# my girlfriend portrait attempt



## robertwsimpson (Sep 17, 2009)

Title says it all:









what do you think?


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## McNugget801 (Sep 17, 2009)

should of gone HDR


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## robertwsimpson (Sep 17, 2009)

lol thanks for the tip!


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## PhotoXopher (Sep 17, 2009)

Looks like a snapshot with nervous bokeh to be honest. Focus is good and the subject appears sharp though.


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## Sw1tchFX (Sep 17, 2009)

McNugget801 said:


> should of gone HDR






I got an HDR portrait somewhere in the back of my flickr page that I did a few years ago and...yeah...

It makes people's faces look like the surface of the moon...


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## robertwsimpson (Sep 17, 2009)

N0YZE said:


> Looks like a snapshot with nervous bokeh to be honest. Focus is good and the subject appears sharp though.



it WAS a snapshot   I didn't really want to "pose" her, so we were just walking around taking pictures of each other.


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## robertwsimpson (Sep 17, 2009)

what do you mean by "nervous bokeh?"


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## 2camera (Sep 17, 2009)

oh hdr your idea very good


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## PhotoXopher (Sep 17, 2009)

If it was just a snapshot than I wouldn't call it a "portrait attempt", to me that means you set up the shot. For me it changes the way I critique, for a snapshot this is very nice, for a portrait shoot it needs work.

Nervous bokeh = not creamy, shaky.


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## robertwsimpson (Sep 17, 2009)

sorry... I will retitle the thread.  I didn't really set anything up. 

how do I change from nervous bokeh to creamy?


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## Derrel (Sep 17, 2009)

Yes, it is nervous bokeh. It's a characteristic of the Canon 50mm 1.8 EF-II lens and its overcorrected spherical aberration, which makes the images very sharp, and the clunky five-side diaphragm that the lens also has. Nervous bokeh doesn't look too awfully bad on a smooth, monochrome hedge like you have in your photo's background. Some backdrops would have made it much more intrusive.

Nikon's 28-200 G series zoom has the same issue of overcorrected spherical aberration, which makes the lens bitingly sharp at its best focal lengths, but it does not have the 5-bladed diaphragm like the 50 EF-II, but a 7-bladed one.

This article compares Canon's 50.1,4 EF versus their 50/1.8 EF-II, and has some nice photos that show how a 5-sided aperture renders out of focus highlights in the background  Canon EF 50mm &ndash; F1.4 vs F1.8 MK II - photo.net

One of the odd things about bright,green hedges is that the leaves themselves often have subtle highlights on them from the sky, small reflections if you will, that will disappear with a polarizer is used. Those highlights tend to render badly with the 1.8's five-sided aperture, not as graphically as with the lights at night as shown above, but enough so that the bokeh is not creamy, and the rendering is not what is called "with a roundness of detail". Canon's 85/1.8 EF gives much smoother bokeh than their economy 50/1.8. One of the *worst* 50mm lenses for bokeh is the expensive Zeiss 50mm f/1.4--it has a Double Gauss optical formula, and is very sharp, but the bokeh is extremely harsh and hashy.


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## robertwsimpson (Sep 17, 2009)

it probably didn't help that I sharpened the photo... if I had known it was a big deal, I would have done NR on the background...  I'll remember that for next time.


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## Dao (Sep 17, 2009)

Next time, you may also want to try it out with your 55-250mm lens and change the focal length to around 70 to 100mm and see if the result is better.


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## Derrel (Sep 17, 2009)

Somebody has this Bower 85mm f/1.4 manual focus lens, with click-stopped diaphragm for sale here at TPF for $200. This lens is also sold under the Vivitar Series 1 brand, as well as the Samyang label.http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/...ull-frame-portrait-lens-bower-just-200-a.html

 I have seen many Japanese sample photographs of this lens,which seems to have been created for wide-open use with good bokeh, for those who want a nice 85mm focal length, but cannot swing the prices of 85mm 1.4 or 1.2 AF lenses that typically cost $1400-$1900.

This is a manually focusing lens. By the time it is stopped down to f/5.6, its bokeh is nothing spectacular, but at wide apertures, it's pretty good.


It might look odd, an EF-mount lens with an external diaphragm control ring, but this lens is available in Pentax and Nikon mounts too,so they probably went with an external diaphragm control to make the design more easily compatible with older bodies that demand the use of on-lens aperture control rings.


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## robertwsimpson (Sep 17, 2009)

Dao said:


> Next time, you may also want to try it out with your 55-250mm lens and change the focal length to around 70 to 100mm and see if the result is better.



good idea, I can give her a walkie talkie so that I can still tell her how to move!

lol jk, here is a sample of what you're talking about:





55-250 @ 250mm f5.6


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## robertwsimpson (Sep 17, 2009)

55-250 @ 55mm f4.0


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## robertwsimpson (Sep 17, 2009)

wow I didn't notice the banding before!

that's at ISO800, btw.


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## Dao (Sep 17, 2009)

Cool!

For outdoor type portrait type shots, I found myself always use the 70-300mm IS USM lens at around 80 to 100mm range.  I like the result better than my 50mm lens.

Well, I end up purchasing the EF 85mm f/1.8 lens.  And the main differences I noticed between the telephoto lens and my 85mm lens is the color of the photo and the creamy bokeh that the 85mm lens produced.


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