Monday, December 1, 2008

Portraits with this combo

Portraits with the D700 and the AF-S 24-70 lens.

These girls were roasting and selling nuts at the Krist Kindl Market in Chicago.  While I saw one of them completely in the dark (and wondered what the lens saw to lock focus on her), the fact that I had Active D-Lighting on helped a lot.  Their faces are visible... and they're smiling. 

Another vendor at the Krist Kindl Markt in Chicago IL.  With Active D-Lighting on and the camera on P&S mode (more on that later), it's not too bad.  Problem: the color cast is simply part of the image.  There's no way I can fix this without altering the white balance completely. 


This one was different.  The lens wasn't completely extended to the longest, and the window was letting in a fairly strong bit of sun, so I used my built-in flash here.  No D-Lighting trick was necessary, as the photograph looks good on my screen and in print.  


These two girls looked friendly enough to say yes to my request to photograph them.  Since I was in a bit of a hurry, I focused on the one on the right, and compensated the exposure by opening it two thirds (the D700 has the Easy-Exposure feature on).  That will explain the blown highlights behind them. 

Portraiture does not need to be with long lenses only, and this zoom just proves that.  Of course, there's the operator's skill at play here... but that's enough for another day, when we deal with urban 'scapes.  In the meanwhile, I will keep using long lenses for anything but portraiture, and wide-angles for people shots.  Why not? 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow. Beautiful pictures.
Very nice blog.