I took my New Sony A7r III out today and did my first portrait session with it, I like that camera. The Zeiss Milvus 1.4/85 was used on these unless otherwise noted.
Thanks Charles...
Well these were all at f/1.4 as I was using the viewfinder zoom feature to manually focus. Wanted to see how well I could do. So naturally the lashes will be out of focus due to the shallow depth of field. As long as the eyeball is in focus, I’m happy.
Thanks for the comments.
charles.K wrote:
Great shots Todd Shot #4 is excellent. Congrats on the new A7rIII...
The first shot could be straightened along the post line and remove the blank space left as it draws your eye away.
Shots #1,2 and 3 the eye seems sharp but eyelashes do not so it "appears" unsharp.
Todd, love what you are doing. great use of light and oof bg bokeh. Going to have to say what I've always felt when viewing your images. May help or may not.
as shown by you, the eyes are rarely sharp. This set have one or two. Eyelashes.... number 1 and 2 not even close. I recall a past post from you on the theory that a shoulder, is in line with the eyes, etc... this is not working.
There have been past comments on front focussing. Doesn't seem to have changed. Politely saying you are clearly mastering light and model rapport but every image I see i will expect to see you off the critical focus.
Beautiful model. Nice variation of expressions especially in her smiles (from broad to no smile at all). I especially like #4. Her nicely angled head works very well. In terms of sharpness, I have two thoughts. If the eyes and eyelashes both cannot be in focus at f 1.4 stop down. Blur in front of and so close to your ideal point of focus can be distracting. And, two, in the third pic, the clearest, sharpest area is her hair about an inch to the right and slightly above her left eye. Might be on the same plane of focus as her eye. I do love the pose with her having both wild and tamed hair. I think her hair, overall, is very well styled with the only fly aways being the intentional ones in #3. So often I see portraits where the model's hair just did not get enough attention.
I have a 35, 85 and 100 Zeiss for my Nikon d850. Stunning images. They don't call it Zeiss pop for nothing. Shooting at f/4, 5.6 has a pop without shallow dof.
Shot #4 is excellent. Congrats on the new A7rIII...