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Hi all,

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a few examples from the MYER fashion show (compliments of Wendell). Here are a few more examples.

The whole gallery can be found here: http://agitlits.m6.net/NikonD70/myer.asp.







C&C are welcome as always.

Alex

hi alex

these two are really good, just need to work on your white balance and your technique to maximize sharpness and your set

the fire - sexy


a great pose, just a few highlight and colour balance issues


Hope you know that that myer show was the most publicised Australian fashion show and it was considered as an extravaganza in the media it kicked David Jone's efforts 10 fold
I guess the rivallry between melbourne and Sydney will never stop
Sydney Got David Jones Melbourne got Myer

with these images in your portfolio it will get you so much credbability to shoot the next big one, aim high go for Mercedes Australian Fashion Week Melbourne in September

Great stuff Alex. I don't mind the colour balance issue as much as it has that 60s or 70s feel to it. Keep it up and keep adding to the folio

I think his white balance is absolutely fine.

Good work Alex.

If anything, the exposure on these looks to be a little bit under to me. The first image, for instance, looks to me to be about 1 or 1.5 stops underdone.

And on the second image that Wendell has posted, the PP looks to me to be way overdone, with far too much contrast on the model's face. Alex, what does that orignal image look like? Is that how it was shot, or was that harshness introduced during your PP?

for reference have a look at the results from the official photographer

http://www.six6photography.com.au/Fashi ... 20show.htm

Nnnnsic's edit: I really prefer it if people don't delete a comment people have posted or responded to. It lessens the context of a conversation. No offense to you Wendell, but I feel this comment is necessary for the comments below.

Wendell

wendellt wrote:for reference have a look at the results from the official photographer

Why would I want to do that?

We're looking at Alex's work, and it should - and it does - stand on its own merits.

Alex is asking for critiques of his work, not comparisons between his work and the work of others.

wendellt wrote:for reference have a look at the results from the official photographer

Mmm... I always love horribly executed Photoshop generated website.

It should have a disclaimer that to view this site properly, you need a T1 line.

hi Gary

didn't mean to de-merrit alex's work
my apologies

just thought you may want to the see lighting in the other shots

Thanks a lot for your comments, guys. It means a lot to me. I certainly have issues with WB (I have little feel for it) and I'm learning PPing. Gary, I did some curve steepening in LAB on that image, hence the over contrast. I am at work now and will reply more fully (with the original image before pping) from home tonight.

All shots were done with 80-200 f4.5-5.6

Cheers
Alex

FIRE!!!! FIRE!!!! I'm on my way!!!

oh... back to reality....

Well done alex... some great fashion shots... only comment would be the white sneaker type shoes seem to be a little overexposed...


cheers

wendellt wrote:hi Gary

didn't mean to de-merrit alex's work
my apologies

just thought you may want to the see lighting in the other shots

No problem at all, in fact thanks for the reference

Alex

Hey Alex, how did you get into the event in the first place? Were you hired or tagged along? or just bought a ticket and set up your gear?

cheers

nice work

locopano wrote:Hey Alex, how did you get into the event in the first place? Were you hired or tagged along? or just bought a ticket and set up your gear?

cheers

nice work

he got media acredited, these sort of events you have to get acreditation and prove that your shots will be published somewhere,best ot work for a fashion mag, then you get invited to all these events to shoot

Cool, will look into it more.
Cheers

Ok, just got home.

Wendell: Thanks. I wonder whether the sharpness issue is:

- my Sony choice of USM settings
- Bad focusing skills
- lens quality
or combination of all of these.

I vary my USM settings from image to image and I do bicubic sharper thingy when I 'save for web' my images that go on the website.

Not sure I have a good feel for white balance.

Wayne: Thanks, mate.

Nnnsic: Thanks, Leigh. I'm not sure what WB should actually look like in these, but your comment made me even more complacent

Gary: I didn't know they were that underexposed. I'll have to watch out for that. Thanks for too much PPing warning. I tend to do it sometimes. Here is an original you wanted to see, would love to know what you think about my pping.



Mark: LOL thanks!

Locopano: see Wendell's reply. Sometimes there are shows that open to public for photos, but rare. One such show was at Chaddy a week or so ago (I will post photos from there soon).

