First time out with new lens & flash

[Big Mike]

Here are a couple shots from my first real shooting with my new lens (Tamron 17-50 F2.8) and flash (430EX).

I was going for a good balance of flash and ambient light. I think I got that but I'm still not thrilled with the color. I played with it for a while but maybe not long enough. Any C&C welcome.

 

[Peanuts]

Doesn't look like flash whatsoever. The only hint of flash being used is the catchlight in the eyes of the child in the first image. I guess if you look really really closely you can see the shadow of the lady on the far right's skirt, but that was searching. Great job, I wish I could mix ambient and flash that effectively!

Regarding the colour, have you tried using curves? Honestly it doesn't bother me at all, as it isn't unnatural for the inside of a church especially with all of those warm tones.

Great job You are going to have to share the knowledge of how you used your flash now.

Edit: My spelling is atrocious right now due to multi tasking. My apologies.

 

[TBaraki]

I agree that you got the balance pretty damn close. The catchlights in the first are nice. The colour in the second looks fine, but yeah, something looks slightly off colour-wise in the first.

Seems like a pretty nice lens; I've heard good things about it.

 

[shingfan]

doesnt look like flashed at all.....is nice Mike........what was the setup like?.....i've never been to a church before so not sure what the lighting is like.....lol

 

[Big Mike]

Thanks for the comments.

It was a very large church. The ceiling was probably about 50 or 60 feet high...with a hollow dome going up another 40 feet or so. There were plenty of incandescent lights, many of them in warm toned shades which is typical. Also, there were several windows with sunlight streaming in...but the windows were stained glass, so the light was all sorts of colors.

Even though it seemed rather bright, I did struggle at times to freeze the movement. One problem with keeping the flash turned down to fill level...is that it doesn't freeze the subject like it would if you blast them with flash. I was trying to shoot at around F4 to F5.6, to have a deep enough DOF...but then I often needed an ISO of 800 to keep the shutter fast enough. 800 is higher than I like so I usually kept it at 400. Maybe I should work on my noise reduction workflow and shoot at 800/1600 more often. I guess it's easier to rescue a sharp noisy shot than a blurry shot.

 

[PNA]

Mike.... what religion church is it???

Good shots for using a flash in the church, virtually no reflections.

 

[Jazz]

Mike - These look great, nice job! Yeah, mixed lighting is tough. The yellow and cyan look a little strong, but that makes sense with mixed lighting. I'm going by the numbers in cmyk in PS. Cyan is roughly 50% of the magenta in the flesh, should be closer to 33%. And the yellow is 15-20 points higher than magenta, so that's a little high perhaps.

But for mixed lighting, I think it's pretty darn good. If you want to use rgb, then maybe add a little red. However, if you get too full by doing that, you may want to try a little desaturation. These digital captures are often over saturated, which is fine, until you start to color correct.

I agree that catchlights and fill balance look sweet. :thumbup:

 

[Big Mike]

Mike.... what religion church is it???

Ukrainian Catholic. Also, this is a baptism ceremony (if anyone wanted to know).

 

[PNA]

Thanks Mike....I'm Greek Orthordox which is all part of the
Eastern Orthordox religion. And I did think it was a baptism?

I processed you first shot a bit and if you like I'll post it here for you to view and comment.

Paul

P.S. The priest looks like MASH's "Radar"

 

[Big Mike]

Thanks for the comments Jazz, and thanks for the detailed color analysis. I work in sRGB and I was playing with the color balance but couldn't find anything that I was really happy with. I think it's because, in the first shot, the baby's face is quite different than his mother and God-mother. If I adjusted for his face, theirs were way off...and vice versa. I suppose I could have made up some layer masks and adjusted everything separately to even it out but that would have been too much work for 10:00 on Sunday night.

 

[Big Mike]

I processed you first shot a bit and if you like I'll post it here for you to view and comment.

Please do...and let us know what you did.

P.S. The priest looks like MASH's "Radar"

He does. He was kind of a funny guy...when he was posing for these shots, he was frozen solid...he didn't move or blink. I have 4 or 5 shots with the mothers and babies moving around and he's in the exact same position each time. I guess he was thinking that if someone was going to blink and ruin the picture...it sure wasn't going to be him

 

[Jazz]

too much work for 10:00 on Sunday night.

I hear that loud and clear. On a sunday at 10pm, it's clearly the baby's fault. Faulty baby.

 

[PNA]

After reading Jazz's scientific approach, perhaps I better just tell you what I did....

dupped the layer
reduced the saturation
did a bit of levels
added a bit of contract
Select color range of baby's blouse
inverse
a little brightness and contrast

Tell me what you think.....

I did not take into consideration the facial colorings and Jazz and you stated.

Paul

 

[PNA]

Here goes....

 

[PNA]

Please do...and let us know what you did.



He does. He was kind of a funny guy...when he was posing for these shots, he was frozen solid...he didn't move or blink. I have 4 or 5 shots with the mothers and babies moving around and he's in the exact same position each time. I guess he was thinking that if someone was going to blink and ruin the picture...it sure wasn't going to be him

Yeah, our priests love to pose.....it's an Orthordox thing.