Washed Out - Need your help

[mgmoore7]

I would appreciate your opinion and help.

I have put on two pictures. The 1st one that is unedited is washed out on the whole picture and the second is edited and there is a noticable difference.

I would like to figure out what is causing the washout of the complete picture.

Nikon D70
50mm at 3.5 and 125 shutter
Auto White Balance
1 Flash off to the right and up at about 45 degrees bounced off umbrella
1 Flash on ground pointed away from subject into a few white boards and a umbrella to provide some light on the neck and under the eyes as well as fill.
Soft FX 3 filter
Center weighted exposure

[CLKunst]

Losing your filter (it looks like a soft which encourages light to bleed out) and using a flash white balance I think would improve it significantly. Also since the baby has a white shirt on that is adding to your reflected light. With that many lights and umbrellas I would set either the flash or the camera to a -0.5 under exposure.

[gahspidy]

Very nice picture. I'm not experienced at all with this type of portrait /studio photography, but it looks to me that the soft filter is removing some contrast and giving the appearance of a fading washed out look. Also, images that come straight out of the camera usually require a bit of editing as they lack strong contrast and saturation. I think, though that the filter is the big "culprit" here. For me, I seem to like the softness of the first image and the fact that you had to do a bit of editing to get the pop your looking for does not seem to me like there is any problem here. Good work

[dbutler]

Also check your settings on the D70. You can control the amount of sharpness and vividness. May be set to something less than what you want.

[mgmoore7]

Thanks for the input. The concensus seems that the filter may be causing this. I am going to have to do some testing.