What’s Your Preference?

2stroke · #1 (**permalink**) 07-13-2010, 01:49 AM

Here are a couple of baby pics. I got volunteered to take pics at my wife's 2nd cousins christening. I dont have much portrait experience or mucho photo experience period. The lighting situation here was terrible so I used my fastest lens 50mm 1.7 and shot without flash at 800 iso. All hand held.

I processed these from raw and did what I could do to reduce noise. Are these obviously overcooked? I think I got a little carried away with smoothing but the more noise I got rid of the sharper it looked. I have different crops of these but these are both uncropped.

ShamJolimie · #2 (**permalink**) 07-13-2010, 01:58 AM

i like the first one, because his face is very sharp. the second one looks a bit washed out, maybe push the contrast but very slightly.

arelis30 · #3 (**permalink**) 07-13-2010, 02:02 AM

Hello. I like them all but the last one is my favorite. The baby's face is very sharp and vivid..

z0mbina80 · #4 (**permalink**) 07-13-2010, 02:37 AM

the first is wonderful IMO... i love the sharpness, his rosy little cheeks, and the sparkle in his eyes

2stroke · #5 (**permalink**) 07-13-2010, 04:24 PM

Thank you for the input. I was/am worried about going too far and turning him into a plastic doll, I may still back off on that smoothing layer a bit and see what I got. On the 2nd one I have a portrait crop without dad (sorry dad) that I like much better and I think the low contrast softness works.

dave.turley · #6 (**permalink**) 07-13-2010, 05:09 PM

Hi,
Handsome chap. Personally, I'd back off on the eyes a little. Other than that, they're great shots.
Dave

SusanH1970 · #7 (**permalink**) 07-13-2010, 06:01 PM

Definitely way too much skin smoothing going on and the eyes look overdone as well. I do like the lighting, though! He's a cutie. I'd love to see these with much more natural processing.

2stroke · #8 (**permalink**) 07-14-2010, 12:32 AM

Susan and Dave, that was my feeling and the reason for posting.

Here I reduced the smoothing layer by 50% and and got rid of the noise reduction layer, I also reduced the amount of eye lightening. I also put the crop I like on one, any suggestions on a crop for the other?

edit: wish my a300 handled noise at high iso better, without suggesting a different camera (not happening now) are there other noise software that do a better job than what I have now? PSE6 mac, Preview on Mac, and iPhoto.

What do you think?