studio lights I need help

[gmaschreiber]

Here are two pics that I took with strobe lights. I know walmart is not a great place to print but in my town I don't have other choices. Printed pictures look really bad. Skin tones are blotchy, background is grey instead of white. Overall picture quailty is far from professional. Anyone have some suggestions. I used a Sony A350 with a 50mm 1.8 lens on these. I actually sold that and bought a Nikon D90 with a 28-75mm F 2.8 but it is not the camera it is me. I have not been able to try the D90 with the strobes because I am waiting for a sync adapter to come. I tried just using the modeling lights and room lights just yesterday and got really poor quality prints. Third pic is D90 with modeling lights.

[Ray Dockrey]

Are you doing any post processing of these or are these straight out of the camera?

[gmaschreiber]

The only thing I have done is cropped them and removed a scab on the middle girls chin. Using Picasa. I do have Elements 7 but did not use it.

[jetrim]

This response may be a bit late, but this mainly looks like a white balance issue. Since you're using white backgrounds, the easiest thing to do is set up the strobes and do a custom white balance (it's in a submenu of White balance on the D90). It appears that you may be shooting in "auto WB" which will add color corrections based on the scene BEFORE the flash fires, and that's why the tints are all over the place.

For these photos, Elements *should* have an auto white balance correction somewhere - Photoshop, lightroom, and Paint Shop Pro do. The idea is to click on an area of the photo that's supposed to be white or gray and it will adjust the RGB to remove the color cast in the whole photo. This will go a long way toward removing any splotchiness too.

[julies]

Clarity Photos you have taken by your camera. Clarity is depends on lights. If you use a bright light while taking a snap, this might be good solution. available more lighting products like Fluorescent bulbs, LED Interior Bulb , Halogen Portable Work Light and more. You can get it right now and give the life to your photos.