Portrait of my Girlfriend

[birdbonkers84]

Dunno about the skin tone, didn't think I upped the saturation at all and certainly didn't touch the tint or temp sliders.

How did you set the white balance in the first place?

Joe

I have a feeling it was on auto.


Sent from my iPhone using ThePhotoForum.com mobile app

 

[chuasam]

I don't know her well enough (obviously) but her smile seemed really forced and fake.
Try to get her to really relax.

 

[Derrel]

I don't know her well enough (obviously) but her smile seemed really forced and fake.
Try to get her to really relax.

She has beautfiul teeth, but the consistency in her smile from frame to frame makes me think that she's still using her "picture face"; the one that she's developed over her early lifetime, and which has become the expression she goes to for every picture. This is a fairly common situation, but it does seem that she was not yet fully, truly relaxed with the picture-taking process that was going on right then. It can be difficult to get a really truly free, open, relaxed expression in a short photo session, and shooting tripod-mounted and at slowish shutter speeds can make many subjects kind of tense up, and the slowish shutter speeds sort of makes the photgrapher nervous too.

The best part of the shoot is how attractive and healty she looks, and how well put-together her wardrobe is, with good jewlery, a smart outfit, and well-manicured fingernails in that very modern white nails style, a pedicure, etc. A lot of times I've seen women show up for photo shoots with quite bad nail polish in this type of one-person photo shoot, and the lack of attention to details can spoil many poses where the nails or hands show.

 

[Ysarex]

Dunno about the skin tone, didn't think I upped the saturation at all and certainly didn't touch the tint or temp sliders.

How did you set the white balance in the first place?

Joe

I have a feeling it was on auto.


Sent from my iPhone using ThePhotoForum.com mobile app

Then you probably should have touched the temp and tint sliders. Better yet just measure the WB with a reference card. You mentioned using Adobe RAW so I assume you have raw files. Auto WB is a "best guess." Take the guess work out of it and snap a photo of a WB reference either before or after you take the photos.

Auto WB will return varying degrees of success or failure depending on the subject. Here's an especially egregious example of a fail with a very difficult (for the auto WB algorithm) subject.

I leave my camera set to auto WB as well, but that little piece of Styrofoam (cut from food tray) in the inset above is in my camera bag at all times. I take the photos I want to take and when I'm finished I just grab a snap of the Styrofoam in the same light as the subject. Processing the raw files I take a WB reading off the Styrofoam and transfer those temp/tint values to my photos. It's simple. It doesn't interfere with your taking the photos. You get accurate WB to start.

Joe

 

[birdbonkers84]

I don't know her well enough (obviously) but her smile seemed really forced and fake.
Try to get her to really relax.

She has beautfiul teeth, but the consistency in her smile from frame to frame makes me think that she's still using her "picture face"; the one that she's developed over her early lifetime, and which has become the expression she goes to for every picture. This is a fairly common situation, but it does seem that she was not yet fully, truly relaxed with the picture-taking process that was going on right then. It can be difficult to get a really truly free, open, relaxed expression in a short photo session, and shooting tripod-mounted and at slowish shutter speeds can make many subjects kind of tense up, and the slowish shutter speeds sort of makes the photgrapher nervous too.

The best part of the shoot is how attractive and healty she looks, and how well put-together her wardrobe is, with good jewlery, a smart outfit, and well-manicured fingernails in that very modern white nails style, a pedicure, etc. A lot of times I've seen women show up for photo shoots with quite bad nail polish in this type of one-person photo shoot, and the lack of attention to details can spoil many poses where the nails or hands show.

Thanks Derrel for your input, I'll pass on the comment about her teeth, she'll love that one especially!

 

[birdbonkers84]

Dunno about the skin tone, didn't think I upped the saturation at all and certainly didn't touch the tint or temp sliders.

How did you set the white balance in the first place?

Joe

I have a feeling it was on auto.


Sent from my iPhone using ThePhotoForum.com mobile app

Then you probably should have touched the temp and tint sliders. Better yet just measure the WB with a reference card. You mentioned using Adobe RAW so I assume you have raw files. Auto WB is a "best guess." Take the guess work out of it and snap a photo of a WB reference either before or after you take the photos.

Auto WB will return varying degrees of success or failure depending on the subject. Here's an especially egregious example of a fail with a very difficult (for the auto WB algorithm) subject.

View attachment 135468

I leave my camera set to auto WB as well, but that little piece of Styrofoam (cut from food tray) in the inset above is in my camera bag at all times. I take the photos I want to take and when I'm finished I just grab a snap of the Styrofoam in the same light as the subject. Processing the raw files I take a WB reading off the Styrofoam and transfer those temp/tint values to my photos. It's simple. It doesn't interfere with your taking the photos. You get accurate WB to start.

