Potrait Shots

[aseanna]

Can you take nice potrait shots with blurred background like a SLR lens. My understanding is that the lens used in digital cameras has great depth of field and are incapable of giving the same effect as that for SLR unless you use the D30. Any comments ?

[rknol]

The 90 has a special portrait setting, so it should be possible. I have no experience with it at this moment.

[James]

You can use either Portrait mode, in the EOS based settings or you can have it on Av mode and keep the apurature at a low DoF.

Either way will work, but keep in mind, the one big advantage of digital is that you can experiment and see immediate results.

[bmiller]

The Pro90 has a very high quality lens. It supports aperture settings from F2.8 to F8.0. (my 35mm SLR can be set from F2.8 to F22) It's very easy to control the DOF by the Av Aperture Priority or Tv Shutter Priority settings on the Pro90. You can also preview the settings through the lens or LCD before taking the photo by pressing the shutter button halfway down. The Auto Mode tends to set the lower aperture in average to low light and flash situations which can result in some unintentional blurred shots.


My understanding is that the lens used in digital cameras has great depth of field and are incapable of giving the same effect as that for SLR unless you use the D30. Any comments ?

[gbjune]

Although I don't use a Pro 90, I think part of what the original question is what happens to DOF.

Since digital cameras (well, digital cameras that cost less than 1 arm and 1 leg) have "smaller" lenses (like the G1's 7-21 mm, the effects of DOF will be reduced...

Taken from
http://www.students.tut.fi/~vahonen/computer/digiphoto/DOF/ (for G1)

and
http://www.cs.yorku.ca/~oz/nikon/dof/dof_hfd.htm (for 35mm)

21mm G1, focus 5 meters away, f/2

nearest sharp: 4.46m
farthest sharp: 5.69m

102mm 35mm, focus 5 meters away, f/2
nearest sharp: 4.959m
farthest sharp: 5.041m

So, my example here (the G1) has more of the picture in focus for the same aperture and "effective focal length".

Which is good if you want to get pictures that have a lot in focus, but sucks if you want to use DOF for something creative...
(IMHO)

-Geir

[yourpix]

i am jsut starting out with the portrait thing. i had a great first shoot.

http://www.yourpix.com/headshots.html

white wall with tripod mounted floods. apeture wide open.

[oops]

Actually my definition of "great" DOF is the ability to blur the background at will using wider aperture settings.

That is what I miss the most from my 35mm camera. Digital "prosumer" cameras have short focal length with resulting l-o-n-g DOF. This has caused them to be labeled "point and Shoot" cameras by the more snooty bunch that can afford those digital SLR's with removable lenses. In defense, however, many of these folks started with fixed lens digitals and are still very helpful to the rest of us. Pekka is a good example.

I know what you want. I want it, too. The ability to fill the frame AND blur the background at will regardless of subject or distance or light. There are prosumer limitations but, as I understand it, the work-arounds are possible with the PRO90 because of the 10x zoom lens.

Step b-a-c-k; zoom in (longer focal length), select portrait or wide aperture, and bingo! Full frame, can't see squat in the background, digital full frame picture thanks to the 10x zoom.

Am I right? (I don't own a Pro90, yet).

But the theory sounds right. Man, I hope I'm right because I miss short DOF so much.

[jfranciskay]

I have posted and example in the Shared photos section of this site called "Pro90 IS Portrait Example" to give you an idea. This was shot at full zoom at F4.0. Hope it helps....

[icpixels]

Just set the camera to the portrait mode and make sure your lense is set at 70mm and up...if you are shooting in the program mode.
If you're shooting in the av mode just set you aperture
to f5.6 and choose 70 mm +
If you're shooting manually..f5.6 or wider,70mm+ and iso setting of 100asa or slower.
Then shoot lots of frames and see what you like.
The above is just a starting point.