I would make them look good.”
I felt like a plastic surgeon in front of my computer screen minimizing the wrinkles, removing the blemishes...I turned back the clock...especially for the women.
Sometimes, I was afraid I went too far and someone might be offended that I had modified their appearance.
Not too worry...the younger I made them; the larger the smile and the hugs
In most cases, my subjects requested additional copies of my work so they could share with their children and grandchildren.
Stanley
Lighting from the front with a large tripple diffused octa or parabolic makes a big difference. It washes out a lot of the fine wrinklesAnyway, I think it's as much about technique as it is about making them feel comfortable, I don't proclaim to be an expert at anything, my technique and processing are what they are, don't do much at all. Maybe post something you have shot so we can see what you're facing?
Now, I have an inexplicable desire, renewed now, for a Nikon D4!!!Without getting too philosophical about this - if you wish to shoot with Nikon, then the 12-16MP cameras, like a D4 or D3, will provide very pleasing rendering of skin, even for older people. Not the D850 as you have "experimentally confirmed". I am always so pleased with people images from my D4 that I again and again resist the urge to put the beast on eBay. The Black Pro Mist filters from Tiffen, in either 1/8 or 1/4 strength, help manage contrast on skin nicely and are popular with videographers shooting interviews. Shooting in diffused light can of course go a long way to suppress wrinkles. And finally, the choice of style - look at how Paolo Roversi shoots portraits and you may conclude that sharpness is much over-rated
Ok, and if I do want to get philosophical, I can remind myself of the lyrics of one of my favourite songs (I assume that there are not many Nightwish/symphonic metal fans on this forum, so this may perhaps provide some refreshment of mind):
"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of those stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?"
+1You can try using Portrait Pro software.