mood_lover

<p>Thats a great idea Tim, I can somewhat save the image this way (yes shooting Raw). But moreso my concern is how I can get lower contrast before I even get to the editing stage. I still want some nice modeling on the subjects face, but just very low contrast ratio like the two attached images at the bottom of the original post had. Thanks!</p>

<p>Thank you for the help David, for a while I had a hunch that fill-light (or lack of) is what controls the contrast but never gave it much thought. I want my SOOC photo to be much, much flatter in contrast so I can decide how far to push it later. I really dislike having high contrast right off the bat. When you say "using a fill AND moving the key light further away reduces contrast even more", you are talking about reducing the intensity/power of the keylight right? Sometimes I have the strobe on lowest power level and its still too much, but I want my shadows to be soft so thats why I have it so close to the subject. Not sure how to solve that problem but I thank you for your input!</p>

<p>Everytime I'm in the studio using a large octabox or softbox, my portraits' highlights on the back of my 5D Mark III looks fine but then on the computer they are too bright. I love boosting contrast to add pop to my photos, but of course, this looks terrible when there's no headroom left for the highlights! I have no idea why my highlights are coming out so hot even before I get to editing. When I boost my contrast in post, I want my highlights to end up far from pure white, and I want my shadows to be deep and dark, but still not pure black.<br /><br />Here's a failed attempt at me trying to do this, but only had one light on the model (with a slight hair light behind) and I think lack of fill light ruined it:</p> <p><img src="http://i.imgur.com/o7yuKba.jpg" alt="" width="533" height="800" /><br />Question: does lack of fill light (meaning using just 1 key light) create TOO much contrast in-camera, and make the shadows too dark? I find that when I use only one light for portraits, the picture already has the amount of contrast I want in the final edit, so I cant even push it at all. I guess what I'm going for is a low contrast raw picture, so I can grade it and boost contrast to my hearts content.<br /><br />I found images from a great photographer who has the lighting I'm after, and he uses only natural light from windows, I'd love to figure out how he has deep contrast but still such smooth highlight rolloff after editing, and of course I want to do this with no more than 2 lights in a studio:</p> <p><img src="http://i.imgur.com/YHGdJPV.jpg" alt="" width="1066" height="800" /><br /><br /><img src="http://i.imgur.com/av9l0Hp.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="1078" /><br /><br /><br /> Thank you guys so much for the help and I apologize if I broke any rules, I mean no harm!</p>

<p>They were just new AA duracell batteries, which says ALKALINE on them so I don't believe it was the batteries fault...<br /><br />@Jochen Schrey: oh thank heavens...it was definitely disturbed during the film advancing but I would hope that wouldn't ruin the whole camera...the owner says the winder is really old and this kind of stuff happens so I'm hoping a replacement will help.</p>

<p>I was shooting with the winder A on my A1 and my face was pressed accidentally against the rewind wheel, so when I took a shot I felt the wheel spin grind against my face and skip around. I shot another one again, and the same thing happened but this time smoke started coming out of the on/off switch from the winder so I quickly shut it off and detached it from the body.<br /> <br />I tested the A1 after with one or two shots more, and it seemed to work fine. I didn't want to open the film back cause my roll wasn't done. I am afraid that I might have damaged the camera somehow? I am not sure what happened or what to do, or if the roll is messed up now. The winder definitely wont be in use again, there's a nasty burn smell coming out from the on/off switch.</p> <p>Any advice appreciate, really scared for my camera :(</p>

<p>Hey guys I've been testing out a friends A-1 recently and wanted to know if you guys had any tips for portrait focusing? I like to compose with my subject's eyes off center sometimes so I'm not sure if focus+recomposing is the way to go or not? I guess the idea is to make peoples faces stop shaking in the microprism, and use the split-image to line things up but that doesn't really help for off-center composing. Would love some advice, thanks!!!</p>