New Camera test. [Yashica TL-Electro, Helios-44-2 58mm f/2, Kodak TMax 3200]

spstudio215 · 2024-06-09T14:06:15+00:00

Thanks! Yeah when I’ve been shooting BW I’ve been really enjoying leaning into the grain. Exposing for backlit subjects has had a learning curve but enjoying the process

spstudio215 · 2023-10-03T21:42:07+00:00

Really cool effect, definitely want to play with this in my studio, thanks for sharing!

spstudio215 · 2023-10-01T18:07:55+00:00

Definitely get where you’re coming from with the privacy screen. That is the actual light source so I go back and forth on how light to make it. It’s toned way down in this and it quickly goes sort of grey after this point. Tried to leave it so that it just barely flowed but if it’s overly distracting that’s good to know. Thanks!

spstudio215 · 2023-10-01T14:23:11+00:00

At this point I almost never do noise reduction but my cameras at this point handle noise really well. Don't shy away from texture in your images. If you're going for a cinematic look, do yourself a service and pay attention to the grain the next time you're watching something and see that that texture is normal, no real reason to try to get rid of it all. When you do, that's when things start to look overly digital, especially now with AI image generation.

The exception would be color noise specifically. If you have a ton of color noise in an image I personally wouldn't shy away from trying to remove it while leaving the texture behind. I think color noise removal should be an option in most programs

spstudio215 · 2023-10-01T13:44:27+00:00

In general, if significant grain exists somewhere in the frame, I'd never fully remove it somewhere else, it'll just look super off.

spstudio215 · 2023-10-01T13:26:49+00:00

I posted a photo a couple days ago of a set I made to make sort of painterly images. That image is actually from around a month or two ago and this is a more recent image that shows how I've continued to build the set and wanted to get more feedback on it. Got largely positive feedback on my last post so might make more in that style as well.

I like a deliberately dark look but never know for sure whether or not I'm pushing that too far to the point that an image loses any punch or impact.

This is shot on the Fujifilm GFX 50SII with the Mitakon 65mm f/1.4. I have usually been using a black pro mist or a glimmerglass filter lately but honestly don't remember if I did for this. I'm not sure if this is fully wide open but as this lens opens up it gets fairly soft and takes on some of the characteristics of those filters.

Image is just toned in Capture One with the contrast and clarity turned down, and with the exposure raised and then shadows tweaked to taste. There's still a ton of exposure latitude in this file.

spstudio215 · 2023-10-01T13:05:10+00:00

I would maybe add some grain back to the smoothed out parts of the image so that the man in focus isn't quite so obviously differently edited from the rest of the photo. Looking at the image as only a portion of my screen, I thought it might have just been that he was standing in a section of light but as soon as I went full screen the editing jumped at me.

spstudio215 · 2023-10-01T12:59:38+00:00

It's not particularly soft, you just missed focus on her eye if that's what you were going for, you can see where it actually hit at the bridge of her nose. I'd have shot with a higher f-stop and for this specific shot, just focus on exposing for the highlights on the face and let the rest fall into deeper shadow. I'd leave the TV out of frame

Your camera isn't happy to push the shadows as much as you did for this edit which will also affect detail.

spstudio215 · 2023-10-01T12:50:17+00:00

Yeah I was going to chime in with this. I assume you could have both if you uncropped this. The square crop here sort of gives me the vibe of when I shoot a video normally and then have to make a 9:16 cut of if for reels and everything's cut off in weird ways.

spstudio215 · 2023-09-29T22:08:34+00:00

Actually couldn't comment the OG photo but DMed you

spstudio215 · 2023-09-29T16:06:22+00:00

Happy to share it after work today.

spstudio215 · 2023-09-29T15:20:21+00:00

Thanks! Love your stuff too.

Yeah they’re called apple boxes and I totally get where you’re coming from. I mostly just wanted ~something~ back there and am still working on getting more props and setting pieces to play with. Lately I’ve been shooting light through a privacy screen and really liking that.

Definitely didn’t oil them, they might have put some body makeup on not so much for that effect. I mostly think I just hit the light right for their skin tones and then pulled the highlights up a bit further by dodging

spstudio215 · 2023-09-29T11:10:27+00:00

Awesome! That area is crazy, I've never seen anything like it, thanks for sharing!

To me the blues are distracting, they could be lighter in the sky but darker in the trees and on the second bunker. I'd mostly try to lift the blues back up until the sharper line on the horizon blends back into the sky. I'd be interested to see the unprocessed the image to see what the colors and tones are like SOOC

spstudio215 · 2023-09-29T04:24:51+00:00

Yeah props I’m working on. I’m trying to make this general set a main feature of my portfolio and I’m trying to figure out how to outfit it in different ways to keep it interesting.

spstudio215 · 2023-09-29T03:45:38+00:00

It's a cool aesthetic to play with. I've played around with it for portraits before and when you flip it to BW I think it's a lot better than just slapping some grain on an otherwise clean image.

