Single OCF light source picture thread

[matthewm]

16" light box sb900, full power 1/250s f11

 

[Village Idiot]

This is from my trip to DC. On 580EX II with shoot through camera left held by VAL.



Started really trying to pin down a color correction and skin smoothing technique. This one didn't need much color correcting as it was shot in the shade with a flash and everything was already mostly the right color.

 

[2WheelPhoto]

This thread delivers

 

[2WheelPhoto]

Bump- rockin' a Vivitar 285 cam at the park trying to let some ambient in

 

[Village Idiot]

Looks like the focus is on her boob and not her face.

You can use a narrower aperture for a wider DOF, which will encompass the subject an still allow a background to be blurred if there's enough separation and then compensate with ISO so that ambient remains exposed correctly and you don't have to use too slow of a shutter speed that may introduce blur from hand held shake due to the ambient portion of the exposure.

 

[2WheelPhoto]

Thanks VI.

I had the ISO cranked to 1000 for 1/60th shutter, maybe I'll try it a little higher. or something else is going on, I'm not used to the D700 maybe my focus points aren't set right since you pointed out focus on the boobs, thought I had it set for 9 points single point focus and nailed her eye but i'm going back to check the cam.

 

[Derrel]

Looks like the focus is on her boob and not her face.

Her eyes and face are in focus well enough for the image at small size like this. You're probably just zeroing in on her boob. Maybe it's the sequins on her flimsy top that are drawing your eye. If her boob were out of focus, it would look really bad. In this kind of situation the best thing to do is to try to shoot at an f/stop that will provide enough depth of field to get the costume into focus, along with the face. Looks like the flash is just a tiny bit too high to get a catchlight in that eye on the right-hand side.

 

[2WheelPhoto]

Thanks, I noticed the flash was too high after i imported them into lightroom. One day I'll learn. I destroyed this pic with the "too high" flash for example, blatant shadows in her eyes:

 

[Village Idiot]

Looks like the focus is on her boob and not her face.

Her eyes and face are in focus well enough for the image at small size like this. You're probably just zeroing in on her boob. Maybe it's the sequins on her flimsy top that are drawing your eye. If her boob were out of focus, it would look really bad. In this kind of situation the best thing to do is to try to shoot at an f/stop that will provide enough depth of field to get the costume into focus, along with the face. Looks like the flash is just a tiny bit too high to get a catchlight in that eye on the right-hand side.

The eyes are visibly out of focus. It doesn't matter what size an image is, it looks bad when facial features are out of focus and a forward part of the person isn't.

 

[gsgary]

one of my ceramics, beauty dish with grid camera right and low

 

[Geaux]

1 - SB600 on boom in DIY Beauty dish 2 foot directly above/front of subject. Fired with Nikon CLS

SB-600 camera right, above model in 14" DIY Beauty Dish

 

[Derrel]

The eyes are visibly out of focus. It doesn't matter what size an image is, it looks bad when facial features are out of focus and a forward part of the person isn't.

Sorry, but your inexperience is showing again Village Idiot. First off, the focus is decent: I just took the image into Photoshop and in a few seconds, applied a simple Sharpen filter to the low-rez web shot he posted: the zits on her forehead, as well as the pores on her forehead,as well as individual eyebrow hairs start to come into clear view. The "focus" is not off, it is acceptable.

And second, yes, it matters HUGELY what size an image is viewed at; if focus is slightly "off", it often does not even show at web sizes, but it sure as heck does at 11x14. Depth of field is evaluated at what is known as "appropriate viewing distance"....but of course, you probably have zero idea about that technical stuff like depth of field and CoC and viewing size and distance. If an image is OOF, one can easily,easily hide that by shrinking it down to web size. Duh....

