Toronto Photography Meetup Group

Some random chic we picked up on the street

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/potatoeye/4123996152/" title="Yorkville christmas girl by Scapevision, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2567/4123996152_94a13fa96e_o.jpg" width="533" height="800" alt="Yorkville christmas girl"></a>

Camera: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi
Exposure: 0.025 sec (1/40)
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 100 mm
ISO Speed: 800 !!!

Damn that 100L macro IS does magic

WANT!

This is the 3rd guy I've seen that uses a 200mm 2.0 and wears a brown leather jacket this week.

We had fun, and some funny moments with the strangers. lol

That's Pierre..

WOW, I love dmitri's shot of the teen. There's so much class in it

Not sure if anyone is interested in my "No Strobe Photos" but here it is:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/auduongc/sets/72157622851952852/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ileto/sets ... 852154430/ here my shot of it. No flash too, except for the 2 shots of Cindy.

That's so funny as she had no class whatsoever.

its the irony haha

Oh I don't know.... the kids are alright. She was just young. Of course at my age, everyone's looking awfully young these days.

I'll be putting my images up tonight or tomorrow. Meanwhile, since the two ladies signed my model release, and were pretty game for all of us to shoot them, I thought I'd post their e-mail addy's in case anyone felt generous enough to send them some images. I'm sure they'll be happy if you do. I will be sending them full rez images converted to sRGB compressed to jpg 10. If you do that, at about 2-3 Mb each, send no more than 3 at a time.

The Lady in question is "DJ Solo" at kma.2amakaara@hotmail.com
The more petite lady was Halimo at halimo_salat@hotmail.com

I'm actually stuck on Halimo`s images and what to do about her complexion.

Anyway, thanks to all for a good time - especially Mike our organizer, and antioxident, our marketing and PR specialist. That Lighting the Tree production really helped our cause. However, I still can't believe we let those blue Santa's helpers walk by, and I missed that gorgeous blond lady with her handsome boyfriend on at least three occasions. Still, it's amazing to see how friendly perfect strangers can be. It renews my faith in people.

And now that I'm in a chatty mood, a word about that lousy auto-focus assist light that didn't work. For Nikon shooters with cameras similar to my D300, I did not select my center auto-focus point. The center point is the only one that activates the on-board light or the SB-800. The other method is to use the auto-AF feature that uses face recognition software. I doubt that would have worked with those black back-lit faces we were trying to focus on. I`ll be ready for pitch dark AF next time.

Sounds like you guys had a good time. I'll have to join you for the next one!!

You can use your center point and use the AF-Lock function then recompose your shot. This is particularly useful when shooting in the dark with static (posed) people. It gives you the benefit of the AF assist light and the freedom of any focus point that you want, you're not even restricted to the camera's focus points!.

Ouch... hopefully she doesn't sign up and see this.

Well, yes, I'm going to have to focus and re-compose using the ONLY focus point that works to trigger the AF assist light. The center one.

This is less than ideal for me because I always shoot with a lens hood on. The on-board focus assist light is rather close to the lens on the right side. The hood causes a shadow for the center point, but not the focus point two to the right. If I could have only one focus point to work with the assist light, I would want that right-sided one only.

I'm glad to hear people enjoyed themselves. In hindsight I wished the event was better run, especially for people who had no flash/triggers. At events where we had dedicated models, we'd end up passing the triggers around, but last night, it would not have been fair to expect the strangers to stop for more than a couple of photographers at a time.

Next time, we should have more distinct stations set up, and spread out so we don't end up stealing each others' models.

Reimar: I hear you on the focus difficulty with the low light. It was so dark that even MF was hard. Would it be ok to focus-recompose, especially at the distances that you were shooting at? There'll be a distance difference causing out-of-focus.

Seren Dipity: Yes, come to the next one. We need your AB head and its modelling lamp!

Where would you all like to shoot next?

Ideas? Suggestions?

Let's make this happen again?

Distillery?

likely problem I can see with shooting at the Distillery is that it may be quite sparsely visited. Still, it might be worth a try.

I think we should go shoot real soon, before the snow arrives. Oh; but after my replacement umbrella/modifier arrives.

You need a permit to set up lights at the distillery. It should be free if you convince them that it isn't a commercial event

Focus lock and re-composing should not have a large impact on focus accuracy even at f2.8 unless your lens has a LOT of field curvature.
The solution is to use center focus point and remove the lens hood (a pain) or put on another SB-800 as the master flash to get above the lens hood (a pain). Of course, no pain, no gain.

I just got through most of my images. DJ solo's images were easy. For Halimo I had to work harder. Here's an example:



The rest are here: http://www.pbase.com/reimar/yorkville
I also stuck in a blurry one of Santa's helpers walking by - sigh.

It's not fair

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/potatoeye/4129865534/" title="Yorkville street find by Scapevision, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2758/4129865534_5920630c55_o.jpg" width="533" height="800" alt="Yorkville street find"></a>

After some major retouch

Thanks Mike.

My process is simple, although in this case it takes some time to do. It'll probably take as long to explain as to finish an image. Here goes:

- After optimizing and converting from RAW, import to CS3.
- duplicate layer (Ctrl-J).
- Use the spot healing brush (J), and the smallest size (use [] to control) to remove as many zits as possible. You can click quite quickly here - use two hands. Use the clone tool for any troublesome border areas (like ear piercing marks).
- Create a new transparent layer (click icon at bottom of layer palette).
- Set the brush at 25% opacity at a relatively large soft size. The idea is to use this like a large powder puff. Don't worry about dust getting everywhere - we'll clean that up later.
- Repeatedly sample the underlying color (use the Alt key) and brush a bit. Sample some more and brush this color on a large area with that color. Don't sample highlights - just sample the nearby skin color.
- This will even out color, mute shiney skin and soften the face. We want soft but not too soft.
- Since we used a large brush, we got powder on the eyes, eyebrows, lips etc. We're going to erase that by adding a mask and painting black at 100% over these areas.
- We're going to add some grain to this softening layer. I added noise (Filter - Add Noise - 5%, uniform, mono)
- Reduce opacity of this layer to 80% to let some more shine and skin texture come through.
- Flatten.

I find this approach far superior to any blurring solutions. It looks smooth but natural. You can't see that in my posted images, but the full rez looks very natural.

Good luck

I see it a little too orange-like here maybe overboard with saturation a little?

Perhaps. Halimo had quite dark skin and she's standing beside the tree with red lights. High contrast and saturated colors is my style. This tends to work well for stock.
On my calibrated monitor, I would want more contrast in your shot of Halimo (nice picture by the way). For a night shot it seems too milky for me. I would dial in more punch. But hey, that's just me. It's all good.

yeah, I just went a little more fashion than night street I am just starting in portraiture though. For her skin though, I'd selectively desaturate the orange a bit, in fact that's what i did for the DJ, is she a real DJ?

Thank you very much Reimar. Your technique certainly is very effective.

Here's my take 2 for Halimo:

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mike-tan/4130158152/" title="IMG_2651-take2 by mike.tan, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2697/4130158152_9958b6902e_o.jpg" width="1024" height="683" alt="IMG_2651-take2"></a>

Now I can see why graphic artists can get RSI.

the care photographers put into their products is just awing. now i just have to apply this technique to all of my personal photos