Self portraits

[Jonathan K]

Hi there,

I desperately looked for an item to shoot, and since the wheather remains lousy, I ended up trying the A700's studio facilities on myself... (not that I like to see myself too often)

The "Satanist"






These in bigger size and some more of them in my gallery / portraits.

I have to say: The A700 is a pleasure to use... No comparison to the 7D. The remote control is fantastic to use (especially in this situation).
I will start a thread in the "A100-A700" thread, to clarify a few questions...

Thanks for looking, thanks for your comments.

Cheers Jonathan

[David Kilpatrick]

They have worked well. Did you use a mirror, or guess your alignment? They are better composed than anything I've managed. If I want a shot of myself, I have to grab wife, son or daughter to do the shooting. The 'Satanist' lighting appears to be twin rim light, as used in the famous Newman/Krupp photo:

Incomplete (cropped) repro from photo.net!

David

[Jonathan K]

Hello David,

Thanks for your reply. I found that you can "guess" the alignment pretty well by looking up the lens. When using a focal lenght between 50 and 70 with a fast lens (f2.8 in my case), you can easily detect the central AF sensor standing in front of the camera, especially when the camera is placed in front of something "light". In my case, there was a tiny bit of light getting through the curtains behind he camera setup. From there on it was guess-work. The remote control makes this so much easier!

Well, lucky you for having a wife and children being able to take photographs... Guess how many decent pictures there are of my ugly face... I took over the job of "family shooter" at the age of eleven, and from there on there are only p&s snapshots (mostly bad ones) of me... So learning to do decent self portraits is a necessity. In my job I need representative pictures of myself... and so far I have been to greedy to pay a pro.

Cheers Jonathan

[bossel]

(not that I like to see myself too often)

You should mirror your portraits and you might like them a bit more. There was a discussion going on (on dpr I think) discussing the psychological impact of mirrored photos, I found that very interesting.

[Jonathan K]

Hi bossel,

You don't have a link by chance?

Cheers Jonathan

[bossel]

You don't have a link by chance?

Have a look here:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readf ... e=29013118

[Jonathan K]

Hello bossel,

thanks for the link. I downloaded Portrait Professional trial version and took the time to play around with it... Not sure whether I want to use it. My first impression is that all the smoothing and correcting can be done in a more subtle (and more "personal" way) in Photoshop. I don't really care for the other tools, like changing the shape of face, neck, position of eyes etc etc.
Maybe it will come later, but so far I have always made it a photographic challenge to hide the less favorable elements of a face and emphasize the beauties just by choosing the correct angle, position, lighting... not always successfully I must add.
The software is probably nice for fashion magazines...

Does anybody here use it regularly? What are your feelings?

Don, thanks for posting your pictures... So why not portrait yourself?

Cheers Jonathan

[David Kilpatrick]

Portrait Professional is widely used by pros now. The studio version will process Alpha/KM raw files on Mac as well as PC. If you buy it, wait for a week or two - we will have a 10% discount code for the studio version. We already have a 10% discount code which works for the standard version 8:

MPA78

David

[Javelin]

I've used it for the few portraits I've taken (I will be doing more face type shots in the future) the thng aboutthis software is the effect can be very subtle with the manual controls. mostly I use if for smoothing out blemishes.

I wish they had this for hands to be honest. I'm not skilled enough to fix hands I took a picture of a girl from the office to show her what could be done (she's getting married soon and was going to cheap out on the photographer... she asked me I said no. she asked he uncle he said yes... I convinced her to look for a pro. but when I showed her the picture she pointed out that I needed to fix her hands right after being very pleased with he face and the pose... which is a shame she's not a bad looking girl but she has .. er... man hands :/ I said all I could do was buy her a bigger bouquet but a pro could deal with it.

[bonneville]

Bit bored being driven home yesterday so I thought I'd look back in time

[Jonathan K]

Nice.. Your hair looked good in the past!!!

Jonathan