On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 10:52 AM, Collin Brendemuehl <[email protected]> wrote: > > #1 I've been reading through an old book -- Professional Portrait Lightings > by Charles Abel. > 1947. Good stuff. Each portrait has a layout and description of the > lighting types. > Some quartz, some incandescent, some flourescent. Some with snoots and > others with diffusers. > Got me wondering -- has anyone here ever experimented by rotating a set of > lights > around a model or still object to document the various lighting results? > I'm thinking this might be fun one weekend. Constant light, controls, and > fortunately the simplicity of a DSLR. But maybe some film just to see how it > works in "real" b&w.
I've been meaning to try something like that, but I get so little model-time I don't want to waste it. I'm keeping my eyes out for a shop-window dummy to use for lighting experiments. But I've seen a couple of webinars that walk through one, two, three lights, different angles and different sources so you can see the effects and the classic lighting styles. If I dig up a link I'll pass it along. > #2 I'm liking good HDR, but really disliking bad/over-done HDR. [...] > Do any of you use external stand-alone or PS HDR software? > How heavily do you process? > Has anyone stopped doing HDR? Why? > Examples would be great. I'm interested in the concept of HDR (ie multiple bracketed exposures), but I really don't do the kind of shooting where HDR is useful. I've been completely satisfied with using off-camera strobes or reflectors to bring the light value range under control. The few HDR experiments I've done I've simply used Photoshop. It does an okay job. I'm left completely cold by what people *call* HDR but which really amounts to processing single exposure shots in Photomatix with all the sliders set to 11. It's like those roadside vendor's oil paintings on velvet. -- -bmw -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
