First Go at Portraiture

Hello all!

Some close friends of mine recently got engaged. They joked around about not being able to afford engagement pics, and I'm like: "Helloooo, I've been spending half my paychecks on camera equipment these past few months"

Anyway, I would have no idea what I am doing in terms of poses, off-camera lighting and the like. So I was wondering if there was a good place to get started in reading up or looking at the standard poses and lighting setups for - say - budget engagement pics. These are very close friends, so there is no concern about "messing up" or getting everything right, more like a time for me to experiment and hopefully get them a nice engagement gift.

Poses are one of my biggest questions. Do you run through a list of poses? Have them embrace and kind of go with the flow? etc.

The other (probably more obvious and answerable question) is what gear / standard settings I should use. My gear is all listed below, I assume my 50 f1.8 would be the best lens to use for this? Should I be switching between lenses to get different shots? What camera settings should I prioritize? I will most likely be purchasing a 430EX II this weekend, and odds are I will be selling my 420EX thereafter. I'd like to try to set something up with them while I have both flashes, since I assume that gives me more flexibility. And who knows, if I fall in love with it maybe I will keep both!

Lastly: Setting. I obviously don't have any backdrops or a studio or anything. What should I be looking for in terms of a place to actually shoot? It's a little cold to do something outside. This is the area that I am the most stumped on. I could probably improvise my way through the rest.

Thanks for any help you guys can give! If there are any sites or forum topics that you all can lead me to (im sure that there are, since I'm sure there are a million people asking these same relative questions) I'm sure that would be tremendously helpful.

kelbytraining is a subscription site I would recommend with some informative videos.

For poses I would check out something like this for inspiration - http://digital-photography-school.com …ith-photographing-couples. Setting up these poses can sometimes be a bit forced though, so you may be better letting them get on with it initially as they're obviously used to interacting with each other and you'll get some good shots. Pull out your sheet if things start to dry up.

Setting wise I would personally go outside (although a little cold as you mention) - you can still get some lovely shots wrapped up in coats as opposed to flip-flops and a t-shirt! Avoid shooting in the middle of the day if possible. This way you should have plenty of natural light (maybe use a reflector if you've got one) to not have to worry about rigging up additional lighting if you don't have all the kit. Having said that, if these guys are willing to let you experiment and there's no pressure to nail it first time, then play around 'til your hearts content

As for which lens to use - I would mix it up as you suggest. The 50 will give you a nice shallow depth of field, and will be nice and sharp when you stop it down a bit, however, when compared to the 17-55 the colours and contrast from the 50 won't be as good. I would also get your 55-250 out and take some shots longer shots to avoid distortion and "smush" (technical term) the background as much as possible.

There's loads of stuff out there, and lots of people on here will give you tips and tricks, but the main thing is have fun - especially in a low-stress environment with people you know

Chris

Surf the web looking for the types of images you want to create. Save them to a folder on a phone or tablet and make yourself a portable posing guide. That will give you inspiration and the couple sort of a visual guide of what to emulate.

What would be better for portraiture on a crop body. 50mm 1.4, or 85 mm 1.8?

I feel like 85mm I would have to get too far away from the couple. Both of these lenses are around the same price so I am not sure which to look at. Also, would the 50 1.4 be a noticeable upgrade to my 1.8ii

As a general rule, you want a bit of distance between you and the model/subject, to minimize perspective distortion. But either lens will work. In this situation, where you're learning the basics of posing, lighting, and composition, the difference between 85mm and 50mm is insignificant.

There might be a local photographer or studio who's willing to rent you studio space. If you get a bite, let them know what you're doing and they might have some set pieces or props that will work. A simple chaise or couch against a dark-colored background will work well. Or, go to the couples' place and - space permitting - rearrange their stuff to make a nice shooting area. Get some inexpensive fabric (Jo-Ann or IKEA) and hang a pleated curtain behind their couch to make a mockup studio space. If it's a very small room, you might not have the space to work.

On camera settings: If you're using flash, you need to decide whether your lighting will be a mix of ambient and flash, or flash alone.

1) If you want to do flash alone, you'll set the shutter speed to your maximum sync speed (1/160-1/200), set your ISO to 100, set your aperture to whatever you need for your desired depth of field (if in doubt, somewhere between f/4 and f/8). Unless you're outside in the sun, this will kill all ambient light. Then set your flash power and distance to properly expose the subjects.

2) If you're mixing flash and ambient, which is IMO more difficult, start with your flashes turned off. Set your aperture to your desired creative DOF (again, f/4 to f/8 if you're not sure), set your shutter speed and ISO to underexpose the background by a stop or two. Then turn on your flashes and set your flash power and distance to properly expose the subjects. In this case, you can use a relatively slow shutter speed (e.g. 1/30-1/40) as long as the subjects are posing still and there's no ambient light directly lighting them; the flash will freeze them. This allows you to keep your ISO pretty low. You might need to gel your flashes so you don't have an unpleasant color mix between the ambient and flash.

nathancarter wrote in post #15601961
As a general rule, you want a bit of distance between you and the model/subject, to minimize perspective distortion. But either lens will work. In this situation, where you're learning the basics of posing, lighting, and composition, the difference between 85mm and 50mm is insignificant.

