[Miguel]

Any suggestions, MF preferred.

I've always been super-pleased with the color values and background rendering of any SMC Takumars or SuperTaks. I have this one, SMC/S-M-C/Super-/Auto-/Takumar 55mm F1.8 Reviews - M42 Screwmount Normal Primes - Pentax Lens Reviews & Lens Database
but the 50mm f1.4 is fine too.

Edit: just remembered regretting getting rid of one of the Helios 44mm variants. I'd recommend a little homework to understand the distinctions among the models (which I don't remember much). I enjoyed the artful rendering.

M

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Last edited by Miguel; 10-14-2014 at 12:10 PM.

[Bcrary3]

If anyone is curious to see how this photo shoot turned out, feel free to take a look:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.872060809485661.1073741845.474534199238326&type=1

[robjmitchell]

I'd just use a 1/4 CTO gel on a diffused flash. Warms and flatters

[Bcrary3]

I apologize Robjmitchell.... But I have no clue what that is! Is it just like a typical gel filter for for use with a flash?

I don't typically use flash for anything, never really have, since the batteries that I like using in my AF280T are so expensive (about $20 for all 4) I learned to work without it, using regular batteries, it has such a LONG recycle time.

[Matthew Saville]

Owning Sony sensors (Pentax K-3, Nikon D5300, same-ish sensor) has really spoiled me with respect to HDR images, I barely ever bracket them anymore. There's just soooo much digging to be done in those shadows!

However, when the scene does call for it, I usually do HDR portraits in a manner along the lines of what I learned shooting for SLR Lounge and my wedding studio. Something along the lines of what adwb and others mentioned: Basically, shoot bracketed exposures normally, just making sure that the brightest exposure (slowest shutter speed) doesn't accidentally blur the people's faces. Then, I create the HDR normally like any other, but as one final step I re-process that original (brightest) raw file for correct skin tone, and mask it onto the HDR image. The processing has to match up, of course, other wise it just looks like you photoshopped them in, and that is of course where the magic lies, in making it look natural.

Good luck!
=Matt=

[Aachor]

Nice photos! If I might add...
When you're shooting portraits, the eye should be easily drawn to the subject. One way you are already doing this is though using boekh; the eye is drawn to the harder lines of a composition. In my opinion, another important way to draw the eye to the subject is to ensure that the subject is not competing with the background in terms of color and brightness. The eye is naturally drawn from darker areas to lighter areas and from cool areas to warm areas. In the second photo, the subject is both dark and cool. This is an easy fix in PP that really goes a long way in making the subject stand out.. In photoshop, I just used a masked levels adjustment layer. Curves would work fine too.