A Black & White Soft Ice

A trip to Dorking playground with the little McGs, going well until a lack of small change meant only ONE ice cream - but, that situation seemed to induce more interactions than usual, and I liked this one so thought i'd share it for comment!

The mono arose out of experimentation really - I was having trouble in colour with the very strong backlighting (the shot is fill-flashed) causing washed out tones, and contrast was a nightmare, so I opened it in Lightzone and tried the B & W panel, and was pleased with the results. Thanks for taking a look.

What a lovely family, Nigel. A perfect moment captured for ever.

I've never got to grips with fill-flash tending err on the side of caution, often not using enough power. This one certainly fills all of the shadows, giving the little girls a stark almost cardboard cut-out character. They certainly stand out from the defocused background.

(Word to the wise, although perhaps too late for you, having only one boy solves the short change crisis!)

That's a very attractive and natural photo. I also found the background technical info interesting.
David

Great shot and one the girls will treasure in the future

That is a delightful shot Nigel, and the ice cream on the tip of the nose is great - makes me wonder what happened next!

Cheers.
Philip

Very nice Nigel. One to remember.

Should have tried HDR though

definitely a shot to look back on in the future, well caught and processed.

Good advice Andrew, but very late indeed! I wish there were more places like ice-cream vans that don't accept credit cards

I've checked the exif for this one, and it was at f6.3, +0.3 flash exposure at 35mm, 180th/sec. I usually set fill-flash to -0.7 or -1.0, but here the meter was fighting very bright open sky behind, so after a few previous shots I had settled on +0.3.

I didn't say before, but this was with the 18-55 WR AL zoom, the one that came out with the K7 back in 2009. Its generally regarded as the pick of the 'kits', and certainly its IQ stands up and is very useful for many situations.

I really like this shot but I do agree that the children look a bit detached from the background. In some ways that makes it a bit different.
The bokeh of the tree in the middle looks almost painted on.
I assume you were using the camera's built in flash?

Nigel, I was, of course joking about the girls: they must be a treasure for you both. What great subjects they are for portraits Dr Orloff makes excellent use of his children.

Looking at the shot again it has a Martin Parr quality to it, although he always works in colour (that sounds a bit daft, but I hope you know what I mean.)

I've been really lucky with my Pentax kit lenses: mine have always been good copies and I never hesitate to use them when I want ease of use or flexible focal lengths. Folks are always in such a rush to ditch their kit lenses. I agree, Pentax 18-55s are generally much better than other brands. I bought my K5 without a lens but have since sourced one of the weather-proof models which is very solidly made and makes a good splash-proof pairing with my K10.

Thank you, glad you liked it! Thanks also to Philip, Alan & Joe for your replies and for taking a look.

There's definitely a cardboard cutout subject vibe to this pic. Almost like it was shot in a Zollywood studio with rear projection screen.

However it matters not IMO as it works in this instance.

Yes, this is the work of the 'pop-up', a quick and easy solution. The detached 'zollywood' appearance results from two things I think ... the very different angle of direct flash light on the subjects, as opposed to natural light of a different quality and direction on the background, plus the fact that really separate processing was carried out on the background & foreground areas.

The kids were well exposed by the flash, so needed only a small upwards tweak, plus a big mono contrast boost, but the background sky area was very much blown to the extent that quite a lot of tree detail was lost (giving a few hovering branches!). I really pulled the highlights back massively and this has created the unusual bokeh effects I think as bits of detail poke through where others have gone.

Just for interest I ran the DNG through PDCU without any adjustments ... this effectively gives us a camera JPEG, what some call an 'out the camera' shot ... here's that 'camera' version followed by my mono for comparison :











Hopefully you'll still agree I took the right route with the processing. Certainly it solved a lot of difficult issues of colour and contrast and using the B & W panel colour wheel I could 'dial in' extra contrast and depth to a number of colour tones when converted.

I do like the B&W version but TBH I think I prefer the original now that I've seen it.
If I had taken this the most I probably would have done was a touch of clarity and bringing the highlight down. I think you have balanced the flash light almost perfectly. In fact if it wasn't for the shadow of the ice cream on her arm it would be difficult to spot that you had used flash at all. In many ways the B&W treatment has highlighted the flash effect.
A lovely moment, captured well in colour or B&W

-1

With this kind of family image it's always going to be very subjective and personal, but I really like your B&W treatment.

But as Ralph and others have said, a lovely moment beautifully captured.