Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Overpowering the sun, a look into my free-time.

Hey Hey Hey! I do hope that ya'll be well!

Ok, so I set myself up as a bit of a flash guru way back in my first post, guru is way too strong a word, as I'm very much still learning the ropes of how the whole flash thing works. So today I present to you quick video on my 2 light outdoor setup, as well as the resultant pic, along with a before/after look at my processing. Not to mentional all the tiny little mundane details that alot of people forget about.

Ok, first things first, the video:



Good yeah?

Like the pic at the end?

Yeah, me too.

If you didn't catch all the gear in the video, or can't see the video, here's my light setup:


Ok, so that was a pretty quick and dirty look into my light setup, now onto the processing, followed by the results!

Not too shabby eh? And now to explain my Post procedure:
- Import into Lightroom
- General preset - Punch
- Pulled the clarity right down to -14 (this makes the image look softer, very very effective for females)
- Increased the black clipping upto 8
- Sharpening (+50)
- Noise REduction (+46)
- Vignette (-100)
- Exported to *.tif, and into my favourite Image editing program (just to remove a few stray leaves from a nearby tree)
- Imported back into Lightroom
- Sharpening (+50)
- Noise Reduction (+50)
- Clarity down to -19
- Upped the Blue saturation (+33)
- Pulled the Blue Luminance down (-31)
- Upped the Vibrance to +55
- Pulled the Saturation down to -29

And now for the Final Result...(click through the photo to see a higher-res image)



J.P.

5 comments:

  1. It's nice that you share your setups and workflow Josh. It gives me (us), begginers, lot's of food for thoughts and experiments. Thanks!

    Very nice final result! She looks like a doll!

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  2. I have to ask two things:
    1) What's that freaky sideways lightstand mount thing you've got for your 580EXII?

    2) Take this not as a criticism, but as a chance to learn.
    Doing the Guide Number maths for a 580EXII:
    GN@50mm=42
    GN@105mm=58
    Now they were both at 1/4 power, so that means
    50mm=>10.5
    105mm=>14.5m

    At f/14
    50mm=>0.75
    105mm=>1.04

    Now, from the video, the close strobe looks like it's about (conservatively) 2m away, and the back one, about 4m away, so you'd probably be a bit over 1 stop under 'correct' exposure with the front flash, and up to 2 stops under with the back flash.

    So from that, you're not really 'overpowering' the sun :)

    Now that's out of the way, I really would have liked to see a no-flash comparison, to see how much ambient was on the subject, to see how much the flashes added.

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  3. @ SS Buchanan
    You make an excellent point, and a good reminder for me in include a "before" photo where there is no actual flash being used, to give a real comparison of what is actually being achieved. As for over powering the sun, you're completely correct. It was more that I overpowered the shadow.

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  4. Nice post Josh, I love the home made clamps, I made some too, as u know, we should do a quick video on them.

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  5. I think I'll have to make a sideways mount for mine, as well... I've got a pretty ghetto system that I'm not really a fan of. And I'm happy to see you're using CyberSyncs! I love them.

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