Just for fun

[Rita]

I don't normally take pictures of people but I was at a local mall this afternoon having coffee with some friends. Sitting near us was a mother & son. We were getting such a bang out of watching the little boy eat his noodles that I brought out the camera. I just quickly set it on auto and started clicking. The pics have been cropped to eliminate an unwanted chair back and a pop bottle.

His mother did give me permission to use the pics.

Any feedback is appreciated

1.


2.


3.


4.

[travis4567]

Great stuff Rita. Perfect example of why we should have a camera with us at all times.

[Andrew76]

Hey Rita, I think you got some pretty good candid shots there! Focus is a little soft on a few of them, but something to watch for may be your white balance. I think they have a green tinge to them.... May just be my monitor though.

[Loose Canon]

Hi Rita!

Do you think its possible that there might be a color cast on these? Looks like the usual challenging indoor native lighting problems.

And what if I suggested that a couple might be a little soft? If the eyes are critical in a “people” shot then a solution would be to focus on the eyes and recompose while holding focus.

[Loose Canon]

Oops!

Look like i was gabbing at the same time Andrew was giving useful advice!

Sorry.

[Rita]

Hi Andrew & Terry, thank you for your feedback. I totally agree with both of you. The lighting was a challenge, between the lights in the mall and a christmas tree almost next to the child with blinking lights on it. The white balance I just had on auto, I should have thought to change it but the thought came to late. As for the soft focus on some of them I focused on his eyes to start with and put the camera on the table so I wasn't right in his face with the camera, I didn't take into consideration that he would move as much as he did....a good learning experience for me

[Rita]

I will try and remove the colour cast in PP

[Pappadi]

Nice candids.
A little pp is always good. (I make it worse though, sometimes.)

[IzzieK]

I once had a photographic event at one of the stores in the mall once and nothing came out really well...in fact those photographs made me feel so unwanted in that area that I stopped taking photos of anything at all since -- a full year. The mixed lightings on malls are terrible.

Your candid shots are good. I love the expressions on the boy's face. This will be a good example of a side by side or a 4 sided dipstych (telling a story via photography). No, I am not going to critique your works, others had already done that...

[Shadowman]

Rita,

What settings/camera did you use?

[Rita]

Hi John, I was using on Olympyus EM-5 (MFT). I just quickly put the camera on auto and started clicking. Checked the metadata for you and the settings the camera chose were ISO 1600, f4.8, & SS 1/25. If I were setting the camera I would have used a faster SS but in the moment I thought
that auto would be the quickest setup to go with.

[Shadowman]

Hi John, I was using on Olympyus EM-5 (MFT). I just quickly put the camera on auto and started clicking. Checked the metadata for you and the settings the camera chose were ISO 1600, f4.8, & SS 1/25. If I were setting the camera I would have used a faster SS but in the moment I thought
that auto would be the quickest setup to go with.

One thing I've found about the AUTO setting is that it works best when the camera is on a tripod. Even when shooting sports, whether in AUTO or Sports mode, the camera always chooses a shutter speed slower than I want.

[Rita]

Thanks John, this is very helpful. I am slowly learning how all of this works

[ajohnw]

I wonder if the slight softness is down to digital zoom - 2x.but maybe the exif is coming up incorrectly. I haven't used that on the EM-5 but did on an E-P3. Results were a bit soft but would process ok.

I recently obtained the correct ICC file for the camera. Colour balance and tonality are better than what I used before.. It seems to be the same one as Adobe use so you should be using it already.

Having used Pen's I'm intending to sort out a myset for best camera jpg's at higher iso's in situations like this. The raw file will still have more in it but the quality of the jpg's can be rather surprising at times and in need of little work..Don't ask what settings as I will need to find out. I suspect in Pen terms a higher ISO range than normal, hard sharpening? and auto noise as a start.

John
-

[Rita]

John, thanks for the feedback. Now a question, what do you mean by the ICC file, I'm not sure what it is?

[ajohnw]

Some of this is difficult for me but hopefully a CS user will jump in.

It's used to obtain the correct colours when an image is converted from raw. It's a profile and corrects the colours the camera records. That varies from model to model etc.. I run Linux applications so it's a bit difficult for me to say much else. Under windows / mac they might even be called something else.

If you look in the raw conversion section of your software I would suspect you should see the camera name somewhere in it. In the software I use it's in a drop down list that includes no profile, colour matrix and now I have added it the EM-5. Alternately it may be in a colour management section and be referred to as an input profile.

I would hope Adobe select the correct one automatically but it can't if you don't have it. One thing I am fairly sure of (I hope) is that googling adobe dng update will list their latest camera profiles for the version of adobe raw you are using.

John
-

[IzzieK]

I have Photoshop CS5 Extended open at moment so I can pitch in a little bit...

When you open an image, whether RAW or JPG, it will open the Camera Raw plug-in. On the right side of the window, icons are Basic, Tone Curve, Detail, HSl/Greyscale, Split Toning...the fifth icon is Lens Correction. Choose your Lens Profile by choosing the camera you have...go from there..

Some of this is difficult for me but hopefully a CS user will jump in.

It's used to obtain the correct colours when an image is converted from raw. It's a profile and corrects the colours the camera records. That varies from model to model etc.. I run Linux applications so it's a bit difficult for me to say much else. Under windows / mac they might even be called something else.

If you look in the raw conversion section of your software I would suspect you should see the camera name somewhere in it. In the software I use it's in a drop down list that includes no profile, colour matrix and now I have added it the EM-5. Alternately it may be in a colour management section and be referred to as an input profile.

I would hope Adobe select the correct one automatically but it can't if you don't have it. One thing I am fairly sure of (I hope) is that googling adobe dng update will list their latest camera profiles for the version of adobe raw you are using.

John
-