using wide angle distortions in portraits

[Pherdinand]

Just like the title says.
Any portraits made specifically with wide angle to use distortion? (accidental WA portraits that turned out great due to distortion are also welcome🙂 )
Here's a starter(24mm lens on 135 film).
I know i've seen a few in the galleries here and there😀 so cough them up!

 

[Sonnar Brian]

Got ya goin' didn't I! I have some; mostly from the SLR's and from a long time ago. I'll Scan and Post!

 

[nwcanonman]

Is 40mm considered WA? That's all my Canonet can do, and it's closest focus is like 3 feet.

 

[Doug]

Well, I'm having a hard time finding obvious distortion due to snapping at a 'too close" distance. It also takes a bit of unusual point of view like Csab's nice pic above to do it... 🙂

Here's one example. That's me in the dentist's chair, and I have the camera in my left hand snapping the action from maybe 2/3 meter away. Obviously "too close" for portraiture... and the lens is the fixed 45mm on a Fuji GA645W, about equivalent to 28mm on a little camera.:angel:

 

[Pherdinand]

Woaa Doug, that's scaringly cool 😱 🙂
I have a dentist friend, maybe i'll try something similar next time i "visit" him, thanks for the idea! However, i;m not sure i can do it myself while being in this position, it should need a high degree of braveness.

 

[nwcanonman]

Pherdinand.
I couldn't resist the $3.00 Olympus Trip 300 on Ebay last week. It's got a fixed 34mm lens, so I'll see if it works for street portraits this weekend. It is a P&S, not an RF, but if I lose it - eh? Who cares.

 

[Doug]

Continuing with the thread, I found another that does have some perspective distortion. Fuji GA645Wi again with 4/45mm.

 

[Doug]

Oops!

 

[Rich Silfver]

Pherdiand, I like that photo a lot - hope you don't mind my 5-minute-quick-play with it in PS.

 

[Pherdinand]

I don't mind it at all, Rich - but now you'll have to explain me, what exactly you have done😀
It became very richsilfverbergish 🙂seriously! I think it's the tonality and the greenish tint is what i mean, but i'm not sure.

By the way, i played with the contrast a bit myself, but the grains started to act weird (expired delta3200), see her teeth on your version too... and i'm not a very patient guy, when it's about postprocessing🙁 But i do like what you've done.

Doug, that's very cool🙂 Did you lie on your belly or just approximated the framing?

 

[michael]

I don't know if this counts, but for once I had one more or less ready.

 

[Doug]

Thanks, Pherdinand! I just held the camera down low and didn't use the viewfinder.

I like Rich's editing of your photo... I had also edited it myself just to see what improvement might come from a simple tweak on the histogram in the Levels control. I think Rich did basically that too, but either did more than that too or was just more careful than I! 🙂

 

[chenick]

I don't mind it at all, Rich - but now you'll have to explain me, what exactly you have done😀
It became very richsilfverbergish 🙂seriously! I think it's the tonality and the greenish tint is what i mean, but i'm not sure.

Yeah, what did you do Rich? 🙂

I tried curves, levels etc, but came nowhere near... each attempt killed the tonality!

-Nick

 

[Rich Silfver]

I can't remember reallly....

To me contrast and brightness settings are not always as 'scientific' as keeping on eye on your levels to see if you lose your shadow details - it's more of 'what looks good'.

I remember I did this;

- 1) Adjuststed the levels so that the triangles touched the beginning and end of end side of the levels
- 2) Unsharpening at 0.8, 130, 4
- 3) Converted to grayscale
- 4) Applied a standard photoshop dunotone (in the quad category)
- 5) Converted to RGB
- 6) Played with curves so that I got a faint "S" curve
- 7) Final tweaks in brightness/contrast
- 8) Zoomed up a bit and did some dodging on eye-whites and teeths.

And that's about it - the next time I'll document the steps more detailed if anyone cares 🙂

 

[Pherdinand]

yeah, rich, you just don't want to tell us the details of your secrets😀

[thanks]