Friday, January 9, 2009

January 9th - The New Do



So today it was my turn to wonder all day what I would shoot. Not much going on, other than I finally got a very long overdue, very much needed haircut. Being that the light outside was kinda warm when I got home I thought I'd try a self-portrait again. But by the time I got things set-up, the clouds killed all the nice light so I had to improvise. I put an orange filter over my Vivitar 285HV, set at 1/4 power, about 4 ft from subject (me) camera-left. About 2 ft away camera right and 2 feet above, I had a softbox with the Canon 430EZ also at 1/4 power. 1/40 sec. f/13, iso 200

Here's my setup, shot from reverse angle:

7 comments:

  1. I like how you balanced the lighting with the sky - great.

    It's hard to do self-portraits isn't it? Never mind that you need something to focus on, how about holding what you think is a good expression while you wait for the self-timer?

    Did you shoot this in RAW (NEF)? If so, play with white-balance a little, maybe trying tungsten which is where a 1/4 cto would be close to. My monitor is nowhere near being color corrected, but you look a little jaundiced ;)

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  2. Lighting was nice on subject and the ambient background was well lit as well. Nice mug and looks like a great 4 dollar hair cut as well, 2 dollars more than I pay.

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  3. Jaundiced... yeah I know.. did you see my email about color quality on Picasa? Several of my pics on here have been "processed" by Picasa and they don't look as good as my originals. There's no jaundice on them. What up with that? And what is "cto"? And boy I wish this cut only cost $4!

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  4. It's a nice cut. $400 Senator?

    A CTO is a gel that you'd put over your flash that brings the color temp close to tungsten. It stands for "Color Temp Orange" or something like that. I've got a sample kit of gels you can have next time we meet.

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  5. I know that the colors are off when posting photos if I have been shooting in Adobe RGB rather than sRGB (My camera offers a configuration choice). WHat color space are you using? Have you tried a tool other than Picassa?

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  6. Hmmmm maybe that's it. I've been using Adobe RGB. I'll try sRGB and see what happens... Thanks!

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  7. Wow good tip; sRGB is closer to the original after I post - Thanks!

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