Thanks
Alex

hi alex

the clarity of your pictures are good considering the low light nature of the shows
to improve a few suggestions
1. refine yourt focusing technique for shooting in low light
2. try out single servo mode focus
3. get a monopod
4. use the flash even though this destroys the mood and natural lighting it can make your shot sharper
5. try to use a prime lens often when you use zooms even on a monopod and your zooming in and out to take a shot some of the movement is carried through when you zoom and handle the lens to when you take the shot and this causes blur, primes liek the 85mm you can just point keep the camera relatively still and shoot
6. use a higher shutterspeed inversely increase ISO to compensate

regarding white balance don't mind it is warm because it's stylish, but in soem cases the red cast interferes with the natural tones in the face in soem pics it looks just too red, if you can change white balance in the camera in Kelvins
try experimenting with the settings and in the next show they usually allow for a lighting test with a person standing on the runway with a white card, learn how to manually set white balance

another way is to go to a fashion store display window which is usually lit with halogen lights(warm) do a couple of test shots of the manequins tweak the white balance till you get a shot your happy with commit those settings to memory

Thanks for the pointers, Wendell. Luckily NC has an easy WB correction (for NEFs). It is much easier if there is something white in the shot as I can measure that and adjust the WB accordingly.

Alex

Alex wrote:Thanks for the pointers, Wendell. Luckily NC has an easy WB correction (for NEFs). It is much easier if there is something white in the shot as I can measure that and adjust the WB accordingly.

Alex

or you can just shoot at 2800kelvin when the lgiht is reddish

Alex, some great stuff there. Well done under what I suggest would be difficult conditions

wendellt wrote:

Alex wrote:Thanks for the pointers, Wendell. Luckily NC has an easy WB correction (for NEFs). It is much easier if there is something white in the shot as I can measure that and adjust the WB accordingly.

Alex

or you can just shoot at 2800kelvin when the lgiht is reddish

And to what degree of reddish, precisely, would this all-encompassing advice apply to?

I think a far better approach would be to assess the color of the light that ewas used, and then determine what the correct corrective value should be, rather than simply suggesting one value.

That said, certainly having a baseline starting point is a good idea, but for that, one could simply just cycle through the various wb options in NC, and select the one that, to the photographer, looks best.

Which may, or may not, be the correct one for the lighting encountered.

Of course, that only applies where wb correction is required, but to me that is not the case in these images.

Exposure ? That's a whole different ball of wax, and Alex, in looking at the un-pp'd image that you posted, I'm seeing a fair degree of under exposure again, as I noted for the other image. This is looking a lot like a print from a thin negative would look. Was there haze about as you shot the image? If not, then exposure issues would be the primary concern.

Can you, in NC, start your PP by moving your exposure slider to adjust this aspect, and then play with your curves a little, moving the lower left hand corner towards the right, to the base of where the bell curve actually starts?

Alex wrote:Thanks for the pointers, Wendell. Luckily NC has an easy WB correction (for NEFs). It is much easier if there is something white in the shot as I can measure that and adjust the WB accordingly.

Be careful if you're adopting this approach, as some things that look to be white in an image might not be good sources for this. For instance, a white shirt generally might be ok, but a white light should not be used.

Gary, this is what I do in NC with WB (when I think it's off). I cycle through values until it looks ok. In-camera, I use AUTO -2 setting.

As for exposure, it's a totally different thing as you said. There was a bit of haze also due to smoke used on stage. This I battled in LAB by steepening Lightness curve. As for this particular image, I'm concerned about the face of the model which shows too much flash. Whilst I agree that the rest of the model is underexposed, shifting exposure slider to the right will blow out her face completely. I'm probably missing something here though.

Alex

gstark wrote:

Alex wrote:Thanks for the pointers, Wendell. Luckily NC has an easy WB correction (for NEFs). It is much easier if there is something white in the shot as I can measure that and adjust the WB accordingly.

Be careful if you're adopting this approach, as some things that look to be white in an image might not be good sources for this. For instance, a white shirt generally might be ok, but a white light should not be used.

Thanks, Gary. Yes, I've learnt it quite fast where I stuffed up white point completely on something that I thought was pure white but it wasn't. Glad there is 'undo' button in PS.
Alex

Alex wrote:Gary, this is what I do in NC with WB (when I think it's off). I cycle through values until it looks ok. In-camera, I use AUTO -2 setting.