Joe

Thanks again Joe this is great! I'll be sure to get one of those in my photography bag!

So I'm home now and have looked at the images again and it looks different on my home monitor compared to both my work monitors (both aswell showing different images) Going cross-eyed over this, but I'll get it sorted.

With regards to the WB of the first image, I clicked on the auto WB and it does make a significant difference. Seems to removed a yellowy/orange tint from the skin.

 

[dasmith232]

In my opinion, there's nothing wrong with using Aperture-Priority mode. You can still open up to a larger aperture and bump up the ISO speed. I think that you don't need to "feel bad" about not using Manual.

Given the field-of-view and the 50mm lens, this looks like a full-frame camera. I'd also guess that it's closer to 2m given how much of her is in the frame. So, on the point of the selected aperture, at 2m and that lens, f/8 will give you about 3/4 meter of DOF. Opening up to f/5.6 still gives you over 1/2m of DOF. (At 2m and f/5.6, DOF is 0.517m.) f/4 is still 0.36m. That gives you 2 stops back.

Because the camera is on a tripod, camera shake is not an issue. The only issue (causing blur) would be subject movement, but this is someone who's sitting pretty still. Those two stops puts your shutter up to 1/40 sec, which is certainly better. You still have the ISO option. Any modern camera (especially full-frame) will let you *easily* go up a couple of stops to ISO 400. Now the shutter is 1/160 sec. And that's plenty fast for this kind of picture. Personally, I wouldn't hesitate to use ISO 800, and this is easily into hand-holdable speeds at 1/320 sec. And hand-holding will be much more comfortable and natural (ditching the tripod and remote release) causing the "forced smile" look.

And this is still using natural light. With flash, you get all kinds of speed back. But because you don't have the flash yet, you still have options in getting to a faster (and hand-holdable) shutter speed.

Regarding a calibrated monitor, there are two very distinct types of calibration: color and brightness. Even without a calibrated monitor, just a simple brightness adjustment might be in order. Certainly cheaper than a new monitor. For "people pictures" getting proper color is pretty important, so I'd still agree that calibration is a good thing. Color Munki comes in a few different configurations. The "lower" packages including the calibration device and the "higher" packages come with a color card that includes "neutral" gray as well as subtle adjustments for cooler or warmer renditions.

 

[birdbonkers84]

In my opinion, there's nothing wrong with using Aperture-Priority mode. You can still open up to a larger aperture and bump up the ISO speed. I think that you don't need to "feel bad" about not using Manual.

Given the field-of-view and the 50mm lens, this looks like a full-frame camera. I'd also guess that it's closer to 2m given how much of her is in the frame. So, on the point of the selected aperture, at 2m and that lens, f/8 will give you about 3/4 meter of DOF. Opening up to f/5.6 still gives you over 1/2m of DOF. (At 2m and f/5.6, DOF is 0.517m.) f/4 is still 0.36m. That gives you 2 stops back.

Because the camera is on a tripod, camera shake is not an issue. The only issue (causing blur) would be subject movement, but this is someone who's sitting pretty still. Those two stops puts your shutter up to 1/40 sec, which is certainly better. You still have the ISO option. Any modern camera (especially full-frame) will let you *easily* go up a couple of stops to ISO 400. Now the shutter is 1/160 sec. And that's plenty fast for this kind of picture. Personally, I wouldn't hesitate to use ISO 800, and this is easily into hand-holdable speeds at 1/320 sec. And hand-holding will be much more comfortable and natural (ditching the tripod and remote release) causing the "forced smile" look.

And this is still using natural light. With flash, you get all kinds of speed back. But because you don't have the flash yet, you still have options in getting to a faster (and hand-holdable) shutter speed.

Regarding a calibrated monitor, there are two very distinct types of calibration: color and brightness. Even without a calibrated monitor, just a simple brightness adjustment might be in order. Certainly cheaper than a new monitor. For "people pictures" getting proper color is pretty important, so I'd still agree that calibration is a good thing. Color Munki comes in a few different configurations. The "lower" packages including the calibration device and the "higher" packages come with a color card that includes "neutral" gray as well as subtle adjustments for cooler or warmer renditions.

Now that I'm home I've actually gone and measured the distance the camera was from her. It was roughly 3.6-4m. Also I shot this on a Nikon D3300, which I believe is a cropped body. The 2 sitting poses especially have been cropped.

I think after all these great replies my shutter speed or should I say lack of was the biggest problem. Next time I'll be a little more patient and less hungover.

Thanks for the helpful info

 

[dasmith232]

Okay, pushing out to 4m (and yeah, that's a crop sensor), f/8 gives you 2m of DOF. Even at f/4 you're still getting almost a full meter of DOF (0.96m).

