Forgot to turn on fill-flash?

[roygoh]

Hi,

This is another of my PS adventure. Please give me your comments on the retouching. Do you feel that the touched up photo looks artificial?

Original

Touched up

Thanks!

Roy

 

[tomshen]

hehe this was what I normally did if I forgot turnning on the fill-in flash. But now I would knock my head for failing get a correct exposure at the first place. :devil:

 

[Acieed]

I think the contrast between the people and the surrounding is a little too much. Looks a little like 2 person standing in front of a picture wall. Maybe the rock on the left needs to be brighten up a bit too.. Just my opinion.

 

[skf]

Lake Tahoe?

 

[denizenx]

the cutout effect is there even if u fill flash, if the flash is brighter than the background...

 

[roygoh]

Originally posted by skf
Lake Tahoe?

Yes. Emerald Bay at Lake Tahoe.

 

[maddog]

What if you meter the face and then also use a ND filter. Will it be better? Or will the background still be overexposed?

 

[ckiang]

Originally posted by maddog
What if you meter the face and then also use a ND filter. Will it be better? Or will the background still be overexposed?

Contrary to popular belief, ND filter will not solve this kind of problem. ND filter is universally gray, using it will drop your shutter speed, that's all.

If you are talking about a ND Graduated filter (ND Grad), then it will not help in this case either, coz there's no clear division between the foreground and background. It works best when there's a straight line at the division. When there's something like mountains, skyline, human, etc, using an ND grad can prove to be very difficult.

For such situations, fill flash/reflector is your best bet.

Regards
CK

 

[roygoh]

Originally posted by Acieed
I think the contrast between the people and the surrounding is a little too much. Looks a little like 2 person standing in front of a picture wall. Maybe the rock on the left needs to be brighten up a bit too.. Just my opinion.

Thanks for your comments.

I duplicated the entire picture on a second layer, and then erased everything else except the 2 person and the grey rock and ground on the second layer. Then I adjusted the levels, curves and colours separetly for the 2 layers, before combining the 2 levels back into one.

Edge treatment is the tricky part for this type of operations, besides the brightness and colour adjustment. In this case the person receives more light from the back than from the front, so when I increase the levels, there was an halo effect which can be seen on the shoulders.

I did turn on the fill flash, which can be seen from the reflection in the guy's sunglasses. However, the built-in flash of the Nikon CP995 is a joke under such circumstances.

The illumination on the rock on the left is the same as the 2 persons. so I did not treat it separately.

 

[roygoh]

Originally posted by maddog
What if you meter the face and then also use a ND filter. Will it be better? Or will the background still be overexposed?

As explained by ckaing, an ND filter is of not help to situation.

The best is to meter for the background and use a powerful enough fill in flash.

If the situation allows I would have brought along my flash bracket and SB24, as well as a reflector.