Gary Fong diffuser during the day

DScience · Sep 27, 2009

Hi all. Here is a shot I took up in Boulder Colorado on Pearl ST mall. I used a GF light diffuser on an sb-600, hand held below camera left. The sun is coming from the right, and I used the flash so that the side of his face wouldn't be too dark. C&C welcome as always!

This one I the strobe is above camera hand held.

syphlix · Sep 27, 2009

i like the lighting in these.. framing 'im not sure... seems off to me...

they are really cool though... are these random people you just asked to take a photo of?...

how do you get the images to look so... gritty?... not sure how to describe it... but that feel i really like... is it in post processing?

DScience · Sep 27, 2009

I tried different crop variations. It's really hard for me to crop something square, and have a completely centered subject. I may try some variations later, but I left these ones as they were, however I did crop the first one a bit but mainly for consistency with the squares in the BG.

Anyway, they were PP in Lightroom and PS, and noise ninja (i believe). I used a 50mm 1.4, at 1.4 for both shots so the subject is definitely pronounced, which makes it feel more 'gritty' I believe. Plus, I did do quite a bit of PP.

syphlix · Sep 27, 2009

what kind of PP (if you don't mind me asking)? sharpening for the subject?

DScience · Sep 27, 2009

Not exactly, in fact I didn't do ANY sharpening in PS.

I didn't use PS for the first one, all was done in Lightroom. They were shot in RAW, so that gives you the ability to really mess with things. I can send you the preset if you have lightroom. The sharp feeling is mostly just getting the subject in focus, and then using different settings in LR.

syphlix · Sep 27, 2009

sure i'll try out the preset... i'll pm you my email address...

fiveoboy01 · Sep 27, 2009

I'd offer my opinion on these, but they're posted in the wrong forum.

inTempus · Sep 27, 2009

If I can't post my pics in here, neither can you.

These belong somewhere other than the beginners forum.

DScience · Sep 27, 2009

fiveoboy01 said:
I'd offer my opinion on these, but they're posted in the wrong forum.

inTempus said:
If I can't post my pics in here, neither can you.

These belong somewhere other than the beginners forum.

Um, I am curious as to why these are posted in the wrong forum? I am definitely a beginner.

musicaleCA · Sep 27, 2009

Why use a GF diffuser in broad daylight? For this kind of lighting, a small softbox or beauty dish would do just as well, and likely get faster recycle times and far more life from your batteries in the process. The GF will be throwing light all over, and it'll just get lost on the sides.

DScience · Sep 27, 2009

musicaleCA said:
Why use a GF diffuser in broad daylight? For this kind of lighting, a small softbox or beauty dish would do just as well, and likely get faster recycle times and far more life from your batteries in the process. The GF will be throwing light all over, and it'll just get lost on the sides.

Do you know what a GF diffuser is?

I would sure hope a softbox or beauty dish would do better. All I am using is a small flash, with a cheap diffuser and firing it off camera. I am using it to take pics of people on the street. Now, how complicated would it be to set up a softbox or beauty dish to get a quick snap of some street performer?

The GF diffuser is a great way to create soft light from a flash.

KmH · Sep 27, 2009

The lighting and processing look good. :thumbup:

The compositions...... I'm not real bullish about, and here's why I say that:

#1 The negative space behind the first gentlemen and him looking straight out the side of the frame doesn't make sense. His gaze leads us right off the image camera right and it's hard to make the eye look behind his head. If he were looking at the camera it would work much better.

It's just very natural to want to look where he is looking, but there's no more image there so you loose the viewer quickly. Maybe to quickly.

I'd say crop about 1/2 way from the left edge of the frame to his sleeve and give up a bit of the negative space. That will get his left eye closer to the power point. I think that will make more gut sense and keep the viewer engaged a little longer.

#2 Cropping to a vertical format would eliminate the bright spots left and right of your subject and make the image much stronger. I'd say crop quite close to his right shoulder and just enough to loose the bright spot in the upper right quadrant and that blown t-shirt.

In the daytime an on flash diffuser wastes a lot of light, and that means battery power and cycle time is wasted too. With fill, the slight harshness of an undiffused low power light can actually be a plus visually, while also reaping the other tech benefits, longer battery life and shorter cycle time.

If the tech advantages aren't important for you, keep using the diffuser, though a kind of overkill it won't hurt your images.

Using OCF for a bit of fill in the daytime can make some killer images. Use enough speedlight power to beat snot out of the sunlight and they'll look even better because the backgrounds can be darker by a larger ratio because of a smaller aperture.

inTempus · Sep 27, 2009

DScience said:
fiveoboy01 said:

I'd offer my opinion on these, but they're posted in the wrong forum.

Click to expand...

inTempus said:

If I can't post my pics in here, neither can you.

These belong somewhere other than the beginners forum.

Click to expand...

Um, I am curious as to why these are posted in the wrong forum? I am definitely a beginner.

I'm a beginner too, but it has less to do with you time behind the camera vs. The quality of your work. Looking at your flickr account, it's safe to say you're not a novice.

I tried the "I've had my camera less than a year" line a few weeks ago and it didn't work for me either.

fiveoboy01 · Sep 27, 2009

What tharsmen said.

I expect to see crappy photos here, this is a forum to help people with their work. That said, you might see a few of my pics in here:meh:

Besides, you'll get better critique if you post in the gallery forums, because you won't have every noob on the site going "wow, that's a great photo!" I'd rather have harsh critique from experienced guys over a bunch of back patting from people who don't know what they're talking about.

Time really has nothing to do with it, some people catch on and advance their skills very fast, others don't. Like tharsmen said, a quick scan of your flickr account certainly doesn't say "beginner" to me.