7D and Portraits

DreamMaker23 wrote in post #15902556

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/issacnikon/8711​931157/
With Our Grandma by Dre@m Maker, on Flickr

Very nice looking family that you have there DM.

rrblint wrote in post #15903283
Very nice looking family that you have there DM.

Thank you!

A couple of 7D shots. A picture of my great, great nephew and a model from a shoot.

Oldschool1948 wrote in post #15908668
A couple of 7D shots. A picture of my great, great nephew and a model from a shoot.

Hey, oldschool. I'm guessing you shot film before. I'm still having some trouble nailing this highlight and shadow detail at the same time. Are you spot metering? How many stops do you have between the center of her forehead and the highlight on the left side of her nose? With film I never had this problem but with the digital I'm continually blowing my highlights on stuff like this no matter how hard I try to tone it down until I lose my shadows.

I shot film a very, very long time ago (Canon A1, Canon AE-1, Canon 50 f/1.4, and Vivitar 70-210 - loved that lens, Velbon tripod, and Vivitar flash). I was in the Army traveling the world and loving every minute of it. At the time, I shot mostly using "automatic" mode and only dabbled with "manual" mode. In 1990, I gave my equipment to my niece and stop shooting for about 15 years. I just got serious about digital photography about 2 years ago. Bought a 40D and then a 7D. I've taken a few classes and have read a bunch of books to learn and understand "stuff." POTN has been a Godsend for me!

To answer your questions, for both shots I used spot metering. In fact, I almost always use spot meeting. I also use my light meter whenever possible.

The model pictures were taken in a professional studio using borrowed Profoto strobes and light modifiers. I only wish I could afford that gear . There is a two stop difference between the key light and the fill light. The quantity and quality of light was awesome.

For the picture of my great, great nephew, I bounced my 430EXII off the ceiling so the light would fall on his face.

I shot both pictures using my Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 non-VC lens. The model picture @f8 the other at @f2.8, both at ISO 100, 1/125. Not bad for a non "L" lens.

Oldschool1948 wrote in post #15908860
There is a two stop difference between the key light and the fill light. The quantity and quality of light was awesome.

Yeah. I love the lighting. What I was after wasn't the incident readings. I was assuming you used the spot meter on these points and thought you might know the reflected spot meter readings from those two points I mentioned. Of course if I had shot it I probably wouldn't remember either. lol

kfreels wrote in post #15911832
Yeah. I love the lighting. What I was after wasn't the incident readings. I was assuming you used the spot meter on these points and thought you might know the reflected spot meter readings from those two points I mentioned. Of course if I had shot it I probably wouldn't remember either. lol

Sorry, this was shot quite a few months ago and I definitely don't remember.

One from a few weeks back

delhi wrote in post #13853709
I keep seeing all these threads with posters seemingly trying to "segmentized" cameras. For instance the 5d2 - portrait and landscapes. 7D - sports and birds.
Lately I've decided to deliberately spend sometime getting to know the EOS 7D. Shot a few photos of my daughter.

Lighting via OCF thanks to the built-in flash commander.


This was shot at night using 2 slaves with 7D pop up as master.


I don't know. I think the 7D does portraits just fine if you ask me. And I also own a 5D too. I just wish people would avoid "putting these cameras in a box" figuratively speaking.

With good light and good lens even a cheap Rebel can take portraits!

watt100 wrote in post #15933708
With good light and good lens even a cheap Rebel can take portraits!

Exactly.

It used to be that there was a significant difference in the results you could get between full frame and crop cameras with respect to portraits, mainly because the crop cameras were resolution-limited.

That's no longer the case. Today's crop cameras record 18 megapixels worth of imagery. As long as you've got a lens on your camera that can come anywhere close to resolving enough detail to satisfy the sensor, you'll be able to get portraits that are, in practice, every bit as good as what you'd be able to get with a full frame camera, provided you've got the right light.

No, these days, the mantra that full frame is better than crop for portraits is nonsense. They're equally good in the general case. The only exception is large group portraits where you still need to isolate your subjects from the background. In that case, full frame can do a better job (by a little over a stop) because of its shallow depth of field capabilities. But in the studio, the crop camera (with the right lens) is wanting for nothing.

watt100 wrote in post #15933708
With good light and good lens even a cheap Rebel can take portraits!

That's the entire point of the thread. We were hearing way too much about how the 7D sucks at portraits because it is a crop camera. That's just a bunch of garbage so this thread was started to prove it.

Can I play with the 60D?...

IMAGE LINK: http://s37.photobucket​.com …_3265GIMP_1024v​2.jpg.html