First B&W Nikon D-70 Portrait

Hi all:
This is my son's best friend. I have been trying to develop a nice glamour portrait look for the female portraits I normally shoot. What do you think of the look? Any suggestions about B&W conversion, look or feel. I am kind of going for a stylized, flattering feel. Not sure about the B&W conversion done with LAB settings in PS.

No curves or plug-ins yet, I am trying to learn what I can get out of the camera alone without too many post tricks.

Nikon D-70
Built-in iTTL fill flash -1 EV
Nikon 18-70 kit lens

Your input is appreciated.

Dan

This place has changed software since I last posted about a year ago. How do you upload images now? I supposedly uploaded the file, it shows in the post but then it doesn't show up. Bleahh! I hat non-intuitive forum software!

Dan

Great. I didn't change anything, now the image shows up. Jeez!

Dan

If I were going to pick on itty bitty things, I guess I would try to tone down his arm on the left. It seems too hot. And maybe fixing it so that there is more of a catch light in his eyes. Lastly, the lighting. His nose is highlighted while the rest of his face is in shadow,

Don't get me wrong: The picture is precious and I think you did a great job (My conversions still come out pretty flat). I do like the tones, and I like the way the light hits his hair. Just offered what little I could think of that might make it a little better.

Great portrait.
Great choice with the black and white too.
Your compostion work, but I think it would have been a little better had you shown more of his body and less above.
Welcome to PR.com.
I hope to see a lot more from you and that you learn all that you can!
Brian

I agree with another about the lighting. The face looks flatly lit, would have been nice to see a bit of light in the eyes abd face. But you have a real nice portrait here that you and the childs parents should be proud of. Good job.

Did you soften the background with Photoshop? That's something I really have a problem with. It just never looks right to me. Use the longest focal length you have and open up the aperture all the way. That's the only way to get good background blur. Anything else just looks weird.

i dont know if it takes all thatto blur the background, i have a bunch of pics the background is blurry and i didnt do anything but focuse on what im focusing on

Quote:

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Originally Posted by blphoto

Hi all:
This is my son's best friend. I have been trying to develop a nice glamour portrait look for the female portraits I normally shoot. What do you think of the look? Any suggestions about B&W conversion, look or feel. I am kind of going for a stylized, flattering feel. Not sure about the B&W conversion done with LAB settings in PS.

No curves or plug-ins yet, I am trying to learn what I can get out of the camera alone without too many post tricks.

Nikon D-70
Built-in iTTL fill flash -1 EV
Nikon 18-70 kit lens

Your input is appreciated.

Dan

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I like this shot, it captures an innocent moment.

I like it a lot.

Congrats on your D70. It's encouraging to see such nice quality exposures from yourself and others with Nikon's newest toy. The meter is obviously pretty good / comparable to some of their high end film cameras.

I just now took the plunge and ordered one a few minutes ago. Should be here next Tuesday or Wednesday if I'm lucky; then I can finally start posting some shots in here. I worry I may be about a week too late for Chicago springtime shots though. Hopefully no heavy rains between now and then to knock all the blossoms off the trees....

I like his pose and the contrast looks good. Kind of looks to me like it's maybe a vertical shot though. And I do see what Photo John is talking about. If you shot it close with a wide aperture (for shallow depth of field) then the background would get more out of focus with distance. Here, the door behind him is about the same amount out of the DOF as the upper left part of the shot, several feet away.