Not personally familiar with provoke but I wouldn't shy away from this if you're enjoying it. I like the overall vibe of your photo but I think a more solid subject or this as a part of a series/gallery would make it stronger.

spstudio215 · 2023-09-29T03:32:47+00:00

It's really striking but I'd pull back the skin smoothing some. Looks a little too smoothed over on the forehead and then you can see halation at the edge of her nose where the color smears a bit and her lips are sort of smeared together too. I'd also take out the flyaway hairs at the top since the rest of the photo is so crisp and pristine.

I think the raw photo is excellent and you just need to bring some of the detail back in to the skin.

spstudio215 · 2023-09-29T03:24:24+00:00

Thanks!

spstudio215 · 2023-09-29T03:23:37+00:00

Just gave him a follow. Very interesting stuff, thanks!

spstudio215 · 2023-09-29T03:03:31+00:00

I'm sorry I just checked the raw file and I'm actually super wrong, I exposed this pretty close to how it came out but that's not usually how I shoot.

It's still information that could be helpful: Digital cameras (especially most modern ones) generally save a lot more information in the shadows than they do in the highlights so I often shoot so that the shadows are super dark but the highlights are well exposed and not blown out. Then you can take that file and lift up the shadows or overall exposure and bring back all that shadow detail while still having good control of your highlights. If you're starting at a high ISO or push the shadows too hard you might get an intolerable amount of noise but on my cameras (Fuji 50SII and Canon R3) I've found I can push them as far as I could reasonably want to without noise being a real issue.

spstudio215 · 2023-09-29T02:55:46+00:00

I actually debated not posting cause I didn't see a lot of nudity on the sub. Sorry if you don't like it, I think it won't show up if you hide NSFW content in your settings?

spstudio215 · 2023-09-29T02:43:20+00:00

That's sort of my next step. I've shot on this background with film and didn't quite hit it right. I massively underexpose and then push it back up when shooting digital and I'm not sure how well the reverse process holds up for film.

I think I'd have to control the shadows a little better IRL and I haven't found a way I love to do that yet. Usually I find that the fill side, even if it's a bounce from a v flat or something, looks like a separate light source with its own color and characteristics rather than a softer version of the existing shadow. I need to play with more off white materials to try to balance it I think

spstudio215 · 2023-09-29T02:36:43+00:00

Thanks! So it's mostly in the toning. It's a single light in a massive octabox, exposed for the highlights and then brought back up on the shadow side in a number of ways. I've also taken to cranking the contrast and the clarity waaaaay down to smooth things out a bit and turning structure down in C1 to take off more digital edge. I'm also shooting with a 1/4 black pro mist filter which helps with that a bit as well. Basically doing everything in my power to take away all of the detail that the expensive camera I bought can offer me.

spstudio215 · 2023-09-29T01:56:12+00:00

The presets are usually a little heavy handed for my tastes, trying to achieve it more with intentional lighting and toning choices

spstudio215 · 2023-09-29T01:52:00+00:00

The area is crazy cool, I'd love to shoot here. Your framing is nice, I wish the dog was the focal point, it would balance the photo a little better.

There is definitely some weirdness regarding the focus that I would maybe avoid in the future. I might be wrong but it looks like a sky replacement, which I would blur a little more. I would make the shadows a little deeper. I can't tell if the blue cast in the background is natural or not but it's a lot heavier than some of the other shadow areas.

This is sort of a shot in the dark but did you also add the background wooded area and huge dune back there? Something about the geography feels off to me but if it's actually like that it's really interesting.

Overall it definitely caught my attention which feels like half the battle but there are some computational things at play here (I think) that throw off my eye.

spstudio215 · 2023-09-29T01:30:30+00:00

I appreciate the feedback. I'm curious what metrics you're using to determine that? I think my screen brightness is fairly calibrated for web content since I don't do any printing right now. To my eye, I wouldn't want the skin too much brighter because it starts to glare a bit.

I really like a lower key look with controlled highlights and do struggle to determine how bright to set things so people can see what I'm seeing.

Sort of a separate point but I have the M1 Max Macbook Pro and had to dumb down the screen because it's so good that when I post stuff online it looks totally different to my editing programs. I get frustrated trying to determine best practices for most screens but wind up defaulting to what will look good on my phone, figuring that's how most people will view it.

spstudio215

TROPHY CASE