Identical Conditions – Two Drastically Different Results

This amazingly sharp, hand-held shot was taken with the all-new Canon 100mm f/2.8L IS USM macro lens (courtesy of LensProToGo.com) mounted to a Canon 5D Mark II body. There are two exposures here, both of which are properly exposed and have merit, yet they have two totally different tones due to the settings used. In the image you see above I used f/2.8 at 1/200 sec with ISO 400 (by accident) and a Canon 580 EX II flash. While I liked the picture on many levels, when I checked my settings I was annoyed to see I had chosen ISO 400, so I brought the camera back down to ISO 100 (since I was using a flash that was totally fine) and set the aperture to f/5.6 for a little more depth of field (not really necessary in this case, but I wanted to shoot at the sweet spot for this lens). I kept my shutter speed at 1/200 sec and took a second exposure (hover over to see the difference). The result is a nice warm image with a totally different feel and more detail on my wife’s shoulder. When you look at them side by side, the warmer tone is usually more pleasing. However, when viewed individually both stand strong on their own. The brighter image feels more like natural light (which it was) with no flash, whereas the warmer image feels like it was taken at night (it was really taken during the day) with only a flash.

The only processing of these images was with Viveza 2.0 to brighten the whites of the eyes in the warmer shot, and Sharpener Pro in both images to give more texture to the hair and clothing (not needed as this lens is amazingly sharp).

UPDATE: Since I posted this article some have mentioned that they can’t tell much difference between the two images, and wondered if the only difference was the presence of a flash. On a calibrated monitor and in print, there’s a fairly large difference between both images with the 2nd image (that you have to hover over to see) being much warmer and darker. Both images were shot with a flash from the same location, but the different depth of field and my position after adjusting the camera settings cause for some other subtle composition differences. This was not a scientific experiment, just a observation that I thought some beginners might find interesting.