[Phrak]

Hey Guys & Girls,
I'd love some some critique please on one photo of a series I shot a while back.

It was shot from some distance away with almost full extension of the telephoto zoom I had on at the time.

I'm still very much learning the art of a well-composed photograph, and this photo was pretty-much the first time I experienced what depth-of-field really meant for the end result.

This shot is straight from the camera, no PP or cropping at all, only scaled down to web proportions.

My feelings are that the lighting could be a fraction better (there was no chance the inbuilt flash would work from the distance I shot) and there appears to be a slight chromatic bleed at the top of her hat.

Attached Images

 

Hi and Welcome.
What PP have you done on it if any? The red is oversaturated, especially on the underside of the brim. Did you do any sharpening?

[and]

Hi and Welcome.
What PP have you done on it if any? The red is oversaturated, especially on the underside of the brim. Did you do any sharpening?

He did write that it was straight from cam with no PP

[K McCall]

That chromatic bleed could be fixed in no time in post-processing, depending on what software you have, and you can even improve the lighting to a degree. Did you shoot in RAW or jpg? RAW is much easier to work with for things like this. What post-processing software do you have? I can show you what I'm referring to if you'd like, but I don't want to download and change anything on your photo without your permission.

The shot is a difficult one to meter because the girl's face is in shadow but there is clearly sun-dappled, bright light behind her. I usually try to make sure I expose the face well and disregard the background; in this case, an EV of +1 would not have been overzealous.

[and]

You used a teleporto zoom at full extension, that is a good idea for a portrait, you normally want to use a longer focal length to seperate the subject from the background.

As you mention the lighting could have been better, alas the built in flash has a limited range as you say, so one solution is to do some light hacking in PP.

So I did a quick and rough PP for you, I didnt bother to do it thoroughly since its just to demonstrate and its a low res pic anyway.

The main goals I had was to brighten the image and then modify the lighting so that the face is the center.

When opening it and checking the histogram I see there is some empty space on the right side, so adjusting the exposure so that the histogram covers the whole range was the first step, essentially this brightens up the whole image as it was a bit underexposed.

After I did that I did a second round of brightening the image (I used curves but there are a number of tools that essentially makes the image brighter) but this time I used a mask so that only the face became brighter and the rest of the image stayed the same.

Then, now that the face is brighter than the rest, I increased the contrast to emphasize that even more.

Finally I did another brightening step, this time of only the eyes as they need to be bright.

I didnt do any sharpening or saturation or anything like that, just adjusted the brightness and contrast essentially.

if you had had a reflector up close or an external flash you could have used that to get some light into the face but PP is also a solution. Hope it is helpful.

He did write that it was straight from cam with no PP

Doh! don't mind me, I haven't been getting much sleep.

[Phrak]

That chromatic bleed could be fixed in no time in post-processing, depending on what software you have, and you can even improve the lighting to a degree. Did you shoot in RAW or jpg? RAW is much easier to work with for things like this. What post-processing software do you have? I can show you what I'm referring to if you'd like, but I don't want to download and change anything on your photo without your permission.

Photo was shot in JPG. I really hadn't considered to PP the image, but I might have a go after seeing and's results below. I have Photoshop CS4 at my disposal, so any (more) pointers would be good.
Full-res image here if you want to have a crack at anything.

The shot is a difficult one to meter because the girl's face is in shadow but there is clearly sun-dappled, bright light behind her. I usually try to make sure I expose the face well and disregard the background; in this case, an EV of +1 would not have been overzealous.

Thanks for the tip. In my mind, I didn't want to completely wash-out the scenery behind. I might try and see what a PP +1 EV will look like.

You used a teleporto zoom at full extension, that is a good idea for a portrait, you normally want to use a longer focal length to seperate the subject from the background.

I'll have to do some reading about this technique, got any pointers? As I said, I'm a relative n00b to SLR photography.

<snip>
The main goals I had was to brighten the image and then modify the lighting so that the face is the center.

When opening it and checking the histogram I see there is some empty space on the right side, so adjusting the exposure so that the histogram covers the whole range was the first step, essentially this brightens up the whole image as it was a bit underexposed.

After I did that I did a second round of brightening the image (I used curves but there are a number of tools that essentially makes the image brighter) but this time I used a mask so that only the face became brighter and the rest of the image stayed the same.

Then, now that the face is brighter than the rest, I increased the contrast to emphasize that even more.

Finally I did another brightening step, this time of only the eyes as they need to be bright.

Thanks for the pointers. When I first saw your PP work I thought it had too much contrast. But after looking at it for a while it started to look more natural. So what you've essentially done is make her stand-out more as the subject via PP lighting? I've never had *heaps* of luck in PP before, but you've all inspired me to try again.

I didnt do any sharpening or saturation or anything like that, just adjusted the brightness and contrast essentially.

if you had had a reflector up close or an external flash you could have used that to get some light into the face but PP is also a solution. Hope it is helpful.

Yeah, if it were a posed shot, I would have considered those things. This one was a completely candid shot, a moment in time if you like.

Luckily she's my daughter, so many more shots may need to be practiced.

Thanks again for the feedback guys. I'll have a crack at some PP work and see if I can replicate the lighting improvements.

Tim

[and]

About the PP, yes, first I made the whole image brighter, then I made only the face a bit brighter, and finally only the eyes yet a bit brighter. And increased the contrast to emphasize what I had done. Im sure it can be done a lot better.

[K-9]

You shouldn't use the extreme end of your tele-zoom unless you have to. Usually, the longest end of the zoom is the least sharpest. Also, 210mm on the ist DL is equal to a 315mm in 35mm, which is a rarely used focal length for headshots. If you have a 70-210, I would stay around 70-100mm. At these focal lengths, you may have gotten away with ISO 100, especially since you were outside in good lighting.

This is a nice looking and well composed portrait that suffers due to not being real sharp. Camera shake is possible, as you are at the slowest shutter speed (1/250) recommended for that focal length. A slightly faster shutter could have helped with sharpness as well, as I don't believe your ist DL has shake reduction.