Hi guys, I took a photo of car show model, Dannie Riel, at the Sport Compact Nights in Vancouver. I shot it with my Canon Elan 7 and Canon 70-200mm f2.8 using Fuji Superia 800 ISO film, and scanned using Nikon Coolscan III. Thanks.

Welcome to the site!

That's got to be a tough environment to shoot a good portrait in. It seems to me you have two choices - either minimize the background as much as possible, or embrace the environment. You kind of fall in the middle here. There's some clutter in the left, behind the model, I can't see enough of her legs, and the background is a bit messy. I think I would have shot tighter, leaving out her legs and focusing on her upper body only. She's got a great face and a great smile and they'll make a pretty photo on their own.

If you wanted to go the other way, you could have used a wide angle to capture the crowd that I'm sure was shooting along with you. I think that would have been the more interesting photo. Maybe even shooting from behind. I have a photo like that from a mountain bike event. I think it's very amusing.

Technically this is nice. Ignoring the cluttered background, I like the depth-of-field. The exposure is a bit light. Although you could probably improve that with the scan or file setup. And there's a bit of a green color cast either from flourescent lights or the scan. That's easily fixed, too.

Overall, it's a pleasing photo. My main impression is that you were trying to do something that's not really possible in that type of environment, though. It's not the right place to try to get a real portrait.

Hope that's useful to you.

Welcome to the site!

That's got to be a tough environment to shoot a good portrait in. It seems to me you have two choices - either minimize the background as much as possible, or embrace the environment. You kind of fall in the middle here. There's some clutter in the left, behind the model, I can't see enough of her legs, and the background is a bit messy. I think I would have shot tighter, leaving out her legs and focusing on her upper body only. She's got a great face and a great smile and they'll make a pretty photo on their own.


Thanks for the welcome. That makes a lot of sense - I think I was shoot at f4 for that particular image, I was shooting at f2.8 most of the time and I think I was worried with all my movement that the focussing wasn't too precise and I did have a lot of clearly improperly focussed images.


If you wanted to go the other way, you could have used a wide angle to capture the crowd that I'm sure was shooting along with you. I think that would have been the more interesting photo. Maybe even shooting from behind. I have a photo like that from a mountain bike event. I think it's very amusing.


I like this idea ... I know a lot of photographers contort their bodies in all kinds of amusing positions sometimes and especially at this type of show where the ladies are scantily clad, I have seen all kinds of amusing positions with the photographers on the occasions where I didn't think I could fight through the crowd for a good shot and I just stood back and watched. I have never taken a shot of them though during those times but I will now, now that you mentioned it!


Technically this is nice. Ignoring the cluttered background, I like the depth-of-field. The exposure is a bit light. Although you could probably improve that with the scan or file setup. And there's a bit of a green color cast either from flourescent lights or the scan. That's easily fixed, too.


That's the one thing - I am a total klutz with imaging software (I can program a computer, but god help me, I can't be an "end-user" for some reason LOL). Actually I was surprised that I didn't screw up the image quality when I resized it.


Overall, it's a pleasing photo. My main impression is that you were trying to do something that's not really possible in that type of environment, though. It's not the right place to try to get a real portrait.

Hope that's useful to you.

Thanks, that was helpful!