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Taken in quite a low tech way, even though it was on digital. You can

see her smiling faintly, and his hand in her hair, just as faintly.

I'm sorry about the glass. :-)

This is rather unfortunate JPEG artifacting. I try to get a reasonable size while keeping under the 100K limit of photo.net, and sometimes it does that...

Stephen is unfortunately right on this. I like the pose, it's good, although a bit too conventional for my taste, but it's blurry.

 

What you want is a big north-side window, where you'll get lots of indirect light from the outside. With some ISO 400 B&W film, you'll get in the 1/100 and above shutter speeds that you need to get this right.

 

A reflector opposite of the window helps a lot, but since I'm lazy, I take many portraits in a room that we have that has a lightly colored wall opposite of the window that can act as a big reflector (since the room is so small!).

I have no idea whether it's the scan or something else, but this is both soft and has weird colors.

 

I played around with a *lot* of color films, both C-41 and E-6, and didn't find *anything* of interest in Kodak's line of slide films. Maybe the Kodachrome are cool, I didn't try them because of the development hassle (they're not E-6), but none of Kodak's E-6 offerings were of any interest. Maybe some of the flatter ones like EPN or EPP, for skin tones, but if you don't *require* slide film, you can do a much better job and easier with neg film as far as skin tones are concerned. In particular, Portra NC and UC (stay away from VC, more contrast, without any more saturation in exchange, a cheap artifice, get UC if you want bright colors) are very good choices if you like Kodak, Superia-Reala, NPH or NPZ (overexpose these by 1/3 of a stop, by setting the ISO to one notch lower than what it says on the box) if you like Fuji.

 

Reshoot with Sensia 100, and be amazed. I like Provia 100F and 400F a lot, but the contrast is higher and the latitude smaller, so it's harder to shoot right.

I like the contrast better in the other shot, and I like the extra sharpness. Desaturated slide film looks better for that kind of situation than T-Max (a bit too flat, was it outside and overcast, by any chance?).

 

This one is good, make no mistake, but I like the other better, with the very strong diagonal of the bow, the inclined head of the player and the violin pointed slightly toward the camera. It has more liveliness to it and stronger emotion. This one is more subtle, maybe the lower contrast and softer focus suits it better in fact.

I like the empty space on the left. It might work too cropped to a square, but it would be much more conventional. Beside, cropping 35mm is stretching it, if you want a square, get a 6x6 MF camera and you'll get fascinating tonality in the process.

 

Maybe some more contrast would be welcome, but only a little more! Try Sensia 100 or Provia 100F, desaturated it in PhotoShop. Not "true" B&W, but just try it... :-)

Jeffrey: this has been developed by a local pro lab. Ilford XP-2 Super is a C-41 film, meaning it is developed in color negative chemistry rather than conventional black and white chemistry. I simply asked for a three stop push, after having exposed at EI 1600. I had an 8x10 print done on Ilford Multigrade paper (I don't print myself, unfortunately) which looks really good, but this image has been scanned directly off the film (the print looks very similar).

 

I really love this film, BTW. I just got back a roll that I used in my Olympus Stylus Epic (smallish P&S camera), and I've got lots of very good pictures, including an amazing window light portrait of the same girl (Mélanie, my significant other). Everybody thinks I used my big SLR and fancy lenses to do them, hehe!

Yes, that's correct, I clarified the technical note.

In this photo, there is a kind of haze in the middle section that

slightly annoys me, and thinking of it, I don't seem to remember any

fog that night! Could this be the result of a lack of coating (or poor

coating) on the Yashica Mat (a TLR from the '60s)?

 

Also, I am interested in comments on the photo itself, of course!

 

Thank you!

There was a cloud cover that night, so in *reality*, the sky was of a rather light color (for a night sky, anyway!).

 

This was an awful time to take a picture (bad time of the day, bad weather), but I wanted to finish off that roll of film and wanted to experiment a bit with exposure.

 

I got some other stuff coming that'll blow you away, way better than this crap. :-)

One question: Is that rated at EI 1600? Thanks!

We can see a leg of the... whatever it is.

Could we get some more information on the lighting and background? Inside, outside, time of day, strobes, etc...

 

Very nice, you get to see through them, but not too much, and without having a bright background. I'd have liked a teensy bit more saturation, but nothing like Velvia. Would Astia or Provia 400F give that, I dunno?

I find the lighting a bit too hard (the shadow is too clearly defined and dark). Another light or a softer single source would be better.

Talk about a good shot! I won't detail too much, I like many things about it, model, background, pose/expression, clothing, hair and particularly the exposure, barely blowing out anything, keeping good detail in the darker areas in a rather difficult scene, amazing!

What? Do you think I was crazy enough to open these?!?

One of our agent, putting his own safety at risk, infiltrated the Fuji

factories and finally revealed the source of those amazing Velvia

dyes!

If I remember correctly, the exposure was in the area of 10-15 seconds at f8.

 

I metered various areas of the picture using the camera's partial meter (in fully manual mode), and then bracketed on top of this.

 

The difficulty with this shot is that there is not much space to work with around this building (I am right across the street corner, and there is other buildings both in my back and on both sides, separated by streets).

 

Also, I only had 50mm and 100mm lenses at the time I took this shot, further restraining my options. A mild wide angle lens, as you suggested, might have helped a lot.

This is called "night mode" on some cameras.

Good use of infrared, IMHO, I'm sure it doesn't look like this at all with regular B&W film. I like the off-center composition, but is it me or it isn't straight along the left edge?

 

Strangely, it's the first time I see medium format IR, and it's one of these "duh" moments for me (IR film is grainy, grain doesn't show as much in MF, *duh*!).

Excellent shot. I liked your "Jane" serie, but it had a number of things that didn't work right. Here, you've got everything sussed out and under control (with the help of that booted person, I suppose!).

 

The background is smooth and nicely textured, the dark right-half of her face is just right, with some details remaining, and you see where the rope goes.

 

There is no confusion about the lingerie anymore, and her expression is just about perfect. She seems to like it, but she is not nonchalant about it like in "Jane II".

 

I guess I could say something about the shadow on the background, but I don't find it too distracting.

In some conditions, you might be able to improve the quality slightly more by using a lens hood.

 

Always use a lens hood, if possible. Even though the one for the Canon 50mm/f1.8 lens isn't very fun to use.

 

If you use both the lens hood adapter for that lens, the UV filter *and* the polariser, you might get some vignetting though. I don't use any UV filter on my 50mm/f1.8, it's cheap enough that if it gets scratched or breaks, I'll be glad to have that excuse to go get a 50mm/f1.4. ;-)

Could we get info on ISO, shutter speed, aperture and flash used? This should be all in the JPEG's EXIF block... Thanks!

I like this one a lot, I think more than the serie with Jane. What it lacks is contrast though: it only goes from black to some mid grey! Under-exposed?

Very nice, but I don't like the crisp shadow line above her breasts. Maybe the main light should have been more diffuse? I'm not sure, I got that "effect" too on some of my pictures, and I'd like to know of a good way to get rid of this...