Help with Indoor Portrait settings for "M" mode...

[dancinmyazoff]

A friend of mine is being my model for a few hours to help me practice, I'm shooting some portraits of her in a very well lit room, using only natural lighting. What do you recommend I keep my shutter speed at if I'm keeping the ISO at 100 and F-Stop at F/11. Any good rule of thumb for shutter speed with portraits. Thank you.


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Canon 40D, Sigma 28-70 F/2.8-4 DG lens

[JeffreyG]

A friend of mine is being my model for a few hours to help me practice, I'm shooting some portraits of her in a very well lit room, using only natural lighting. What do you recommend I keep my shutter speed at if I'm keeping the ISO at 100 and F-Stop at F/11. Any good rule of thumb for shutter speed with portraits. Thank you.


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Canon 40D, Sigma 28-70 F/2.8-4 DG lens
I think that those settings are going to be hopeless.

Two quick points:
1) I can't tell you where to put your shutter speed as I cannot get my incident light meter into your studio. You need to meter the scene and then decide on your settings.
2) Picking your ISO and aperture up front without knowing the light is a bad strategy.

I just metered my own family room next to a doorwall. If I wanted to shoot there at ISO100 and f/11 I would need a 2 second exposure. That is so slow as to be laughable. There will be obvious subject blur at that setting. It's cloudy here....but I strongly doubt that your house interior is going to be much better than 2 stops brighter. I think f/11 at ISO100 is out of the question unless you are using strobes.

Here in my living room I would have to compromise. ISO800, f/2 and 1/100 would work. I would not let the shutter speed go below about 1/100 if I could help it. 1/60 is really pushing it for people as they need to be holding very still.

[EdBray]

Why on earth do you want to use f11 for a portrait, most of my portraits are taken at f5.6 and below.

With available light and your listed equipment Canon 40D, (Sigma 28-70 F/2.8-4 DG lens) I would be shooting at between 50 and 70mm on your zoom and probably using ISO 400 @ f5.6.

[charleyclarke16]

Do you have a large reflector? they are not that expensive and they help a lot for natural light portraits. I also would not recommend shooting at f11. you want your background to be out of focus. i would start at 5.6 and work from there.

[dancinmyazoff]

Why on earth do you want to use f11 for a portrait, most of my portraits are taken at f5.6 and below.



I sometimes find it a little intimidating asking questions on here because of responses like such. I am a VERY beginner and have started reading a lot of books on photography and 1 tip that I was trying to follow was that they kept mentioning was that a good aperture to take portraits in is taken in F/11. I apologize for my novice question.

[charleyclarke16]

Dont worry about some peoples responses... the reason a lot of places recommend f11 is because on a lot of lenses it is the sharpest aperture...the problem with using such a small aperture indoors though is that you will most likely need to use a slow shutter... unless you add a flash or something to your shots... also shooting at ISO 100 isnt really necessary, the 40D will be great at ISO 400. Do you have a reflector?

[JeffreyG]

I sometimes find it a little intimidating asking questions on here because of responses like such. I am a VERY beginner and have started reading a lot of books on photography and 1 tip that I was trying to follow was that they kept mentioning was that a good aperture to take portraits in is taken in F/11. I apologize for my novice question.

It's the internet. Blow it off and move on.

The reason your book suggested f/11 for portraits is because they were talking about shooting in a studio with strobes. I shoot the vast majority of indoor strobes portraits at f/8 to f/11 too.

For natural light, f/11 is simply unrealistic. Keep this in mind.....the correct exposure for bright sunlight outdoors in summer is f/16, 1/100 and ISO100. So your picks (if you wanted to keep 1/100 shutter speed) are only one stop below shooting outdoors in full sun. That was why experienced photographers immediately noticed that this would not work.

So, how to proceed? I recommend you be flexible. For one thing, you are going to have to compromise on ISO. Your 40D is actually very good to ISO800. If you can stay at ISO400 so much the better, but it is always better to compromise on ISO than to use too slow of a shutter speed. Do not be surprised if you wind up shooting your lens wide open at ISO400 to 800 to get the shutter speed you need.

"Brightly lit indoors" usually winds up being a lot darker than most people expect.

[capt_tast]

I agree with the point about metering. Meter the scene.
Shoot in Raw.
Shooting in Bracketed mode may also help. It takes one stop below and one stop above.

[EdBray]

I sometimes find it a little intimidating asking questions on here because of responses like such. I am a VERY beginner and have started reading a lot of books on photography and 1 tip that I was trying to follow was that they kept mentioning was that a good aperture to take portraits in is taken in F/11. I apologize for my novice question.

There was no intention for me to demean your question, and i gave you some advice as to how to proceed with your shoot.

You asked your question and loaded it with some fixed requirements, I was asking why, as you seemed very sure of what you wanted to do.

I can only assume that you are reading the wrong books if they are telling you to limit yourself to a specific aperture and ISO speed, especially for portraiture. I cannot think of a portrait I have taken at greater than f8 unless for a specific reason and I have been involved in photography for about 30 years.

A better way to have phrased your question may have been:
I want to take some indoor portraits with my listed equipment, can you advise me how to proceed with the intention to keep the best image quality I can?

Still, my advise stands:

Use your 40D on ISO 400 or even 800 if you need to, use the lens between 50 & 70mm and use an aperture of about f5.6, if you are confident about the quality of your lens wide open then (a little softness will not hurt a female portrait) you could even drop to f4 and try to maintain a shutter speed of 1/60 sec or greater.

[Deckham]

Some quick shots from yesterday:
http://MarkGerman.zenfolio.com/p83227235

You can see setting details.
They are not 'works of art', but you can see how wide aperture can be used.

Also - these had fill-flash (well, bounced) if I remember correctly.

[Kzaroshen]

Nice shots Deckham :D the first one is hilarious, a very 'OMGWTF' emotion.

[egordon99]

A friend of mine is being my model for a few hours to help me practice, I'm shooting some portraits of her in a very well lit room, using only natural lighting. What do you recommend I keep my shutter speed at if I'm keeping the ISO at 100 and F-Stop at F/11.

The shutter speed would depend ENTIRELY on the "very well lit room, using only natural lighting". Unless we can transport ourselves into that very room at that very time of day, there is NO way we can answer that question.

[form]

Set camera in RAW, expose to the right (meter 1/3 or more over exposure), adjust shutter speed to minimum 1.5x the division of the focal length you're using (at 50mm that would be 1/75 second shutter speed), and adjust the aperture somewhere between your widest possible and f/8 and ISO between 100 and 800, with priority set on having a wider aperture and lower ISO but not at the expense of a slower shutter speed. Always keep the shutter speed up, 1/100 would be safe for most work with a standard zoom lens, and whatever aperture and ISO will give you properly exposed 1/100 sec. shutter speeds.

[Lightworks Imaging]

^ +1

[Karl Johnston]

It's the internet. Blow it off and move on.

bw!