Last Night's Shoot - C&C

[SCraig]

Noise? How could properly exposing with ANY amount of light be a noise problem at ISO 200? Or even 800 in this situation? I think I don't understand what you are saying?

It's already dark, hence the 1/30 @ 1.8, it ISN'T properly exposed, and going up on the ISO would probably start showing some noise in the shadows.

 

[MLeeK]

Noise? How could properly exposing with ANY amount of light be a noise problem at ISO 200? Or even 800 in this situation? I think I don't understand what you are saying?

It's already dark, hence the 1/30 @ 1.8, it ISN'T properly exposed, and going up on the ISO would probably start showing some noise in the shadows.

No. If it were properly exposed at a higher ISO your noise is going to be much better than underexposed at a lower ISO. And ISO 200 is next to nothing in noise on today's digital cameras. He's shooting with a T2i. I have used the sensor that came before the T2i all of the way up to 12800 and gotten beautiful results. The key is to know what you are doing when you are shooting that high. He didn't need to go that high here to get better exposure at all. He may have needed to go up to 1600 to get good exposure and a good shutter speed. NOTHING on today's cameras.

 

[SCraig]

No. If it were properly exposed at a higher ISO your noise is going to be much better than underexposed at a lower ISO. And ISO 200 is next to nothing in noise on today's digital cameras. He's shooting with a T2i. I have used the sensor that came before the T2i all of the way up to 12800 and gotten beautiful results. The key is to know what you are doing when you are shooting that high. He didn't need to go that high here to get better exposure at all. He may have needed to go up to 1600 to get good exposure and a good shutter speed. NOTHING on today's cameras.

As you wish. You stick with what works for you and I'll stick with what works for me.

 

[ghache]

 

[Tee]

What was your thought process for the direction of lighting?

Do you have a light meter?

 

[jowensphoto]

I'll echo the C/C of just about everyone else.

The pose is what really kills it for me. Let's face it, the armpit is not exactly the sexiest part of the body, now is it? If she had the other arm up with armpit angled away from the camera, that would have been a much more visually pleasing pose.

 

[o hey tyler]

This is the caliber of work that's going to bring so many clients to your business that you've been planning to open in the next few months.

The lighting is virtually non-existent. You're going to need lights that make flashes if you want to get into portraiture, not the ones that you turn on with a light switch. The reason for that is because you can freeze people with flash, you don't have to use a slow shutter speed to compensate for available, or incidental light.

No, you can't just set your shutter speed to 1/100s and turn on the light switch on and off really fast, despite what you may think, that won't work.

The other thing about flashy lights that make ladies fawn over you, is that the burst of light may be short, but they put out a lot more light than the 60 watt Sylvania's you're using. In turn, making it possible to shoot at f/8 if you want to without having to worry about your shutter speed.

It looks like your green screen is pretty wrinkled. You could probably get a steamer that will get the wrinkles out of it. As it is, it's distracting and not forgiving to the model. You'll also have to combat against green casts assuming you get some more powerful lights, rather than the dimmer switch track lighting you installed for photo shoots.

I fail to see why there was text inserted behind her. Not only is it behind her, only 50% of it is readable. You'll notice TIME magazine, and Sports Illustrated will do similar effects to give the cover photos depth. The thing they have going for them is IDENTITY, so you don't have to see the whole name of the magazine to know what it is. In your photo, her name could be Jengo, Jennn, Jenae, etc.

 

[brush]

One of the trends I'm noticing on this forum is people saying over & over that they don't want to move their ISO up because of noise. That makes no sense to me, people ruin pictures with motion blur and under-exposure trying to avoid an undiscernible amount of tiny little pixelation they're never going to see in a million years unless zoomed in to 100% or printed on a giant poster. I'm not saying that an ISO of 6400 is called for in normal situations, but if you set your ISO to 400 and repeat this shot, you'll have much better exposure with no motion blur and the noise you experience will be so minimal that if you said it was 100 nobody would ever call you out on the noise.

 

[redessa]

I shoot with a T2i and start getting noticable noise at 800 ISO. Depending on the situation, I may have to bump it up past that anyway (like at my kid's school band concert where flash photography is not allowed and I'm too far away to use it anyway but I want the shot no matter how crappy the IQ). But the OP could have easily gone to 200 or 400, to get a better shutter speed & aperture combo without hurting the image in terms of noise.

 

[etnad0]

It's really underexposed and you haven't really fixed that problem in the post processing of it.

Still have to get light room, but I'll definitely add more light next time. Everything looked over exposed to me at the time of shooting. I'm not sure, but under exposure seems to be more forgiving than over exposure in post, but I may be wrong. I'll keep working on getting it right.

Why on Earth would you not raise your ISO on this? You could have gotten good exposure easily AND gotten it without having to use such a ridiculously low shutter speed which would have resulted in much better focus.

Now that I know I'll definitely keep that in mind for next time.

I'd actually like you to tell us how you decided upon those settings and your reasoning. I think maybe there is something there we can help you with.

I'm still learning the technical stuff. Remember, I just upgraded to a DSLR on December 1. It's been just over 30 days and my previous camera was a point and shoot for the most part. This is also my first photo shoot with a full manual camera, so I'm making mistakes, which I'll learn from. Other than it looking right in the live view, I can't really say why I chose it. I went with the combination that looked right.