 

[Derrel]

RE: shutter speed. Frames 1 and 2 have very, very slight shutter speed blurring on her face, but her body is rendered crisply. This degree of blurring is very slight, and most people will not see it. It might in some cases, actually ADD to the sense of realism. It's hard to spot this degree of blurring, but if one looks at the eyelashes or brows, or another area with fine, fine details the slight, 3- to 4- pixel-level movement of the subject is there, but hard to see except at large image sizes. On a smaller image, or a small print, or even an 8 x 10 print, that level of ultra-slight blurring might actually enhance the feeling of realism within picture.

Had the shutter speed been slower by a stop or two, her expressions would have been fairly blurry if she was talking, or laughing, or moving her head, etc..

I dunno...I think she looks attractive, super-fit, pleasant, well-groomed, and that these three pictures show off her overall "look" pretty well. Very simple setting, minimal props, very honest, straight-forward portraiture of her. My guess is a second session would be even better, especially if you or her have not done this type of portrait shoot before. My advice on this type of shoot is to reallllllly shoot, and at some point, maybe 200 to even as many as 300 frames into the session, you will get true, genuine, **amazing**, revelatory expressions over a five- to ten-minute or so time frame, where everything will come together: expressions, poses and photographer capturing the amazing essence of the subject. THAT is how a serious portrait session seems to go for me, and for many others: the early stuff is somewhat superficial, and then once the subject loosens up, the pictures become revelatory, not just solid representations of their face, hair,clothes, and environment.

I find that the best photos come about an hour into a session.

 

[dasmith232]

Something else came to my mind earlier and I didn't mention it, but it seems to fit here.

I read somewhere, and I use this myself. Don't say "smile". Smile is a command and the person will respond to a command. Rather, ask/talk about something they're happy about. The smile is then genuine and result of truly being happy about (whatever the thought is).

 

[birdbonkers84]

Dunno about the skin tone, didn't think I upped the saturation at all and certainly didn't touch the tint or temp sliders.

How did you set the white balance in the first place?

Joe

I have a feeling it was on auto.


Sent from my iPhone using ThePhotoForum.com mobile app

Then you probably should have touched the temp and tint sliders. Better yet just measure the WB with a reference card. You mentioned using Adobe RAW so I assume you have raw files. Auto WB is a "best guess." Take the guess work out of it and snap a photo of a WB reference either before or after you take the photos.

Auto WB will return varying degrees of success or failure depending on the subject. Here's an especially egregious example of a fail with a very difficult (for the auto WB algorithm) subject.

View attachment 135468

I leave my camera set to auto WB as well, but that little piece of Styrofoam (cut from food tray) in the inset above is in my camera bag at all times. I take the photos I want to take and when I'm finished I just grab a snap of the Styrofoam in the same light as the subject. Processing the raw files I take a WB reading off the Styrofoam and transfer those temp/tint values to my photos. It's simple. It doesn't interfere with your taking the photos. You get accurate WB to start.

Joe

So i looked over my RAW file in LR and it seems I had the contrast up way too high, which was probably causing discolouring in her skin tone, using your example as a reference I've tried to match it in LR. Lowering the contrast back to normal levels and using the auto WB option made a massive difference.

 

[birdbonkers84]

Hopefully the skin tone is better? Also removed the hairs around her face.

 

[chuasam]

Hopefully the skin tone is better? Also removed the hairs around her face.

Not fond of photos where you see too much sclera. Have her look straight ahead rather than peek into the corners.

 

[mmaria]

well your settings were probably wrong because you don't understand them ... you need to understand dof and posing, recomposing... just practice and see what happens

OP said he was going for the eyes as a focal point and your immediate assumption is that any miss is the result ignorance?

it's not "immediate assumption" because I looked carefully at his images and came to conclusion that he doesn't have enough knowledge to understand the settings he had in camera, I would never use the word "ignorance"
If he had understanding of all settings in the camera he wouldn't make those concrete mistakes and even when he makes those kind of mistakes he wouldn't need to ask about what's wrong, he would knew

Maybe.
Or maybe his camera/lens combination needs to be fine tuned. Appears to me his rig might be back-focusing a tad.

nice of you to think like that

Maybe he's right that his shutter speed was too slow (couldn't find any EXIF).

which confirms that he doesn't understand settings he used


@Coull3d you don't need to buy anything before you get to know your camera. The only correct way of shooting is YOUR way! You'll figure out what's your way after certain experience.
Shoot in S, A or M mode to get to know why, how, what for and then choose what fits to you.
Listen to photographers whose work you like or admire, don't get caught too much in technical stuff. Get to know technical stuff and rules and then play with it the way you want to. Photography is art, not a science. True emotion captured is better than any technical-sterile image.
That's the way I look at things... You need to figure out what you think

eta: You have a lovely model and she seems like she doesn't mind to be in front of your camera... keep shooting and practicing