My latest brush with fame

My latest brush with fame · Posted by RoxnDox, 09-30-2009, 10:57 AM

On Monday, I had the opportunity to meet the US Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar. He was in western Nebraska for a meeting with state and local officials, as well as Ag Secretary Vilsack, and afterwards he stopped in Omaha to meet with any Interior employees who could make it up to the National Park Service's regional headquarters. I sat up front, got a few good photos, and got to shake the man's hand.

Shooting was using ambient light, so I kicked the ISO up to 1600. Ran the images thru Neat Image to get rid of hte noise, then a bit of tweaking the white balance, and resharpening/cropping/etc in PS Elements 6. Results were acceptable to me, all in all.

Jim

K-9 · 09-30-2009, 11:23 AM

Nice, crisp photos. Did they not allow flash in there or did you just not want to be a distraction firing it off?

RoxnDox · 09-30-2009, 11:58 AM

Originally Posted by K-9

Nice, crisp photos. Did they not allow flash in there or did you just not want to be a distraction firing it off?

Thanks. I didn't want to be a distraction. The NPS had one of their staffers doing the official photography thing, and she used flash (and substantially better glass than I can afford...), but I avoided it. Besides, all I have is the on-camera flash and I would rather use ambient.

Jim

dragonfly · 09-30-2009, 01:28 PM

Good results. I need to experiment more in trying to get usable images without the proper amount of light.

RoxnDox · 09-30-2009, 01:46 PM

Originally Posted by dragonfly

Good results. I need to experiment more in trying to get usable images without the proper amount of light.

Thanks. I did kick the ISO up to 1600. I took a number of trial shots beforehand, to see what I could get away with. f/8 at 1600 gave me shutter speeds of 1/45 to 1/20 depending on where I pointed, and it worked OK as long as I was careful on timing...

One thing I didn't do was shoot in RAW. Would have been better, as I had to adjust the color cast afterwards. Plus I could buy one of those fancy lens thingies that goes down to f/1.4 or somethin'

(except I can't afford 'em

)

Anyway, it was a cool event and I got to meet a lot of fellow DOI folks I'd never meet otherwise.

Jim

rparmar · 09-30-2009, 04:27 PM

I wondered what was wrong with the images and then read your blurb about Neat Image. I recommend toning it down to get some noise and detail back.

RoxnDox · 09-30-2009, 09:15 PM

Originally Posted by rparmar

I wondered what was wrong with the images and then read your blurb about Neat Image. I recommend toning it down to get some noise and detail back.

What do you see wrong? The white shirt is kinda blown out in parts, but that wouldn't be from the noise. Skin texture perhaps? It seems OK to me, but I'm not expert at processing portraits by any stretch of the imagination.

Jim

rparmar · 10-01-2009, 10:09 AM

Originally Posted by RoxnDox

What do you see wrong? The white shirt is kinda blown out in parts, but that wouldn't be from the noise. Skin texture perhaps?

Yes. It seems very plastic. Same with wood etc. Mostly in the first image.

RoxnDox · 10-01-2009, 11:44 AM

Originally Posted by rparmar

Yes. It seems very plastic. Same with wood etc. Mostly in the first image.

OK. I'll play with it and see what I get.

Jim