Snapshot with cheap zoom lens

[Stephen Lutz]

A shot from last night at an NYE party. Two friends of mine. 10D manual mode, 1/50 of a second, f/7.1, 420EX flash, no compensation. Tokina 24-200 lens. Nothing remarkable about this shot, per se, but it shows pretty good shots are possible from cheap zooms.

I cropped it, used photoshop to take the "flash highlights" off their faces, and then very slight "smart blur" filter to flatter their complexions.

[swmdrayfan]

Nice closeup Stephen. The eyes have good sharp focus, and the colors are very good.

John

[thecynicroute]

Removing flash highlights is always a good move, though I think the smart blur's effects are a little too artificial. For blemishes I would just use the clone stamp tool. These women's skin don't look bad enough to deserve the smart blur.

[Old Timer]

Nice shot Steve. I like the pose and the lighting. Sure doesn't hurt to have attaractive subjects. It's great to see you posting regularly again. You were one of my real inspirations early on here on PR. I love the way you always were experimenting and giving us the details of what you were doing and trying. Loved you documentation of Louisville life.

[Stephen Lutz]

Hello!

Getting rid of "flash highlights" makes a world of difference in flash photography. It's simple too: select clone tool, set mode to "darken." Set opacity to about 25%. Then select an area of normal skin as the source and clone it into the flash blasted area. This will blend in the skin by "darkening" only areas lighter than the source. Any area darker than the source will be unaffected.

By doing this, the skin tones look natural, and something like hair across a face will be unaffected.

Another thing that helps flash photography is to use manual mode. Set the shutter speed a touch lower than the camera would autoselect (like 1/50 of a second) and set the aperture up to around f/5.6 or even greater. I almost always lower flash compensation a bit to, usually -2/3 of a stop. It is usually better to go a little underexposed on the flash, since you never quite know what the camera is metering on. You can always recover the hightlights in PS if it is only a bit underexposed, but overexposure is death. Details that are blown out cannot be recovered.

If I was going to print this, I wouldn't have used smart blur. It looks a bit mottled in some spots, and obviously "retouched."