Portraiture work, running topic

[Tom H.]

Hi all,

 

I got into the Fuji system after using a Micro-Four Thirds system for a while. For portraits, the sharpness, skin tone rendering and level of detail is incredible, certainly when adding flash...

 

Some of my more recent work, if admins approve, I'll keep this post updated as I process new shoots. Started doing portraiture in November only, so there will be some progression hopefully over time

 

Gear used up to today, together with generic speedlights and modifiers.

X100T

X-T1

56 1.2 APD

50-140 2.8

16 1.4

 

First post is my earliest work with the Fuji system. Three shoots I did in December.

Click on the pics to see full size.

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[Tom H.]

Some more shots from the beginning. Re-edited a while later since I beefed up my Photoshop skills earlier this year...

First shot in the series was what killed my 56 APD. Autofocus motor creeked and yelled throughout the session, and this shot was the final one before I decided something was seriously wrong... You can see the focus was missed, as turned out later were 98% of all shots from this session. I sent in the lens to Fuji and got it back a few weeks later. They changed out the autofocus motor, but problems were even worse after that. Sent it back a second time. They changed the whole optical assembly, and now it seems to have been fixed.

 

Click on the pics to see full size.

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[MatusKicka]

Tereza ,2015 London

X100s and godox wistro in octa softbox 

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[ERphotogATL]

Hello. My name is David. I am a portrait/head shot photog in Atlanta. This I my first post. Gaining more confidence with my Fuji X-T1 on every shoot. I hope to participate often in this thread with my work. I would encourage any criticism or tips I can use with the Fuji X-T1. Thank you.

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[Tom H.]

Hello. My name is David. I am a portrait/head shot photog in Atlanta. This I my first post. Gaining more confidence with my Fuji X-T1 on every shoot. I hope to participate often in this thread with my work. I would encourage any criticism or tips I can use with the Fuji X-T1. Thank you.image.jpg

 

Very nice! Lovely colours :-)

[Tom H.]

Some of my work from early 2015. Trying to mix it up more, working on concepts with some make-up artists.

 

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[Tom H.]

And some of my most recent work. Still some shoots to edit, but lacking time at the moment.

 

 

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[r o b e r t]

nice, the skin softening is a bit on the heavy side. I would bring it back some. 

[Tom H.]

nice, the skin softening is a bit on the heavy side. I would bring it back some. 

 

Thanks. Most of these don't actually have a lot of skin work on them, but I have worked with pretty agressive make-up artists who went a bit overboard. That last picture looks very smooth, but actually I have not touched her skin in that one, apart from cloning out her bra and a mole on her hand. But on my early work, I did go a bit too far, I try keeping it down on newer work.

 

I did notice that my files seem "smoothed" already when imported into Lightroom, as if the pixels were blended together sometimes. Very strange, I can't recall my Canon or Olympus gear showing that effect. I should try Capture One sometime maybe...

[r o b e r t]

To me that is Fuji's weakness the micro contrast. Yes, I don't see that with the Olympus which i do have also. I think it either the sensor or the noise reduction or a combination of both. Images with soft skin like this are a hard sell nowadays. 

[RadBadTad]

To me that is Fuji's weakness the micro contrast. Yes, I don't see that with the Olympus which i do have also. I think it either the sensor or the noise reduction or a combination of both. Images with soft skin like this are a hard sell nowadays. 

A lot of that comes down to processing techniques. The detail is there, if you're willing to go through the (hopefully temporary) hassle of getting to it. For instance, doing your initial detail processing in another program, like PhotoNinja, and exporting to a TIFF that you then continue to edit in your adobe suite as usual. Even without that step, simply removing all noise reduction and lens correction from Lightroom will bring back a lot of your detail. I'd post an example but I don't want to encroach on a wonderful thread. 

 

 

Some more shots from the beginning. Re-edited a while later since I beefed up my Photoshop skills earlier this year...

 

First shot in the series was what killed my 56 APD. Autofocus motor creeked and yelled throughout the session, and this shot was the final one before I decided something was seriously wrong... You can see the focus was missed, as turned out later were 98% of all shots from this session. I sent in the lens to Fuji and got it back a few weeks later. They changed out the autofocus motor, but problems were even worse after that. Sent it back a second time. They changed the whole optical assembly, and now it seems to have been fixed.

 

Click on the pics to see full size.

