Photos of Japanese women. How were these done?

[pbase]

Hello all,

I'm new to this forum as well as photography, but for a while now i've admired the kind of photographs that I see most often coming from japanese photographers.

Can anyone give me a breakdown as to how the photographers who took the attached images (sorry, I don't know their names) were able to achieve these results?

The vibrant color, the clarity, the 'eveness' of the lighting.* The photos are all of women and convey a softness, while being pin sharp at the same time. Am I looking at extensive photoshop work here, or just good lensmanship?

My own work pales in comparison. I'd like to come up to the level of these gents. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[dc2]

Welcome
I have no idea of the details really but they look a tad overexposed
Still lovely shots and I would not think theres a lot of photoshop work here
Colours can be bumped up in hue/ saturation

[Mr. Pickles]

I don't know if they did it all in the lens ofr not. I'd say not. I'd say there is PS work done, but it isn't that difficult. Looks like they lean it towards overexposed, and blow the highlights too. Colors get shifted too, don't know if they adjust them a bit or not, but they all have a bluish tint to them, like they applied a cool filter to them.

Your member name is interesting. I don't like them, or their price, so I switched.

[pbase]

What about the softness? Are they using a diffusion filter, blur in photoshop, or am I just imagining it's there?

[dc2]

Possibly but my guess is there just over exposed and as Mr Pickles is right about the a filter it might have added to that effect .

[J.A.F. Doorhof]

Very close exposures indeed this way the colors tend to go a little bit pastel.
Probarbly enhanced with a little pastel like action.

[pbase]

J.A.F., what do you mean by "close exposures?"

[Blinky]

I'm gonna guess that swimsuit shot was done with a ringflash. It's more likely the softness was done in post... it doesn't make a lot of sense to soften a digital shot with a lens filter. Better to keep the sharpness data and soften selectively.

It's possible the pastel look is just an expansion of the shadow end of the luminosity range, that is, the shadow end of the exposure is lower in contrast which forces some of the data out of the top end... nothing's blown out because the high end has data to spare and it's compressed rather than clipped. The reason I'm guessing that is because (on my monitor) there is lots of detail in the dark hair and what few shadow regions there are but, on all but the bottom left shot, the skin tone is contrasty and detail is sparse.

... I'll wager there's some 'diffuse glow' going on too.

Chip

[pbase]

Thanks Chip, but a good deal of what you've said is lost on me…
Is it possible you can decipher for a noob?

[J.A.F. Doorhof]

Close exposures = just a tad under over exposure.
Normally with skin tones I try not to expose to the bloody limit, when you want this sort of look you push firstly everything to the right, meaning the skin gets an almost blown out look, this way also the colors will shift just a tad, this can be enhanced with PS and a soft focus filter package.

[Blinky]

Originally Posted by pbase

Thanks Chip, but a good deal of what you've said is lost on me…
Is it possible you can decipher for a noob?

Actually, kind of what JAFD just said. The images are mildly overexposed, either in camera or in post.

It has to do with the range of brightness the camera can record... the dynamic range or, how many levels of brightness you can record between the darkest dark and the brightest bright. On a typical 8 bit digital camera that's divided up into 255 levels(tones) of brightness but, because the eye/brain combo sees light differently than a camera, the distribution of brightness is lopsided. Most of the those levels are in the brightest half of the dynamic range which means subtle detail is easy to record in the bright parts of an image but in the shadowy parts you have relatively few levels of brightness left to distinguish fine detail.

...did that make sense? It's just the way digital cameras work. There's all kinds of processing going on behind the scenes to make digital cameras appear to behave more like a human eye... but when you start tricking out your images, you have to understand how brightness is unevenly distributed across the dynamic range.

OK, so what do you do with that? Most of the detail is in the brightest part of the picture right? ...which means the least detail is in the darkest part. There are things you can do with your exposure, either when you shoot or on the computer later, to stretch the image data in the dark part of the dynamic range an get more detail in the darker regions... but it means you will lose some detail in the bright regions. You can either lose it by simply pushing it right off the top (clipping) or you can lose bits of it in steps from across the whole bright part of the tonal range (compression). If you clip, things that used to show bright detail just turn white. If you compress you lose subtle detail without blowing anything out to white... and of course, you can compress AND clip if you want.

Back to you pictures, if you look at large skin areas like the model's legs, you will see that they show tonal detail but not much, that part of the range is compressed. If you look in the dark areas like hair you can see a fair amount of detail like strands and subtle differences in color, that part is expanded. The effect is a pastel look because the scenes and clothing are full of lively, bright colors that look pastel-like when they're over-exposed.

So that's a long winded version of what JAFD said.

Chip

[pbase]

Ah…
I think I'm beginning to understand. And using levels in photoshop, I pushed out the bright end in a photo I took, and although it's still not as good as the pros in Japan, I can begin to see how the images may have been created.
But my efforts seem to create a few hotspots on the model's skin.

[J.A.F. Doorhof]

bump the saturation a bit and use a diffuse glow very very slightly and youre close.
Highlights burning out can be solved by proper use of makeup and light, use large soft sources.

[pbase]

Okay, with the levels adjusted as before, saturation bumped up, and smart blur used to even out the skintone.
I do think I'm getting close…
Big ol' hotspot on her chest, though.

[J.A.F. Doorhof]

History brush with a highopactity to get the hotspots in order

[pbase]

Thanks to all who helped me out with my little photographic conundrum. As I take
more photos, I'll post them for critique.

[Lunatique]

I'm a huge fan of the Japanese style and have researched it and studied it for years. Although I don't shoot in that style, I do try to learn from them. There are a lot of Chinese photographers that try to copy the same style too, and there are always discussions about how to shoot in that style in Chinese photography forums (I'm bilingual). I also read some Japanese as well, so I try to do research on the subject from Japanese photography websites.

In general, the technique used is not what you guys think. The key is to use fill lights--whether from reflectors or flashheads. Fill from any angle required to cancel out undesirable shadows, and do it with a large source (large reflector or softbox). The post processing is actually not as significant as you think, as only the hack photographers over do it. The really good ones do it with lighting and exposure, not fiddling with Photoshop (although all pro photographers understand the importance of post processing--the good ones know not to over do it). If you guys pay attention to some of the photographers shooting for the sample galleries of Japanese camera manufacturers, you'll notice that they shoot in the same style.

I've uploaded a bunch of great Japanese glamour photography examples here for those of you who are not familiar with the style:
http://www.ethereality.info/ethereal...y-examples.htm
(I put them on a seperate URL because I didn't want to flood this thread with a bunch of pictures--in case we have members still using dial-up connection.)

There's a pretty well-known Japanese glamour photographer who's got a lot of stuff on his website, including behind the scenes photos of his sessions: http://www.iwh12.net/ (it's all in Japanese though, so if you can't read Japanese...)

[pbase]

Thanks, Lunatique!

It's a good thing I came back to check this post! Would you happen to have a direct link to the behind the scenes page of the photographer's site you suggested? I can't read Japanese, and I'm having trouble finding my way around the site.