p.1 #1 · First head shot (C&C + black&white help!)
my wife needs a new head shot for her community theater auditions. so i rented a 50mm 1.8 lens from tempe camera (they didn't have the 85mm in stock and my other lens starts at f3.5)
light: cloudy afternoon coming in through unbleached muslin blinds
here is one of the better shots, but i'm having a ton of trouble turning it into black and white. this one was done by decomposing into RGB and mixing some of the green (50%ish - i use the gimp) into the red channel (tossed the blue channel):
i would love to hear some thoughts on how to make the b&w pop more (but without highlighting her freckles! that's a demand of the model....)
thanks
henri
* please feel free to edit and repost the pics
Nikon D70, 50mm f1.8
Sep 24, 2005 at 04:38 PM
heartseye Offline • • [X]
p.1 #2 · First head shot (C&C + black&white help!)
Hi....easiest thing is to just re-shoot it. It cannot be adequately saved as you have done it. It isn't sharp.....it isn't in focus.....I'll e-mail you an edited version.....but it doesn't cut it. Bob
p.1 #3 · First head shot (C&C + black&white help!)
I would reshoot it, and shoot in portrait mode, rather than landscape mode!
One of my favorite ways to convert to B&W for portraits is: Change mode to LAB. Select L channel, convert to grayscale. Duplicate background layer, change blending mode to soft light. Then, play with the opacity of the top layer until you see the effect you like!
p.1 #4 · First head shot (C&C + black&white help!)
thanks for the feedback. i can and will reshoot.
reshoot questions:
is the light ok?
should i shoot against a darker background?
Bob:
you can see the full sized pic here: full sized pic this is a rented lens, so i have very little experiance with it. i took that pic at f2.2 to get a bit more leeway with regards to fucus (and at 1/80, to hide any shake, captured in raw mode). looks to me like focus caught the middle of the nose, rather than her left eye.
advice on how to get a sharper shot?
Tione:
i'll take the next one in portrait mode, problem with the 50mm is that i can't get close enough for her to fill up the frame without distorting (forhead looks big etc) so i figured since i'm going to crop anyways....
will mess with the LAB method.
thanks!
henri
Sep 24, 2005 at 09:28 PM
heartseye Offline • • [X]
p.1 #5 · First head shot (C&C + black&white help!)
ok, Henri......the lens needs a smaller aperture....say f/8 or so to get the depth of field. To get a reasonable shutter speed you simply have to add more light to the set up......maybe shoot it open shade outdoors and you should be able to go 400 iso with out quality loss. This ought to be a workable combination for you. Oh...I would not bother to shoot RAW....no advantage in this case that I can see...cheers,...Bob
p.1 #6 · First head shot (C&C + black&white help!)
Although a reshoot would be best - here's my take on the B&W conversion. I used Greg Gorman's approach (found on his site in the learning area). It's a "chocolate brown" look. I also added a vignette and a center brightening. BTW, I think the square crop works for this image - there's a nice diagonal flow from lower left to upper right IMO.
p.1 #10 · First head shot (C&C + black&white help!)
Joe, your rendition, including the square crop is perfect, and the eyes are now plenty sharp. What did you do there, add some selective USM? No reshoot necessary. Henri should dupe your retouch exactly, and it will be fine... as is the subject!
Converted with the channel mixer in photoshop, 60% red, 60% green, -12% blue.
Started by duplicating the background layer, applying a 30% USM with a radius of 90 to increase contrast a bit, setting the layer opacity to around 20-30% and merging down.Then I smoothed over some freckles just a little with a new layer with a mild gaussian blur, which had a mask applied so that only a few areas on the cheeks were softened. Sharpening applied to the layer beneath the blur layer, then adjusted with a curve as below, which was applied as an adjustment layer at 30% opacity. http://www.users.on.net/~timfischer/curve.jpg
