Photography Thailand Forum

[Marc Schultz]

Something I shot for fun today in the studio this afternoon. Shot was taken using only one studio strobe with a soft box mounted on a boom from above. Background was a piece of black glass with a bit of water sprayed on it. Comments are welcome please.

[David Salmanowitz]

Nice shot Mark. I think the crackled plastic of the glass really adds to the shot, especially next to the water droplets on the sheet of black glass.

[Marc Schultz]

Thank you for your nice feedback David. Incidentally, the glass is actually fully made of glass, no plastic on it at all. It just has that cracked look. Not sure how they made it though. It seems quite strong as I have had it for many years and it hasn't broken despite the fact that it looks cracked already. I am attaching one more picture from the shoot which helps to give a better visual understanding of what I was shooting.

[Sophie Elliott]

i much prefer the second image, but both are pretty awsome 

[Marc Schultz]

Thank you Sophie. Hope my comments on your camera purchase are helpful.

[canon]

Hi Marc,

Really like your shots there and I agree the second gives a much better perspective of what the scene is about.
Great saturations and sharpness and the details of the water drops is very superior.

Can you tell more about the settings and what sort of lens you used here? I am aware your camera's is in a
different catagory than my 350D but perhaps it will help me also to understand more about the lens problem
I have and still contemplating to fix (when I win the lottery that is...) Did you post produce this image in PS
albeit just alittle?

Cheers.

[Marc Schultz]

Thank you for your good comments. The first one is intended to be somewhat abstract and the second one obviously to show more of the setting in a more traditional type composition.

I used the 24-105mm L F/4 Canon lens for this shot, which is what I use to shoot about 85-90% of my work.

You might want to look for a good second hand 28-70mm L lens or a second hand 28-135mm IS Lens if your budget is tight. The 28-70mm should give you the same clarity, colors, and detail as what you see here and a good second hand one should be less than half the price of a new 24-105mm lens. The 28-135mm IS lens second hand should be even less than that and image quality will be nearly the same. With second hand lenses though you have to be very very careful about buying one that does not have any hazing from dried humidity or fungus growing inside the lens elements. If you are buying a lens second hand best to have someone look at it for you who knows about these issues to advise you before you buy it and make sure you don't get stuck with a lemon or possibly one that has been dropped either on the ground or in water.

The 350D has the same imaging sensor as say the 20D and the new 30D, and the same DIGIC 2 processor, so the camera's capabilites are quite good and with the right lens you will probbaly be happier with the level of sharpness of your images.

There really was no serious post production on these images to speak of. I shot in RAW and processed the images with Adobe Camera RAW. Then, once I bring the image into Photoshop, a few minor levels, color balance, contrast and saturation adjustments are applied to almost all of my images as needed. Then, when I downsize for web purposes, I add the Unsharp Mask filter to sharpen the image as the last step of my digital workflow.

Basically all digital images need to be sharpened, whether shot with a digital camera or scanned from film. Sharpening filters identify edges and then increase the contrast between neighboring pixels along the edges. It does this by darkening the pixels on the darker side of the edge and lightening the pixels on the lighter side. The result is a more sharply defined looking edge and so the image looks sharper, clearer, and more in focus.

Photoshop Menu String: Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask

Within the Unsharp Mask dialogue box an Amount ranging between 70 to 120 is usually enough for most images except for some landscape images with a lot of detail where you might like a bit more than 120. Set the Radius to .6 and the Threshold to 0. These are standard settings for on-screen usage and the Amount of sharpening will need to be set according to how much sharpening each image itself requires.

Hope this helps and looking forward to seeing more of your work posted here.

[canon]

Many thks for your detailed explanation and guidance to my lens problem. I definately will have to have a look at
those lenses. I usually down scale in fireworks with a quality of 80 pct for web based images. The distortion is hardly
noticable and it usually gives a smaller sized file. As for the usharpend mask I occasionally find I need a radius setting
of around 2 px to get the image clear enough.  I'm off to Singapore within the next week and yes will try post some
more work here for sure.

 

[agitlits]

Very nice shot, Marc.

Just wanted to ask you. If I wanted to set up a small home studio and wanted to start with a single strobe, what brand and power would you recommend? How do you trigger strobes with a cord from your camera?
Thanks
Alex

[Marc Schultz]

Thank you Alex. There are so many brands out there and they all have their pluses and minuses. I use mainly Elinchrome lighting equipment. 600W/S is enough for portrait work and you can trigger the flash using a sync cable which normally comes with the strobe or you can buy a wireless trigger, either infrared or radio frequency. Hope that helps.

[agitlits]

Thank you Alex. There are so many brands out there and they all have their pluses and minuses. I use mainly Elinchrome lighting equipment. 600W/S is enough for portrait work and you can trigger the flash using a sync cable which normally comes with the strobe or you can buy a wireless trigger, either infrared or radio frequency. Hope that helps.

Yep, sure helps, Marc.

Thank you
Alex