I prefer to stay well away from the auto settings, but it really doesn't matter too much because you're shooting raw anyway.

As for exposure, it's a totally different thing as you said. There was a bit of haze also due to smoke used on stage. This I battled in LAB by steepening Lightness curve. As for this particular image, I'm concerned about the face of the model which shows too much flash. Whilst I agree that the rest of the model is underexposed, shifting exposure slider to the right will blow out her face completely. I'm probably missing something here though.

Ok ...

You may need to get a bit tricky here then.

The real issue to deal with, as I see it, is the exposure. Unless and until you have that aspect tright, the rest of the work that you might want to do is moot. IOW, unless and until the exposure problems are addressed, all bets are off.

So let's work with this, but make two copies of the image.

Set up one with the face correctly exposed, and set up the other with the rest of the image correctly exposed. Save each version as a separate file out of NC, and then move to PS, where you should start with the major part of the image correctly exposed.

Open the other image and then copy it into a secondary layer overlaying the first, and then mask out the rest of the image, leaving just the correctly exposed face.

Playtime!

it should also be noted that black clothes are very hard to photograph especially if the main spot if quite bright sometimes you expose correctly for the brightest part the face but the clothes being black look under exposed, you can live with a shot where the face is exposed correctly and the clothes underexposed and do what gary says mask the clotes in post processign and lighten up or you can overexpose the shot to get the clothes it just depends on how much time you have in your case you can play around but someof the pros who have to turn image saround fast just overexpose it's good enough for them

forget about my white balance comments in this sort of show the overall tone suits the context of the show hot and sexy

i just menat in that show there would have been a light test before it and all of the photogrpahers would of set their white balance accordingly
Also alex you told me there was a brief to the photogrpahers by the lighting director before the show hence there was opportunity to work out your settings at that time.

gstark wrote:

Alex wrote:Gary, this is what I do in NC with WB (when I think it's off). I cycle through values until it looks ok. In-camera, I use AUTO -2 setting.

I prefer to stay well away from the auto settings, but it really doesn't matter too much because you're shooting raw anyway.

As for exposure, it's a totally different thing as you said. There was a bit of haze also due to smoke used on stage. This I battled in LAB by steepening Lightness curve. As for this particular image, I'm concerned about the face of the model which shows too much flash. Whilst I agree that the rest of the model is underexposed, shifting exposure slider to the right will blow out her face completely. I'm probably missing something here though.

Ok ...

You may need to get a bit tricky here then.

The real issue to deal with, as I see it, is the exposure. Unless and until you have that aspect tright, the rest of the work that you might want to do is moot. IOW, unless and until the exposure problems are addressed, all bets are off.

So let's work with this, but make two copies of the image.

Set up one with the face correctly exposed, and set up the other with the rest of the image correctly exposed. Save each version as a separate file out of NC, and then move to PS, where you should start with the major part of the image correctly exposed.

Open the other image and then copy it into a secondary layer overlaying the first, and then mask out the rest of the image, leaving just the correctly exposed face.

Playtime!

Thanks a lot Gary. It's an interesting approach. I think I did something similar before using layer blending options in PS. I'll give that a go.

Cheers
Alex

wendellt wrote:it should also be noted that black clothes are very hard to photograph especially if the main spot if quite bright sometimes you expose correctly for the brightest part the face but the clothes being black look under exposed, you can live with a shot where the face is exposed correctly and the clothes underexposed and do what gary says mask the clotes in post processign and lighten up or you can overexpose the shot to get the clothes it just depends on how much time you have in your case you can play around but someof the pros who have to turn image saround fast just overexpose it's good enough for them

forget about my white balance comments in this sort of show the overall tone suits the context of the show hot and sexy

i just menat in that show there would have been a light test before it and all of the photogrpahers would of set their white balance accordingly
Also alex you told me there was a brief to the photogrpahers by the lighting director before the show hence there was opportunity to work out your settings at that time.

Yes, Wendell, there was a brief about what is going to happen during the show, but no light test AFAIK, may be I missed it when I was outside shooting arrivals.

Cheers
Alex