First fashion show images

[dmartins]

Hey all,

It's been a while since I posted here, but a few days ago I walked past an open fashion show in a local shopping center and took the opportunity to take a few photo's since as this is the area of photography I would like to focus on in future.
Would be greatful for any feedback on the following images; I'll post a few more later but these are the only one's I've managed to take a look at so far..

http://www.itekdesign.eu/photos/DSC_4423.JPG
http://www.itekdesign.eu/photos/DSC_4177_209.JPG
http://www.itekdesign.eu/photos/DSC_4161_193.JPG

Edit: Shot with D300 in JPG, Nikkor 18mm-200mm VR handheld.

Thanks,
Dan

[kat]

Is there a way you can make them smaller? Took over 2 mins for it to come to me and I'm scrolling up and down, left to right...

[EJC]

I like the last one best. You did really well on the composition and DOF. The middle models white pants may be a tad bright but the shadow areas are pretty good. Pehaps a bit of burning would help. There must have been some weird light in the second shot because the models and their clothes look yellow but the white panels above them are normal looking. The people on the upper level are distracting but with the girls spread out you must have needed a wider DOF. Good job of taking advantage of the situation to get in a real model shoot!

cheers

[dmartins]

Is there a way you can make them smaller? Took over 2 mins for it to come to me and I'm scrolling up and down, left to right...

Ok I've resized them for you. They are at 72 dpi and are all less then 800KB.

Thanks,
Dan

[Iguanasan]

Since they are in the critiques section I'll throw in my opinions. First off, great to see that you are dragging your camera around everywhere to have the opportunity to pounce on this one.

All the pictures are grainy/soft focus. I'm not sure if this is totally the D300's ISO 400 performance or if it's a combination of that and not being totally in focus. Maybe if you'd dropped down to an f4.0 and bumped ISO to 200 it may have been a better choice.

The camera's automatic white balance didn't help very much probably due to some lighting they were using for the show.

Other than that it looks like you captured some decent shots there.

[F8&Bthere]

First of all, nice pictures. When I compare the settings for these three shots, I see that VR was on for all three, but curious thing is the 1st shot with slower shutter speed appears sharper in places than the other two.

I have the D300 as well but I do not have this lens. For what it's worth I like shooting RAW so I can correct white balance in PP (I'm often too lazy or rushed to get it right in the first place). I also try to avoid shooting at the extreme ends of the focal range (unless it's Nikon's best glass- which I don't have yet). I always try to back off at least a bit since many lenses show their weakness/softness at the extremes. Your last shot was the softest of the three to my eye and it was full out at 200mm.

Although this model was praised for its high ISO performance when it first came out, I find that it's a bit finicky. I have to nail the exposure to avoid nasty grain even at 500 - 800 ISO in some situations. That said, i don't mind a bit of grain in some shots, and the noise in the D300 is usually not all that artifacty (that's my new term for sorta kinda maybe a bit like film grain)

Also I noticed you used the vivid camera setting and you may not agree but for people photography I find it way obnoxious. But okay for landscapes and nature. It just makes skin look too orangey-pink. I shot local highland games in vivid mode when my D300 was new and I was kicking myself later that I didn't try experimenting with other settings. I learned my lesson though and keep it in neutral or standard in most cases for skin.

my 2 cents, ymmv

[AcadieLibre]

First, we do prefer you post them in the forum, if not sure how to ask. Now for my opinion, your B&W's seem to be missing variations in tonal range and overexposed, they go from black to white and seem to have not much in the grays. The Colour one, just not sure how to put it in words, just looks off and there is no cohesion to the colour range, the models are all looking off to places where they shouldn't. Timing is crucial, the eyes in the colour one is just all over, distracts from the photo. As always my

These two can be critiqued if anyone wants, but these were published and one I got a prize for. The tones are consistent throughout the images and one shows action. Just using them as examples of what Fashion mags look for a consistency that shows the models in a stunning light. I have not done any fashion in a while but just no real interest in it.