Bev Sampson
New member
Stuart, you have pointed out some things that I was not aware of. I am a serious amateur and not a pro. So I appreciate your knowledge.
""1. I believe that there is some blue in the man's shirt. WB on the white of the eye seems to give the best overall colour. WB on the lady's top makes the pale green background of the St. Patrick's plaque too yellow. The top looks blue in parts because of reflection from the shirt.""
I must admit that I have never been very successful using the WB pointer. I had never thought to use the white of the eye. Thank you.
""3. The ugly part of the picture is the reflection on the lady's forehead and chin. Nothing I can do gets rid of it completely.""
This really helped. Being an amateur, I could not figure out why there was so much shine. My shooting technique (or lack of it) was the culprit. I had a stofen omnibounce on the flash with the flash position in the normal 90 degree angle. The shine was caused by that setup. If bouncing from the ceiling or nearby wall is not feasible, I am wondering if my small Lumiquest Big Bounce softbox mounted on the flash would have been better. The Omnibounce was on to help spread the light later during the dancing. I did manually remove some of the shine in PS. See photo above in response to Don.
""4. Sharpening doesn't do any favours to the skin texture, but I applied Focus Magic with a radius of 1 just to help with the softness introduced by downsampling.""
This looks very nice. I personally am not a fan of deep taning. But that is my preference and I always try to make my photos as close to real life as possible, understanding that those that have deep tans personally like the look.
In this rec. hall, there is never enough room to set up an umbrella or larger softbox. I do not like to be too conspicuous so I use just the camera with IS lens and whatever deflector will mount on the flash.
Thank you again and if you have any more comments, I will appreciate reading them. Bev
""1. I believe that there is some blue in the man's shirt. WB on the white of the eye seems to give the best overall colour. WB on the lady's top makes the pale green background of the St. Patrick's plaque too yellow. The top looks blue in parts because of reflection from the shirt.""
I must admit that I have never been very successful using the WB pointer. I had never thought to use the white of the eye. Thank you.
""3. The ugly part of the picture is the reflection on the lady's forehead and chin. Nothing I can do gets rid of it completely.""
This really helped. Being an amateur, I could not figure out why there was so much shine. My shooting technique (or lack of it) was the culprit. I had a stofen omnibounce on the flash with the flash position in the normal 90 degree angle. The shine was caused by that setup. If bouncing from the ceiling or nearby wall is not feasible, I am wondering if my small Lumiquest Big Bounce softbox mounted on the flash would have been better. The Omnibounce was on to help spread the light later during the dancing. I did manually remove some of the shine in PS. See photo above in response to Don.
""4. Sharpening doesn't do any favours to the skin texture, but I applied Focus Magic with a radius of 1 just to help with the softness introduced by downsampling.""
This looks very nice. I personally am not a fan of deep taning. But that is my preference and I always try to make my photos as close to real life as possible, understanding that those that have deep tans personally like the look.
In this rec. hall, there is never enough room to set up an umbrella or larger softbox. I do not like to be too conspicuous so I use just the camera with IS lens and whatever deflector will mount on the flash.
Thank you again and if you have any more comments, I will appreciate reading them. Bev