There might be a local photographer or studio who's willing to rent you studio space. If you get a bite, let them know what you're doing and they might have some set pieces or props that will work. A simple chaise or couch against a dark-colored background will work well. Or, go to the couples' place and - space permitting - rearrange their stuff to make a nice shooting area. Get some inexpensive fabric (Jo-Ann or IKEA) and hang a pleated curtain behind their couch to make a mockup studio space. If it's a very small room, you might not have the space to work.

On camera settings: If you're using flash, you need to decide whether your lighting will be a mix of ambient and flash, or flash alone.

1) If you want to do flash alone, you'll set the shutter speed to your maximum sync speed (1/160-1/200), set your ISO to 100, set your aperture to whatever you need for your desired depth of field (if in doubt, somewhere between f/4 and f/8). Unless you're outside in the sun, this will kill all ambient light. Then set your flash power and distance to properly expose the subjects.

2) If you're mixing flash and ambient, which is IMO more difficult, start with your flashes turned off. Set your aperture to your desired creative DOF (again, f/4 to f/8 if you're not sure), set your shutter speed and ISO to underexpose the background by a stop or two. Then turn on your flashes and set your flash power and distance to properly expose the subjects. In this case, you can use a relatively slow shutter speed (e.g. 1/30-1/40) as long as the subjects are posing still and there's no ambient light directly lighting them; the flash will freeze them. This allows you to keep your ISO pretty low. You might need to gel your flashes so you don't have an unpleasant color mix between the ambient and flash.

Wow! this was very helpful, thank you. Things have actually gotten even better. My sister just got engaged as well! The original couple wants to wait until april (their anniversary) to do the shoot so we can go outside etc, but I am (obviously) much more comfortable with my sister and now-brother in law, so things just got even more informal and opened up to experimentation. I'm definitely going to have some fun with these.

Edit - And my sister would definitely be fine with bundling up and doing an outdoor shoot. The original couple would DEFINITELY not have done that in the colder temperature haha.

The camera settings I mentioned above are suitable for moderate to dim ambient light. Shooting outdoors during the day is a whole 'nother way of thinking.

Remember that if there's a lot of snow in the scene, the camera's metering will want to underexpose unless you tell it otherwise. The meter wants to make everything average... it sees a bunch of snow and says "wow, that's a lot of white, must be overexposed, let's make everything nice and average gray." This is where your skilled input as a photographer will make or break the image. If you're in the auto modes you'll use +EC to bump up exposure a bit. If you're in manual mode, you'll let the metering needle float over to the right a bit. Don't try to chase it back down to zero.

If you're outside in a snowy scene, the histogram is going to be heavily weighted to the right... and that's okay. You want white snow to be white.

If you're shooting outside with flash, you have to take somewhat of a different approach than my notes in the previous post, because your maximum shutter speed is limited by your camera's sync speed (1/160-1/200). If you're outside in the sun, to keep your shutter speed this low, you'll really have to close down your aperture. This means you lose a fair amount of creative control over your DOF, plus you have to really crank up your flash power. You can use a neutral-density filter to allow you to open up your aperture a bit for a shallower DOF, but you've still got to use a lot of power from your flash.

Shooting outside portraits, aim for the golden hour - that last hour before sunset. You pretty much can't go wrong there. But that hour goes by fast, so make sure you've got your locations scouted and your equipment ready to go in advance.

Just found a 85mm 1.8 plus good and tiffen filter on Craig's list for 300. I think that's pretty decent from what I see on the forum and eBay.

Your 17-55 is obviously a really nice lens, but when you look at longer focal lengths the 85 1.8 will trump the 55-250 and the 50 1.8 so I don't think you'll be disappointed if you bite the bullet The one thing to note is that 85 on a crop is pretty long - you will probably find it's never on your camera inside, for example.

chrismarriott66 wrote in post #15604632
Your 17-55 is obviously a really nice lens, but when you look at longer focal lengths the 85 1.8 will trump the 55-250 and the 50 1.8 so I don't think you'll be disappointed if you bite the bullet The one thing to note is that 85 on a crop is pretty long - you will probably find it's never on your camera inside, for example.

Haha I pretty much made this same post in another thread where I was discussing this. Another poster had mentioned that the difference between my 50mm 1.8 @2.8 and my 17-55 @50mm+2.8 is somewhat negligible, especially when compared to my 55-250@85mm compared to the 85mm 1.8. I think this argument is what finally convinced me to go with 85mm, since most of my more quality options are in the 30-50mm range.

So I feel like an idiot. I completely forgot that my affiliation with Upenn gets me free access to lynda.com, which has a ton of Photography videos. Anyone familiar with this site? Any recommendations on good tutorials to watch?

Yes, it's great. I got a LOT out of Chris Orwig's series on Lightroom and Photoshop. Deke's Techniques are fun too.

I haven't used any of the tutorials on actual photography (yet).

I'm hoping to use it to get started on Illustrator. Haven't had time to mess with it in the past few months.

Right now I am using a free trial of CS2, and I am fine with purchasing something. I have not really done anything with pp yet. Should I look into purchasing lightroom?

Well, I can't tell you how to spend your money, but I'm a huge fan of Lightroom. It's half organizer and half editor, and does both quite well.

There's a free 30-day trial, I think... but I wouldn't recommend jumping right into it without looking at some of the tutorials, either on Lynda or on Adobe TV.