During the past two weekends, I shot quite a number of portrait images for a number of kids' roller blade hockey teams. For example, see http://www.neukranz.com/adobegalleries/web020514team3/pages/04DC0897.htm for an example where I've got reasonable images. These were shot RAW with an EOS-1D, at the 28mm end of a 28-70mm f/2.8 L USM zoom, using basic strobe lighting (single 1000 ws w/ umbrella), and shot manually at f/16, 1/125th sec. The images were shot out in the lobby of the local hockey rink.
When I first arrived at the rink, I was told I needed to shoot everything in a tiny corner of the facility. The space only gave me about 10' from backdrop to farthest back position for strobes. I was comfortable that I could still shoot individual portraits, as I had with me a 16-35mm f/2.8 L USM zoom. While I was uncomfortable shooting the team portraits in the same location, the rink management insisted. So, I tried. I shot the team portraits at the 16mm end of the 16-35 zoom lens (same lighting arrangements as above). After shooting 8 teams, I decided the distortion of a 16mm focal length for a wide team portrait was too much. Here's an extreme example: http://www.neukranz.com/adobegalleries/web020514team1/pages/04DC0201.htm . So my first question is, are these images fixable, of a wide group of people, shot at a 16mm focal length, at only about 8 feet away? And if so, are there companies in the Dallas, TX area that do this kind of work, and what should I expect to pay? There's 8 images total to fix, with low-res examples at http://www.neukranz.com/adobegalleries/web020514team1/index.htm . I finally said that I wouldn't shoot any more team images back in this tiny corner. That got me approval to shoot team images in the facility's lobby. At the time, I was so rushed, all I had time to do was to slap on a 550EX flash. I still shot manually, using a light meter. My mistake, though, was using a LumiQuest Promax softener on my flash, as I was too concerned about washing out the team faces. While I generally shot at a 35mm focal length, it was too wide angle for the LumiQuest, resulting in a much lower exposure, and color rendition of the top row versus the bottom row of kids. For example, see http://www.neukranz.com/adobegalleries/web020514team2/pages/04DC0356.htm . These were shot at about f/4 at 1/125th sec. After looking at these team images, I told the rink management I had to stop to set up a background and a strobe. And hence the reasonable examples I noted at the beginning of this note. So my other question is, are these images fixable too, with a different uniform color rendition from upper to lower row of kids? And if so, are there companies in the Dallas, TX area that do this kind of work, what should I expect to pay? There's 5 images total to fix, with low-res examples at http://www.neukranz.com/adobegalleries/web020514team2/index.htm . Thanks for any comment. Best regards, Bill Neukranz * **** ******* *********************************************************** * For list instructions, including unsubscribe, see: * http://www.a1.nl/phomepag/markerink/eos_list.htm ***********************************************************