One thing I have noticed over the past few weeks is that a LOT OF PHOTOS people are posting here on TPF are looking quite sub-par in terms of an overall softness of the image; something seems to be going on here at TPF. I myself posted an example image to this very thread, and it looked really "soft", all-over...and it is an image that I posted here once before in the "bokeh thread", and it looked SHARP in that thread and was shot with my 200mm f/2 VR-Nikkor, which is the sharpest lens I have ever owned. It looked so soft in this single-flash thread that I pulled the post and the photo down immediately. The photo in this thread, for example: with more sharpening applies, shows that the FOCUS is quite good at the eyes and face, but as-posted it seemed somewhat soft. But not out of focus.

 

[gsgary]

The eyes are visibly out of focus. It doesn't matter what size an image is, it looks bad when facial features are out of focus and a forward part of the person isn't.

Sorry, but your inexperience is showing again Village Idiot. First off, the focus is decent: I just took the image into Photoshop and in a few seconds, applied a simple Sharpen filter to the low-rez web shot he posted: the zits on her forehead, as well as the pores on her forehead,as well as individual eyebrow hairs start to come into clear view. The "focus" is not off, it is acceptable.

And second, yes, it matters HUGELY what size an image is viewed at; if focus is slightly "off", it often does not even show at web sizes, but it sure as heck does at 11x14. Depth of field is evaluated at what is known as "appropriate viewing distance"....but of course, you probably have zero idea about that technical stuff like depth of field and CoC and viewing size and distance. If an image is OOF, one can easily,easily hide that by shrinking it down to web size. Duh....

One thing I have noticed over the past few weeks is that a LOT OF PHOTOS people are posting here on TPF are looking quite sub-par in terms of an overall softness of the image; something seems to be going on here at TPF. I myself posted an example image to this very thread, and it looked really "soft", all-over...and it is an image that I posted here once before in the "bokeh thread", and it looked SHARP in that thread and was shot with my 200mm f/2 VR-Nikkor, which is the sharpest lens I have ever owned. It looked so soft in this single-flash thread that I pulled the post and the photo down immediately. The photo in this thread, for example: with more sharpening applies, shows that the FOCUS is quite good at the eyes and face, but as-posted it seemed somewhat soft. But not out of focus.

This website makes photos look softer than they are

 

[Village Idiot]

The eyes are visibly out of focus. It doesn't matter what size an image is, it looks bad when facial features are out of focus and a forward part of the person isn't.

Sorry, but your inexperience is showing again Village Idiot. First off, the focus is decent: I just took the image into Photoshop and in a few seconds, applied a simple Sharpen filter to the low-rez web shot he posted: the zits on her forehead, as well as the pores on her forehead,as well as individual eyebrow hairs start to come into clear view. The "focus" is not off, it is acceptable.

And second, yes, it matters HUGELY what size an image is viewed at; if focus is slightly "off", it often does not even show at web sizes, but it sure as heck does at 11x14. Depth of field is evaluated at what is known as "appropriate viewing distance"....but of course, you probably have zero idea about that technical stuff like depth of field and CoC and viewing size and distance. If an image is OOF, one can easily,easily hide that by shrinking it down to web size. Duh....

One thing I have noticed over the past few weeks is that a LOT OF PHOTOS people are posting here on TPF are looking quite sub-par in terms of an overall softness of the image; something seems to be going on here at TPF. I myself posted an example image to this very thread, and it looked really "soft", all-over...and it is an image that I posted here once before in the "bokeh thread", and it looked SHARP in that thread and was shot with my 200mm f/2 VR-Nikkor, which is the sharpest lens I have ever owned. It looked so soft in this single-flash thread that I pulled the post and the photo down immediately. The photo in this thread, for example: with more sharpening applies, shows that the FOCUS is quite good at the eyes and face, but as-posted it seemed somewhat soft. But not out of focus.

Bottom line it's OOF. If you sharpen it and get skin flaws, then they're skin flaws that may have shown for a correct focus and that would have to have been edited anyways. If it's your opinion that this OOF photo is OK, then more power to you. If you like soft images, that's fine. If that image is something you would feel satisfied delivering to a client, then that's your choice. I just wouldn't personally be happy with an image that I posted that looked like the camera/lens combo had front focusing issues.

 

[Village Idiot]

This website makes photos look softer than they are

They're also hosted via Photobucket which generally has a negative effect on photos.