Originally posted by lectrolink JohnBee... In my opinion--unless this was simply a test for noise--you went about this backwards. I would have exposed to the right for her face to get maximum sensor info and then backed off in PP. Any highlight blowout would be in background in this setup, but seeing how it is all blurred out it seems of little importance so you can easily deal with it with highlight recovery slider. I think you would find you'd get a better color representation and would have less of that unattractive pallor I notice on her face. Just my two cents.
Originally posted by jgredline I was thinking the same thing, but said nothing, because I am still learning myself.
Hi guys, thanks for your comments and suggestions.
To help understand what type of exercise this was, I'd like to tell you a little about the scene and settings and approach used for this particular shot. The first thing to note was the sensitivity needed to cope with the scene(ISO6400). And the second was where the only light-source in this case was that of backlighting(no fill light). This made for rather difficult lighting conditions as it inevitably lead to a few phenomenons with exposure.
1. Blowouts in the background
2. Higher ISO
However... for this particular exercise, I chose to use no more than ISO6400 in an effort to avoid the effects of low level NR. and secondly, to retain as much DR as possible within the file for post(DR goes down as sensitivities increase). And since ISO6400 doesn't leave much headroom for highlight recovery, I chose to preserved highlights(head band) by exposing to the left and push processing the scene afterward so as to take advantage of the K-5's enormous shadow recovery capabilities.
As for processing, the final edit was done with Alien Skin Exposure using a "Kodak E100S cross process filter"(film sim.).
Granted its not everyone's cup of tea, but I've always been a huge fan of the film.
Hope this helps and thanks for sharing you're ideas!