[dous]

Thanks a lot, Tracy!

[otitis]

In general I like it a lot. I don't care about model softness so much. I think in some portraits it's OK. But like others have mentioned I would use bigger f and slower ISO.
Pozdrawiam z Chicago ;-)

[ralf1403]

Das Bild ist fotographisch aber auch Thematisch sehr schön!

[Ash]

dous, great work in the composition technique, not so much in the exposure parameters and post-processing. Why f/13? Given the lens you were using, you would have been better off shooting at f/8 and reducing your ISO to something like 200, which would have still given you a shutter speed of about 1/160sec - fairly adequate for focal lengths up to 160mm. But no great loss there - some magic is yet to be done on this gorgeous portrait.

Firstly, did you shoot in RAW? If you did, start manipulating the contrast and brightness settings up the scale. Boost the clarity slider, which would improve the midtone contrast (quite important here). Perhaps even warm up the temperature a little, unless a 'cool' looking image was your intent.

Then save as a JPEG and touch up the colours selectively with your selective color tool or its equivalent - chiefly to enhance the reds, yellows and cyans, all of which play a vital part in this portrait's impact. Then apply a pass of levels (auto if you're uncertain about how to manipulate those channel histograms) and curves for further contrast adjustment (perhaps just a linear contrast preset would do).

Then denoise if necessary, resize for web and run a pass of unsharp mask. I'd hedge my bets that result would be a real stunner.

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Last edited by Ash; 06-02-2011 at 03:32 AM.

[Tomzee93]

I absolutely love this image! Even though the camera settings weren't optimal, capturing that candid moment is much more important than fiddling around with the camera settings and potentially losing the spark in her face, IMO.

[endless]

Like it.nice

[yusuf]

Nice shot!!! Would have even look better if it was a bit sharper.

[vrrattko]

Hi, nice photo....just the composition - there's no reason to go for golden ratio as there's just hollow space next to her and doesn't add anything to the context - maybe crop this with the girl in the center - my opinion only

[Schraubstock]

Hi

I will only concentrate my critique here in respect to colour, because this is what most contributors here get wrong.

And of course this is often the most difficult thing to get right and can make or break a picture.

Your picture exhibits a relatively strong magenta cast. In my business I find when skin tones are not right pretty

well everything else in the shot is not right either. So skin tones are always a good barometer against which one can

make adjustments. (That is of course if there is skin in the picture).

Despite your pic here being low res and JPG I have attempted to show you what I have in mind. Hasn't quite worked out

because low res and JPG are next to impossible to correct, but I think you get the idea.

Greetings

[Schraubstock]

Nice shot!!! Would have even look better if it was a bit sharper.

Hi
I have noted here that a lot of people offering judgement have an all consuming obsession with sharpness. I think this has crept into peoples psyche because modern digital cameras can now produce more and more and better sharpness. And people demand it.

In the old film days the topic "sharpness" was never such a big thing to discuss.

And yet, sometimes a picture can benefit from a certain softness and it is often done in portrait photography. In fact there are even certain "soft lenses" available to achieve this.

This picture here certainly can live with a bit of softness and I don't mind it at all.
The other thing of course is, the original probably is quite sharp anyway and the downsizing and JPG treatment has ruined it.

Sorry I had to get this of my chest.

Greetings

[dous]

Thanks all of you for those honest opinions. It's important for me. I've just started to take portraits and I am not good at choosing right paramets...at all. I have no idea when I should use low ISO when higher f etc. So thanks again!

[Ash]

Generally, dous, you should use the lowest ISO whenever you can. A lower ISO image will be 'cleaner' (have less noise) than the same exposure on a higher ISO image. You should only increase ISO if you *need* the extra shutter speed to avoid blur (whether motion or camera shake). In general, try to keep your shutter speed at 1/(focal length in mm) or faster to avoid camera shake blur in your images. With better lenses, there is also the ability to open the aperture to f/2.8 or f/4 to help with isolating the subject by narrowing the depth of field, whilst still keeping the subject sharp in the image. This increases shutter speed also.

If you want to know more about this relationship, have a read of this: Learning basic photographic techniques - PentaxForums.com

[peasant]

Hi dous, I've checked out your album so I know you can take a good pic,but omg lots of men fans here.

[Schraubstock]

Then save as a JPEG and touch up the colours selectively with your selective color tool or its equivalent - chiefly to enhance the reds, yellows and cyans, all of which play a vital part in this portrait's impact. Then apply a pass of levels (auto if you're uncertain about how to manipulate those channel histograms) and curves for further contrast adjustment (perhaps just a linear contrast preset would do).

Hi
Forgive me if I disagree here. If your original shot was taken in RAW and after having completed all adjustments inside your favorite RAW converter program I would never save the image in anything other than TIF or PSD (if you work with Photoshop) format. Both of these formats are "lossless" while saving the image in JPG you immediately through data away because it is a "lossy" format. Once you have saved your image to a lossless format then you are free to save in to JPG if you need to for that special reason.

Saving your image in JPG format and then make further adjustments makes no sense.

Depending of course at what JPG quality level you save the image, loss of data and brightness levels in the 8 bit JPG will severely handicap your efforts if you wish to recover shadow areas or brighten up a picture. Because JPG has thrown out the window (no pun intended) a fair bit of colour information as well colour rendition also is severely reduced which makes meaningful colour adjustments nigh impossible.

There is of course another fact to consider. As already mentioned JPG is a lossy format, meaning every time you save an image (and people save frequently when the work with an image) data is discarded , admittedly at a diminishing amount every time, but data loss just the same. So if you save often the image suffers every time. On the other hand if you do further adjustments on a TIF file with original data still intact you can save as often as you like in ther knowledge that no information will be lost.

So if you work an image in RAW, do all adjustments until you are happy and think you will need no further adjustment, then by all means save in JPG. If after that you discover you still would like to do some more adjustments go back to RAW. Or else, had you saved the image in TIF and then further adjustments are required you can get perfect results here without going back to RAW.

So it is from RAW to TIF (or any other lossless format) and then to JPG if rquired for that special need.

Greetings