Since we need to get some posts in here (so people don't think that this is a dead area)
I figured I'd add a sample of what I did on e recent shoot. I photographed the couple with their dog and cat. (I recommended what to wear but he didn't have much she said) so ignore his sweater ;-) I could have changed it but thought that might be insulting to them.
anyway - I shot 50/50 film and D30. The film shots were all pretty unusable because the dog sucked up the light like a black hole in space. Even in digital - he needed help. Actually the whole shot did. Since animals aren't always cooperative, I shot serveral shots and poses. This was the one the couple liked best. But as you can see from the orginal on the left, the dog looked at the cat and the cat looked down at the moment of exposure. Because the couple liked their expressions here the best, I took the dogs head off another shot and the cats head off yet a third shot and combined them in this one image. I also burned the edges a little because I don't have a matte box or vignette on the D30. I tweaked image quality and levels and found that 'dad's coloration was pretty bad. HE WAS VERY RED... that was just him as I noticed this would be a problem when I was photographing them. So I selected his hand and face and adjusted the color so that it would better match that of his wife.
I softened lines and wrinkles (which really can't be seen here - but can in the larger full size images) and I removed the yellow and redness from both of their teeth (they were heavy smokers I'd bet)
In addition to placing a better "head on the dog" he was still very dark. I laid in some extra detail in the coat using the dodge tool and the rubber stamp tool in photoshop. Also because the main light was on the right side. Only the dogs right eye showed up. So I copied his right eye - flipped it horizontally and pasted it in place on the left side of the dogs face.
After doing the work this image ended up going to 16x20 - printed photographically on a "lightjet" printer which is like a huge photo enlarger, but projects a digital file to paper with lasers. The final print was excellent and the customers loved it.
See it here...
http://www.zing.com/picture/p1f9e611...8.jpg.orig.jpg
They said - I was the first person who could take a photograph of their dog and have any detail show up.
Without digital - I couldn't have pulled this off. And probably would have had to reshoot the family of four "outdoors" in outdoor light in the spring.
[This message has been edited by Ron (edited April 05, 2001).]
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