Your photos are absolutely beautiful. The colors are great and they are tack sharp.
Jack
Thank you very much, Jack.
Purchasing the Z 24-120/4 S for this and future celebrations was a perfect choice.
I used four different lenses for the ceremony, mostly with the Z 24-120/4 S due to its flexibility and the lack of the option to change lenses during the actual christening ceremony.
For the subsequent celebration in the garden, I used the Z 50/1.8 S, a few shots with my old Canon FD 85/1.2 L, and of course the Plena, but the results with the Plena are simply in a league of their own, especially under difficult conditions (poor backgrounds, lots of potentially distracting elements in the background, sometimes harsh midday light).
The Plena is an absurdly good lens, which really helps you deliver due to its exceptional rendering aesthetics.
Not that the images with the Z 50/1.8 S are bad, or with the Z 24-120/4 S, on the contrary, but the number of keepers is simply so much higher with the Plena, because it is able to deliver something special through rendering even from very simple and difficult situations.
For the first time, I used NX Studio throughout the images, followed by DXO PL6.
I only activated noise reduction for a few images, at very high ISO values, and then only used noise reduction in NX Studio.
This is also one of the things that surprised me with my new Z8.
My concerns about noise at higher ISO ranges, compared to my Z6, were ultimately unfounded.
In practice, at least in my personal photographic work, it is much less relevant than the measured values and graphs might suggest.
The advantages of the 45MP stacked sensor clearly outweigh the disadvantages for me, and the disadvantages that made me hesitate to make the switch for a long time turn out to be much less relevant in practice than studying tests, diagrams, and dynamic range/noise values would suggest.
The images weren't sharpened at all; only via DXO "Lens Softness Compensation" were settings of "0" (DXO's default is "1.00"), or with Plena, often in the range of -0.15 to -0.25.
So, extremely defensive sharpening, but also no or hardly any noise reduction, even at ISO 4500-5000, which leaves some background noise but also preserves maximum detail.
Otherwise, no sharpening; in 2-3 images (especially of the baby), the opposite was true, with a very slight Orton effect.
Not even when exporting, and yet the images are razor-sharp, even at full resolution.
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Here, for those interested, is some more information about my settings on the Z8 for these images.
I took the settings from a post about weddings/portraits/head shots in the Backcountry Gallery forum.
https://bcgforums.com/threads/z8-fo...taking-portraits-headshots.24898/#post-280348
I then applied the jpg in camera settings to the development of the NEF/RAW files via NX Studio.
- Portrait in picture control - dropped mid-range sharpening to -2.0; clarity to -1.00.
- Raw + JPG Fine*
- Active D-lighting: Low
- Skin Softening Normal
- Portrait impression balance Mode 2
- Metering to Matrix + b4: Matrix Metering Face Detection activated
- Subject Detection to HUMANS
. Not sure where you are at, but always wanted to visit Friesland.
It was amazing to see just how big this expo became, a true successor to PhotoPlus Expo!