 

I can't stop staring at the second photo in this post. Mostly because it reminds me of a very film looking photo from the late 90s maybe? Not the styling, or the girl, but just the way the image itself comes off the page. The way the detail is rendered. I love it. Can I ask what you're doing as far as lighting is concerned? Some of these look to be natural light (which you have an excellent eye for, in my opinion) but others look to be strobes, which I haven't seen many good systems for on the Fuji system.  Please keep up the great work, and keep sharing!

[Tom H.]

Thanks! I have a licence to Iridient Developer, but no Mac anymore. I should revisit all of these someday to get a more consistent look throughout my portfolio, lots of these were done while learning Photoshop, so various levels of editing used and mostly learning as I go along... Thinking about Capture One to restart my work flow process.

 

Lighting is usually only one 60x60cm softbox, sometimes 2. I use generic manual speedlights, Godox V850's and their remote trigger system. Cheep and cheerful, works just fine for me. I also have a Lastolite Triflector for headshots. I work only with a mua and tfp, so the less gear the better. Keeps me fairly mobile too.

[Tom H.]

Oh and do feel free to share your work flow with examples :-) Always eager to learn more.

[piXelRider]

Tom, great work! 

 

As for detail in Lightroom - try with sharpening: radius below 1px and Detail slider to maximum. 

[Naddan28]

Can I please ask how are people generally lighting these great images?  They appear to be on location shots in a lot of cases, which I guess makes studio style lighting more difficult.  I am looking to branch out from travel/landscape photography to include some portraiture shots too, but lighting is my biggest fear!  In fact here is two I shot yesterday using natural light and my XT1's flash to lift some shadows.  Both shot with the 50-140mm lens.

 

Katie by naddan28, on Flickr

 

 

contemplation by naddan28, on Flickr

 

[Tom H.]

Naddan28, for a great lighting tutorial, check out One Light 2.0 by Zack Arias. Well worth the expense.

 

Or check out Strobist 101 on strobist.com, they have a free pdf book.

[TenLayers]

Nice work Tom H.

 

Paul

[dlabrosse]

Here's a portrait of my son. I was experimenting with the X100s trying to overpower the sun with a hot shoe flash. This was shot using a Nikon SB-28 in a silver Westcott double fold umbrella directly above my X100s with TCL attached and the built-in ND filter activated. The camera was set to manual, exposure was 1/500 of a second at f/2. My son was standing in open shade.

 

EXIF does not show the TCL because I forgot to tell the camera it was mounted.

 

LucMarch2015-5826 by Dominique Labrosse, on Flickr

[Tom H.]

Tom, great work! 

 

As for detail in Lightroom - try with sharpening: radius below 1px and Detail slider to maximum. 

 

Thanks! Good tip, it is indeed much better that way.

[Tom H.]

Here's a portrait of my son. I was experimenting with the X100s trying to overpower the sun with a hot shoe flash. This was shot using a Nikon SB-28 in a silver Westcott double fold umbrella directly above my X100s with TCL attached and the built-in ND filter activated. The camera was set to manual, exposure was 1/500 of a second at f/2. My son was standing in open shade.

 

EXIF does not show the TCL because I forgot to tell the camera it was mounted.

 

LucMarch2015-5826 by Dominique Labrosse, on Flickr

 

Lovely shot. I find my X100T is very soft at f2 though, I rarely go below f2.8. Yours looks tack sharp though, nice.

[Tom H.]

Nice work Tom H.

 

Paul

 

Thanks Paul!

[Patrick Freichel]

[ElWampo]

Hi all,

 

I felt fresh into the Fuji x system with the X-T10 which i bought last week. Till now I sadly hat not much time to shoot and even less time for preparing in lightroom and stuff. 

But anyhow I wanted to share one of my earliy pictures with you which was more a snapshot then prepared. 

 

Shot in color and .jpeg and processed with capture one to B&W. 

 

Please feel free to comment, give tips or anything oyu like.

Portrait of my grandmother by Marcus Herchenröder, auf Flickr

 

 

regards

Wampo

[carolo39]

Did you use the pop up flash? Bounce it or straight on? About to order same camera myself. Will be my first Fuji:)

 

 

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[ElWampo]

No flash used here. 

The X-T10 has a small pop-up flash yes, but i rarely use it. I would recommend to get a bigger flash if you are a flash shooter. 99% I try to use the available light only