Studio Portraits C&C Please

[Dominantly]

Here is the original if you want to take a stab, I would be interested to see what you would do...

Well, ya gave me a tiny compressed JPEG, but I gave it a whirl anyways.
When shooting on a white backdrop, your DOF shouldn't matter so I would have stopped down a bit on this shot.

 

[Tulsa]

Thanks. I am editing some shots that I did today, after all the advice I received from yesterday, will post up soon

 

[Tulsa]

I also decided to make the switch to RAW, messed with it in the past, but figured I need to go with it all the time. Do I need to do anything special in PP with it being raw and not JPEG? I assume save as JPEG?

 

[cyngus]

raw gives you more control over the image and should be used at all costs in my opinion..

just export out as .jpeg or .tiff and edit the shot more after it is already tweaked a bit in its .raw state..

open the raw and bump the exposure a bit.. as well as the highlights.. then export it out and play around with the jpeg or tiff

 

[Dominantly]

Yes, shoot raw.

It all depends on where you do your editing. I edit in LR3, so when I import the photos as Raw, I just get more options that are available when editing, vs a jpeg.
Nothing really special needs to be done except for converting them to JPEG prior to putting them in a gallery or printing them.

 

[Tulsa]

Thanks guys, I also see I need to get a second light to fight the shadow, from what I have found, a simple light pointed at the backdrop would do the trick? When I shot with a black backdrop, I did not have this issue.

 

[Dao]

If the light is powerful enough, I will shoot with f/5.6 to f/8 which is the sweet spot of the lens.

 

[Robin Usagani]

If the light is powerful enough, I will shoot with f/5.6 to f/8 which is the sweet spot of the lens.

That! You have a nice smooth white background. No need to go all aperture happy.

 

[Tulsa]

Ok, my buddy came over today so we could do some test shots, work on the feedback I received from you guys. Just some goofy shots, how does everything look compared to yesterday?

 

[Dominantly]

Flat and cold

 

[Tulsa]

Ouch? I could see that about the second one, but I feel the first one is getting better.

 

[Dominantly]

I mean do you see that there looks to be a haze over the photo?
I feel as thought the skin tone is missing warmth, and the contrast is lacking. You're getting there, you just need to refine it a bit. I also would have suggested starting off with a darker backdrop so you could focus on the subject more, with white you add additional effort to make it work.

 

[Tulsa]

Yeah I do, I will tweak them some, First time I overdid, so I was hesitant, will work on them. Have a black background coming, I picked this up cheap on CL.