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this is a shot i made for a friend of mine who was in a desperate need for a portrait so i decided to help him.

i tooked another 2 friends to help me (one with his office where we improvised some sort of studio, and another with a 250W lamp!)

this is my favourite shot, although i was in a desperate need for a third source light for the shadows in the background, wich "ruined" my shot. it would have been perfect. so, this is the shot:



the EXIF:

Picture
Make: Canon
Model: Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XTi
Shutter Speed: 1/100 second
F Number: F/5.0
Focal Length: 41 mm
ISO Speed: 100
Date Picture Taken: Feb 13, 2008, 11:22:50 PM

post-processing: unsharp mask, color saturation and curves on lightness for a better contrast. tweaked the white balance too for better color rendition.

i had just 2 source lights, a 250W lamp and the built-in flash unit!

any critique is higly encouraged!

thanks,
Vlad

Hi Vlad

For some reason I see soft spots on some parts of the face. It is not really a problem but maybe you could improve that. Maybe is the lens, by the way, what lens are you using?

As you say, this is a very high quality photo if you take care of shadows.

Cheers

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Carlos - Caracas Venezuela
EOS 40D
Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 XR Di II LD/50mm f1.8II
my flickr

Hi,

Unfortunately it was the kit lens 18-55 mk II. I couldn't get sharper results no matter what i used, auto or manual focus.

Thanks for you appreciations,
Vlad

Hi Vlad I like it - technically, the only thing I'd try to avoid are the shadows behind him, maybe by adjusting the lights or positioning him further from the background... but it's still a great shot.

Was he happy with it?

Hi, nice shot.

I've seen a videotutorial (actually a serie of videos) on youtube about model photography. And that guy mentioned something about trying to make a "triangle shadow" on one side of the face so it doesnt become "flat" due to the massive amout of light from a flash.

With gordons approval i can link the tutorial in this thread.
It was quite good actually.

/K

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Canon EOS 40D - Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM - Canon EF 50/1,8 II - Canon EF 70-200/4L IS USM - Speedlite 430 EX - Lowerpro Nova 4 AW
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Yep, feel free to link - I just discourage links to sites which block us!

Ok Gordon, thanks.
(Are there sites that really blocks cameralabs?)

This is the tutorial i was thinking about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T1g0Zhaitg

Now... this tutorial is produced by a company, and they have a serie of tutorials with this guy. They are really good, and i get the feeling that he knows what he's talking about.

Click this link and you get the serie:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_q ... ertvillage

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Canon EOS 40D - Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM - Canon EF 50/1,8 II - Canon EF 70-200/4L IS USM - Speedlite 430 EX - Lowerpro Nova 4 AW
My Flickr

Hi all,

I love the way his face is lit up.. but the thing is that I couldn't put him further the background and I didn't have a third light to position it behind him so I would no longer have the shadows in the back. So it came out like that . He was very pleased with the picture .

Thanks for the tutorials, they are pretty good. I've seen some portrait lighting tutorial on YouTube, but no these ones.

Thanks for the replies,
Vlad

i saw that tooo, and about getting a nice background and whot not


Coming to the photo, its quite nice but as the guys have mentioned the problem is the shadow in the back, i was shooting a portrait photo of one of my co-workers yesterday and i had to turn all the lights in our store on her, placed a bunch of white plastic for reflection on the floor so it would refelect upwards. But i did end up with the shadow in the back because she was too close to the background, quite the bummer

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