Another well known face

[Stephen]

Every now and again, in the course of my work, I get the opportunity to take photos of well known people. Not portraits or set up shots, but when they are attending an event where I'm acting as photographer.

Last weekend Mathew Pinsent was a guest speaker at an event I was covering. He gave an interesting and fascinating insight into the workings of an Olympic rowing team and the build up to their gold medal win at the Athens Olympics in the coxless fours.

To be honest there are lessons to be learnt here for anyone who works as part of team, and this of course is why he was speaking at the event as an inspirational speaker.

Anyway I was able to get a load of shots of him as he was talking and I particularly liked this one, which shows him showing his medals to the audience. The shot was taken without flash, at 1/60th sec & f3.5 with a Canon 70-200 f2.8. I used ISO 1600 and Auto WB. The picture was processed in Lightroom 2 where WB etc was adjusted.

Working in such conditions there is always mixed lighting, consequently there has to be a tradeoff when balancing the different colour temps of background and foreground. Here the B/G is slightly blue, as its more important to colour correct the subject and make him look as though he has not been Tangoed

[Barr1e]

Re: Another well known face

Interesting stuff there Stephen - thanks for the info and the picture.

You didn't mention whether dinner was just as agreeable.

Regards. Barr1e

[Ian]

Re: Another well known face

Here is the lovely Vicki Butler-Henderson, who was the guest celeb at the recent launch of Panasonic's new Lumx DMC-G1 camera a couple of weeks ago.

I hasten to add that the picture quality isn't great: it was taken at ISO 800, in multi-coloured lighting plus a mixture of artificial and day light, and it's a crop to less than a third of the frame cos there are licensing limitations on the use of the venue in pix, so I have cropped out as much as possible! It was also taken from a JPEG, not a RAW file. There - excuses over!

Ian

[Stephen]

Re: Another well known face

Good shot Ian, I think you just about pulled it off at iso 800, though perhaps its on the cusp of beginning to break up in the shadow areas. I think this is a situation where I would have used some fill in flash, perhaps you didn't have yours to hand though. The shadow area has a red tinge in your picture which could be reflection off something else, maybe the seating area.

She looks to be left handed too, her watch is on the right hand, and she uses the left eye. You can tell she doesn't often use a dSLR by the way the camera is held and the way she screws up her face on the right side. Don't think she would thank you for a copy of that one when I think about it Maybe she should stick to cars

I have to say that many of my shots taken at iso 1600 last weekend show signs of breaking up, esp when exposure has been corrected in LR. However I have found that altering Luminance to 25 and Colour to 50 in the Noise Reduction section helps greatly with this. I have found that you can do this first to one shot in a folder containing several hundred, then synchronise this with the rest, it takes seconds and saves having to do it individually. Other adjustments can then be applied in less of a bulk fashion

[Ian]

Re: Another well known face

Good shot Ian, I think you just about pulled it off at iso 800, though perhaps its on the cusp of beginning to break up in the shadow areas. I think this is a situation where I would have used some fill in flash, perhaps you didn't have yours to hand though. The shadow area has a red tinge in your picture which could be reflection off something else, maybe the seating area.

She looks to be left handed too, her watch is on the right hand, and she uses the left eye. You can tell she doesn't often use a dSLR by the way the camera is held and the way she screws up her face on the right side. Don't think she would thank you for a copy of that one when I think about it Maybe she should stick to cars

I have to say that many of my shots taken at iso 1600 last weekend show signs of breaking up, esp when exposure has been corrected in LR. However I have found that altering Luminance to 25 and Colour to 50 in the Noise Reduction section helps greatly with this. I have found that you can do this first to one shot in a folder containing several hundred, then synchronise this with the rest, it takes seconds and saves having to do it individually. Other adjustments can then be applied in less of a bulk fashion

VBH is a lovely personality - very friendly and approachable.

I took the picture using the new camera. I did record a RAW file, but LR2 doesn't yet support Lumix G1 RAW files. I'll have another go at this image when I get some RAW software that is compatible. I'm expecting the colour balance to be more adjustable. I'm sure the noise can be smoothed better from the RAW file too.

I could have used the onboard flash, but I didn't think to do so - I much prefer non-flash results in general. This may have been an exception to that though.

Julia is left-eyed with a camera as well.

Ian

[Autumn]

Re: Another well known face

Interesting pics from both of you. I like to see this sort of candid approach.

I have only just realised that I use my left eye when using the optical viewer, but am right handed with everything else.

I also use my left eye when shooting with a gun. As in clay pigeon! But I missed.

[Ian]

Re: Another well known face

Interesting pics from both of you. I like to see this sort of candid approach.

I have only just realised that I use my left eye when using the optical viewer, but am right handed with everything else.

I also use my left eye when shooting with a gun. As in clay pigeon! But I missed.

I'm all mixed up, meself - I write, aim, bowl and take pictures on my right, but I bat left-handed. I think my father is the mirror image of me. One of my daughters and one sister are left-handed. Julia, as I mentioned before, is left-eyed, but right-everything else!

Ian

[Rodbender]

Re: Another well known face

Everyone has a dominant eye. To test which look at an object about 6 feet away, hold up your finger and line it up with the object. This is with both eyes open. Now close one eye, if your finger stays lined up with the object the open eye is the dominant eye. Now change eyes and your finger will move to the side of the object.

[Jocelyn Walker]

Re: Another well known face

Thanks for that exercise! I found myself to be right eye dominant! I use my right hand to write & my left hand for most other things! In bygone days, at school & varsity when taking down notes, I was fully ambidextrous! I can still write legibly left handed but too slow! I'm left footed when it comes to kicking a ball! I'm ambidextrous in dartboard matches! When I first started school, I wrote left handed & for some odd reason, my teacher forced me to write right handed!

[kombizz]

Re: Another well known face

I like the first shot although it is little bit soft for my taste.
Also I like the second shot which is somehow funny