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M8 and 50 Pre-Asph Lux


Jack_Flesher

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So I am at a wedding (as a guest) and happen to have my M8 with the 50 Lux mounted. The official photographer is off somewhere to parts unknown as this scene unfolds. I grab the M8 and start shooting. Now the light is horrible --- late afternoon sun streaming in through an un-draped window --- but note how well the M8 dealt with it! This is possibly why the photographer, a Canon shooter, has disappeared to parts unknown --- he's probably grabbing a smoke while waiting out the horrible light... Anyway, it was all over in about three minutes but I nabbed about 20 images total. All shot with the M8 and 50 Summilux Pre-Asph. Converted to B&W in CS3 where I also cropped all to 3:4 aspect ratio, which is my preference for images with people in them.

 

Hope you enjoy the images and the story that unfolds behind them:

 

1) The little boy was the ring-bearer and is 3 years old. Here he has set his mark and asked the 5-year old flower girl to dance. She being all dressed up with nowhere else to go, accepts:

 

Cinco_settingitup.jpg

 

2) He is very smooth. I am actually impressed by his total show of confidence and decorum, and by her expression, so is the young lady:

 

Cinco_smooth.jpg

 

3) Here he cleverly sets his mark, dances out of his shoe, and elicits help getting it re-tied from the unsuspecting young lady:

 

Cinco_shoetied.jpg

 

4) And finally, our young hero goes for the close and actually makes it; my hat is off to him!

 

Cinco_headshot.jpg

 

Cheers,

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Jack, these are absolutely superb! Congratulations.

 

When the 'official' photog came back, did he leer at your M8?

 

Would you mind posting the workflow that you used in CS3?

 

tnx,

 

Hi Bill:

 

Okay, tried to answer your question in the M8 section, but maybe will take another stab here. First off, I use ACR (or Lightroom) for my raw conversions --- I am not a big fan of C1. In the ACR/LR dialog, there are a lot of exposure options, and while they all interact and have their special tricks, the one really useful one for hot highlights is called "recovery". Recovery is designed to re-build highlights that are not fully blown and it does an excellent job. It does not work on every blown highlight, but in this particular series none of the whites were fully blown and "recovery" was able to bring the close ones back to just under blown where they belonged. (That was the point of the post in the M8 section --- as long as you watch your histo and don't let the highlights fully blow, the M8 handles high-contrast exceptionally well.) Along with recovery and exposure for the top end of the image, we have shadow point and fill light to tweak the shadows and lower midtones. Once this image is balanced, I send it to CS3. Here I simply use the B&W adjustment layer and convert it to the B&W you see here. As mentioned, I also take the extra few seconds to crop to 3:4 aspect as I prefer it with people images.

 

Obviously there is a lot more to perfecting output than can be easily shared in an online forum --- at least without me having to write a book LOLOL! But for those interested in more on this topic, it is something Guy and I spend significant time covering in our workshops.

 

Cheers,

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