The posing leaves to be desired as well. She is at an angle and in a position that really accentuates that arm pit. Instead of making her look busty, it makes her look thick.

Had to LOL when I read this. She is thick. She's a plus size model, but she only does it as a hobby. She's smaller than most plus size models and definitely bigger than the usual size models.

You need to have some of the belly to give a better perspective and make her look less thick. The fact that the arm in the foreground points toward the camera makes it also appear much thicker than it should. Look at the parts of her body here. That arm is HUGE compared to the rest of her. Much larger than her head even.
The positioning of the face is good overall in having that little bit of the other side of her face. I'd prefer she were looking toward camera left so that the far eye's iris wasn't attached to the nose so much.

Thanks. I'll keep that in mind for future shoots. Now that I know better I can do better.

the position of the far arm is good-the head is hiding any thickness there and allowing you to hide some of the arm. I'd still probably liquify some of the arm at the bottom towards the shoulder and that little bit of fat roll/muscle roll between the far bra strap and the arm. It's natural even on the thinnest of women, but it's something a woman would see and immediately say it looks like "I'm fat" when they aren't.

She doesn't mind looking "fat". She actually embraces it, but I do get your point. Luckily for me she doesn't mind who she is and is comfortable in her own skin.

 

[etnad0]

What was your thought process for the direction of lighting?

Do you have a light meter?

Nope. That's something I'm looking to invest in.

 

[etnad0]

I'll echo the C/C of just about everyone else.

The pose is what really kills it for me. Let's face it, the armpit is not exactly the sexiest part of the body, now is it? If she had the other arm up with armpit angled away from the camera, that would have been a much more visually pleasing pose.

LOL that would depend on who you're talking to. I don't find body hair on women sexy, but there are ton o guys that like it. Google "armpit fetish". LOL. With that said, I get what you are saying. I'll keep that in mind.

 

[etnad0]

This is the caliber of work that's going to bring so many clients to your business that you've been planning to open in the next few months.

Still displaying your lack of reading and comprehension skills I see. I did this by MYSELF. At the shop I'll have someone with 10x more experience than me and he'll be setting up the lights and setting the cameras. I see you keep ignoring/forgetting or just plain failing to comprehend that I'm not running the photo part of the business.

The lighting is virtually non-existent. You're going to need lights that make flashes if you want to get into portraiture, not the ones that you turn on with a light switch. The reason for that is because you can freeze people with flash, you don't have to use a slow shutter speed to compensate for available, or incidental light.

No, you can't just set your shutter speed to 1/100s and turn on the light switch on and off really fast, despite what you may think, that won't work.

The other thing about flashy lights that make ladies fawn over you, is that the burst of light may be short, but they put out a lot more light than the 60 watt Sylvania's you're using. In turn, making it possible to shoot at f/8 if you want to without having to worry about your shutter speed.

None of that applies to anything I used, but I'll keep the flash in mind.

It looks like your green screen is pretty wrinkled. You could probably get a steamer that will get the wrinkles out of it. As it is, it's distracting and not forgiving to the model. You'll also have to combat against green casts assuming you get some more powerful lights, rather than the dimmer switch track lighting you installed for photo shoots.

Are you making all this up just to have something to type? I never mentioned track lighting or dimmer switches.

I fail to see why there was text inserted behind her. Not only is it behind her, only 50% of it is readable. You'll notice TIME magazine, and Sports Illustrated will do similar effects to give the cover photos depth. The thing they have going for them is IDENTITY, so you don't have to see the whole name of the magazine to know what it is. In your photo, her name could be Jengo, Jennn, Jenae, etc.

Actually she requested the name behind her. She's a hobby model and its for her personal collection or whatever she does with them. It's not or publication or a professional portfolio. I get what you're saying and if we were doing something for the purpose of marketing I would have had my friend present for the shoot so we could get it right.

She knew I was practicing and I knew she was a hobby model. She was practicing her poses, etc. I'm practicing my framing and lighting, so we figured it'd be a fun night of shooting. We had fun and I appreciate the critiques, but I'd appreciate it if you at least stuck to the facts instead of tossing in random bits of false info as you comment.

 

[etnad0]

One of the trends I'm noticing on this forum is people saying over & over that they don't want to move their ISO up because of noise. That makes no sense to me, people ruin pictures with motion blur and under-exposure trying to avoid an undiscernible amount of tiny little pixelation they're never going to see in a million years unless zoomed in to 100% or printed on a giant poster. I'm not saying that an ISO of 6400 is called for in normal situations, but if you set your ISO to 400 and repeat this shot, you'll have much better exposure with no motion blur and the noise you experience will be so minimal that if you said it was 100 nobody would ever call you out on the noise.

I agree with you 100%. In the live view 400 looked way over exposed to me. Maybe what I'm seeing as overexposure is actually proper exposure, so next time I'll do one at a higher ISO and one at a low ISO and post both pics. That way I can gauge what it should look like on my end as I take the photo.

 

[jaicatalano]

Why is your shutter speed so slow? Try bumping that up.