Ryan, from what I have seen, you do seem to like the glow in lenses, so maybe 35 Cron/Lux pre asph may be a good choice, if the price is right The 35 Summarit, is an excellent lens too, but may not have enough personality for you!
Here is an interesting link to getting pleasing skin tones. I have personally have struggled with this on the M9, but I feel I am now getting a much better feel for this for now anyway Skin Tones
That's pretty much the technique I developed over the years. The challenge with digital though is that it has a tendency to make skin tones look more blotchy than how it looks to the eye. The solution is hue shifts to red and yellow values. Shift red to add some yellow and shift yellow to add some red so the two offset. If doing this in Photoshop using the hue sliders, then do a Fade>Hue afterwards to retain accurate luminosity while still affecting the hue.
What they didn't touch on (unless I missed it), was that it helps a lot to set a white balance that renders accurate neutral tones, such as near whites without colour shifts. If your neutrals are off, then everything is off.
And, these tips are for caucasian skin. As we discussed months ago, my impression is that many Asian cultures prefer pinkish skin tones, so it's all relative.
One big issue I have with Lightroom is that the color picker readout is in RGB percentages rather than RGB values. Back when I started using Canon's DPP, which gives only RGB values, I had to learn RGB that equates to the CMYK I was familiar with... Now with LR it's another different set of numbers. I guess the percentages would be the inverse of the corresponding CMY values, but that means doing some mental math each time..
Nice shot and pp Edward. If this was in Boston, I would have borrowed it clear the snow-pile on my driveway and yard. Snow here and I guess elsewhere else has been crazy this winter
Joe, I'm not sure it could make the 2400 mile trip to you
On the skin tones, it's difficult for me. I get the white and black people adjustments - but I am having a hell of a hard time getting the correct tones on my Dutch Indo girlfriend, moreso under artificial light.
I'll have to dig around for asian people skin tone tutorials I guess.
Well, I've finally gone and done it, listed my 75 Lux over on l-camera-forum I love this lens, but I just don't use it, and it will help pay for the 200/2VR. Seeing your 75 Lux photos here, Charles, hasn't made the decision any easier.
carstenw wrote:
Well, I've finally gone and done it, listed my 75 Lux over on l-camera-forum I love this lens, but I just don't use it, and it will help pay for the 200/2VR. Seeing your 75 Lux photos here, Charles, hasn't made the decision any easier.
Seriously if you have a very good copy of the 75 Lux, the lens is extraordinary and so unique that sets it apart from the look that you get from the DSLR's. I would imagine Carsten your lens would be a gem! The 200/2VR is a great lens too!
carstenw wrote:
Well, I've finally gone and done it, listed my 75 Lux over on l-camera-forum I love this lens, but I just don't use it, and it will help pay for the 200/2VR. Seeing your 75 Lux photos here, Charles, hasn't made the decision any easier.
I just got my used Leica summicron M 50 2.0 to go with my M9, anyone got any tips for me on using it? I tend to shoot wide open
Phil
shot of my co-worker, this is not me!
Congrats on the lens. Can't find anything bad to say about this lens, which ever version you have. I like the rendering of this Double Gauss design. A classic!
carstenw wrote:
Well, I've finally gone and done it, listed my 75 Lux over on l-camera-forum I love this lens, but I just don't use it, and it will help pay for the 200/2VR. Seeing your 75 Lux photos here, Charles, hasn't made the decision any easier.
The 75 Lux for the 200/2 VR? That's the equivalent of selling a Jaguar E-type to fund the purchase of a monster truck..
I must say that you have quite an unconventional photo equipment trajectory. Usually people start off with cheap zoom lenses, move on to better canonikon zooms then canonikon primes then to native alt lenses (like Zeiss ZE/ZF) then to adapted alt lenses and finally to alt systems (like Leica-M). You seem to be going in the opposite direction!
Don't take me wrong, the Nikon 200/2 VR is a very good lens, but it's a very mainstream lens. Probably a third or so of portraits you find in regular fashion magazines have been shot by Canon or Nikon 200/2. It's also a bread-and-butter lens of portrait and wedding photographers as their clients typically like their portraits to look like everyone else's portraits. So although the rendering is really good - excellent sharpness, world class bokeh etc - it's also very conventional.
Nothing wrong with that, just unusual for this forum where people tend to move away from the mainstream lenses and develop a much more demanding taste when it comes to the selection of lenses. Typically that selection becomes more esoteric and specific over time (i.e "the Xenotar 234.4/1.5 has such a lovely sharpness-to-blur transition at focus distances of 2.5-3 meters at f/5.6").
IMO I think the 35FL is better suited with the M8.
I love this lens, but I just don't use it, and it will help pay for the 200/2VR. Seeing your 75 Lux photos here, Charles, hasn't made the decision any easier.