raystofberg

Thanks David for your kind words and suggestion. I will try that. Other things that I was thinking of were either cropping here away totally or burn her.

Due to the shallow DoF she falls out. I am still trying to figure out whether it disturbs me having her (and her husband) in or not :)

Thanks everyone for your nice comments. Taken during a travel of 2 months through the pacific. This is taken on Tanna Island part of Vanuatu. At that time there was no electricity on the Island besides several diesel generators. It also has a very active vulcano which I visited as well.

This is one of my favorite shots ever. This shot is part of a series of 3. The lady started doing her laundry when the weather was still fine. This was take one.

Suddenly the sky started to turn pitch dark and the first drops of rain were coming down. She looked up to see what was happening. Take two.

It began pouring like it can only happen in the tropics, the lady decided to take advantage of the sweet water from the rain and continued to wash her clothing without taking into consideration her less than comfortable own situation.

The camera I used fortunately could weather this, the lens turned out it could not I remember.

Vanuatu '97. Some places are still devoid from electricity and life is

much simpler than we know of. This lady wash doing her laundry and

suddenly it began to pour as it can only happen in the Pacific.

Thank you for viewing.

Nice!

Maybe your light a bit high, a little lower would have dimished the shadow below her nose a bit and given you a larger highlight in the eyes.

I would also have moved a little closer to get more face and less black (maybe you need to use an extender to get there because the minimum focussing distance might get in your way).

Lovely image!

I do wonder whether it wouldn't be even more striking when you crop the top until you have gotten rid of the background (somewhere halfway her hair). Also crop from the leftside until you are close to her hair.

You will end up with an image that has her eyes/face & pink only. without too much black of her hair.

Anyway really nice.

No problem Gerry, not that many people are fond of the concept of selective focus. Sure I can dial in f8 as well but in that case I will also be setting additional light.

The camera I use a lot for fun is pretty rudimentary. I cannot go above ISO200 (I could use ISO400 but that is basically unusable), no metering, no AF, no nothing. Just a dial for the the shutter speed and the aperture ring. With this I also like to use available light only.

Since I live in a part of the world where it is quite dark lots of time you can understand I have a closet full of 'fast glass' :)

For clients I would never take a risk with this unless they really really beg me to do that (even than I would probably persuade them otherwise) ;)

In that case I do take the effort to set additionl light I and most of the time I choose a different tool.

Softening by filters or by PS will generate a different image. I use that as well but no softening either by filters or PS can compare to the OOF rendering of good fast glass used wide open (or even bad but ridiculously fast glass like my 90/1.0 :))

Be well and thanks for your responses, much appreciated!

Ricardo,

Thanks for noticing the things I did :)

Ray

Gerry,

why would I want to sharpen something that was meant to be OOF? There is a reason why somebody uses a 1.2 lens wide open together with a K1 ring (8mm) ;)

It is not really visible on such a small web image but this image is so incredibly soft and smooth outside the sharp area it would be totally impossible to sharpen anything even if you wanted to.

If anything the camera didn't miss focus but I did since it is all completely manual, focus, exposure, etc.. nothing automatic. It is all me ;)

For perfection, focus could/should have been 1mm. more forward which is also about the depth you have in total.

I really like it.

I do wonder whether it might improve when you can get rid of the that pesky pole in the center? It kind of breaks the image at the moment.