My First Portraits

Nero

Senior Member
Showed a couple of friends of mine a few of our local waterfalls and managed to get these portraits of them. I have almost no experience with portraits so I'm really happy with how these turned out.

What do you guys think?
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Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
What do you guys think?
Both shots were significantly underexposed but I like the compositions.

While there's not a lot of headroom to pull up the Shadow regions, a certain amount can be done...
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Your Original:
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Q & D Processing:
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spb_stan

Senior Member
Nice poses and girl but way underexposed and too small a file to do much good in post processing. If you could post high res versions or better, the raw NEF files a lot could be done with them. Eyes, particularly the nearest eye is the key feature of any face image and we evolved to be very sensitive to eyes. If the eyes are sharp and detailed, the rest of the image can be greatly softened but our impression is of a very sharp image if the eyes are sharp because that is most of what our brains are looking for.
So pay attention to getting at least one eye sharp, both if they are looking at the viewer. You can make sure of good exposure even when against a background that is bright, by using spot metering on a middle level part of the face.
I played for a couple minutes with this and there was little in data to work with with such tiny files, but added a bit of smoothing to the skin where noise was adding roughness from the small fie size, and added a little color to the lips so there would be some color since none was visible in the eyes. I increased gain in post, and smoothed the busy background and cropped one of them. It is more flattering to have limbs or torso leaving the frame either narrowing or the same width because the viewer's brain fills in the missing information about size and proportion so if a body or limb is cut off by the framing, try to have the limb or body cropped at a point where it is tapering to less width. It really changes the impression of weight or bulk. The side view image is flattering because it appears slimmer because the shoulder is separated from the mass of her upper torso. The lower image gives the impression of the same girl being really bulky, more so than in person because with our binocular 3d vision can detect depth. With a camera being 2D, we as photographers have to give visual cues to the viewer about depth which if given those cues, we get the impression of slimmer proportions like we seen naturally with two eyes on a horizontal plane. That is one reason we pose subjects, to bend limbs and joints and use lights to create separation. Moving the limbs away from the torso and flexing, even if very slightly, gives additional cuing for the brain to understand in a 2d image, what they would normally see in a 3d image.
Please post the setting for the camera so we can make suggestions. Or before doing another set, let us know so we can suggest ways of getting what you and your model are seeking.
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test2.jpg
PS...the roughness of her skin in these photos is due to very few pixels defining the image in tiny JPGs, every time they are saved or edited so 1/2 the data is lost by compression. That is why you really should always shoot in RAW format and edit and render new JPGs as first generation JPGs from the original RAW file. Copy and resizing even a large detailed JPG a number of times and it loses so much data that it becomes useless. Only shoot JPG only when the file is only going to be edited and saved once. Making any change to a copy, means rendering and compressing again, which tosses out a great deal of data each time.
 
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Nero

Senior Member
I did shoot in RAW, and post-processed in Lightroom from the original RAW file. That's always how I do it.

When converting to JPEG I set it so the longest edge is 1000 pixels long. Maybe I should set it a bit higher.

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Nero

Senior Member
I can fix some of the issues you got brought up, but I definitely wish the images were a bit sharper. I need more practice. Haha

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Blade Canyon

Senior Member
I did shoot in RAW, and post-processed in Lightroom from the original RAW file. That's always how I do it.

When converting to JPEG I set it so the longest edge is 1000 pixels long. Maybe I should set it a bit higher.

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Post a link to the RAW files and watch some of these Nikonites work their magic.

Yeah, the website says to make it 1000 pixels wide, but I always make it bigger and haven't had any problems. 1000 pixels seems too small in these days of high speed internet and big monitors.
 

hark

Administrator
Staff member
Super Mod
Contributor
The forum will downsize anything larger than a certain amount anyway. If you could upload a NEF to Dropbox, it would allow others to try their hand at processing it.
 

spb_stan

Senior Member
Sorry, I assumed the file source was jpg because of how much was lost due to compression. The1000 pixel longest side is not as much a problem as the fact that the files is compressed again and reduced to 667 pixels by the website. So a tiny fraction of the original data was still available to work with. If you can post a link to the raw version we can see more of the potential of the images.
Yes, they are not sharp but the only thing our perception cares about is the eyes, using single point AF on the nearest eye with enough shutter speed to freeze camera and subject shake or small enough aperture to assure enough depth of field.
One tip on using Single point is in static AF mode so the flash AF assist light comes on which gives an infrared patterned light on the focus point that really helps the AF system get sharp focus when the eyes are in shadows. For some reason the second image I posted appears washed out when in my Photoshop it looks normal.
What camera, lens, aperture, iso, focal length and distance to background for the second photo? If you want blurred background you don't need a wide open fast lens, which makes sharp eyes harder to capture. The distance from subject to background versus distance from camera to subject is the important factor. If the subject is 5 feet from the camera and the background is 15 feet from the subject, the background is going to be quite defocused even at f/4 or with a kit lens that has a widest aperture of f/3.5 shooting 1-2 steps smaller aperture where the lens is the sharpest.
Overall, they are a good start, nice model,good poses. The second one is more engaging because of the eye contact but a good portrait does not need eye contact. Needs more attention to lighting/exposure, and focusing however.
 
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