 Tara R. Swartzendruber |
summer tan When taking indoor pictures with strobes, should the skin color look exactly as I see it with my eyes? I took some pictures of my daughter and a friend, and while they both have great summer tans, they didn't look so tan on the photographs. The skin color looked pleasing (not washed out), just not true-to-life. Is this normal, or am I overexposed?
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Michael A. Bielat |
I would suggest getting yourself into doing custom white balancing before your shoots. There are great boards from MacBeth and so on where the client holds up the chart and you use that whole color scheme for the rest of the shoot for true accurate colors.
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Jerry Frazier |
Why don't you just fix the color?
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Jerry Frazier |
Why don't you just fix the color?
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Tara R. Swartzendruber |
Ok. I did custom white balance my camera before shooting. I had them hold a white paper, then I shot a pix of it (as my manual says), filling the frame with the white paper. It read as a "good" read, so I thought I was set. As far as "just fix the color" I'm not very adept at this! I would rather the color come out correct than have to mess with each photo later in photoshop (I have elements). SO.... are you saying that I SHOULD have been able to achieve the tan skin look? Other thoughts on what I did wrong?
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- Bob Cournoyer Contact Bob Cournoyer Bob Cournoyer's Gallery  |
Sorry. Picky question. You shot the white paper with the flashes firing, right? Bob
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Alan N. Marcus |
It might come as a surprise, but photography is not an especially high fidelity medium. Photography attempts to replicate life but falls short. If we could reproduce a sunny day on chip or film and then display a true-to-life reproduction, you would need sunglasses to view the image. Films, chips, monitors, and print media are on purpose, biased towards skin tones and memory colors however exact matches are not yet, unobtainable. Consider going to the library (maybe on the web also) and reading “Color as seen and Photographed by Ralph M Evans (Kodak Research Lab). He was and remains the grand master professor of this subject. Alan Marcus (despenser of marginal technical stuff)ammarcus@earthlink.net
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Tara R. Swartzendruber |
Yes, Bob, I did shoot the white paper with the flashes firing. Good question. alas, Alan, you are so very correct. I have seen some beautiful pictures, but I often find some to fall short of what I see with the eye. However, I know some people have waited to come to my studio until their kids get their summer tans, and they are coming in the next couple weeks, and I don't want to disappoint them by giving them pictures where their kids hardly look tanned at all. I'm just trying to figure out if I can get a little closer to reality!
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- Dennis Flanagan Contact Dennis Flanagan Dennis Flanagan's Gallery |
In photoshop you can use the magic wand tool, then to go the Enhance tab. There is a correction tool for skin tones.
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Andy |
How about flash exposure compensation -1/3 or -1/2 stop?
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Tara R. Swartzendruber |
My room is smallish (15x17). I have 2 photogenic 1250 lights - 1 with an umbrella and 1 with a XL softbox. I have these are fairly low power... between 1/8 and 1/16 for the main and between 1/16 and 1/32 for the fill. I have 2 backlights (photogenic 320's) on the white background with a modifier so the light doesn't spill onto the white. These are set around 1/4 power each (any more than that and the background was too overpowering - and did seem to spill over to the subjects). I have moved my main & fill lights back some and perhaps I should move them back a bit more. (Yes, I do hear you all saying, where's your light meter?). That may need to happen yet, but it seems that if I can get my setting fairly consistent, the exposure should'nt change much. Am I wrong? Anyway, I will practice some more... I just wondered what I should be able to reasonably expect from strobe lighting.
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