F stop question

this is prob a very basic question and maybe I should know it already . I have friends who want me to take maternity pics of them. I have never took pics of couples (really I have only taken pics of my kids and a few friends kids). I informed them not to expect much out of my pictures . My question is what F stop do you usually shoot when shooting couples/families?

Thanks!

(oh and I am doing the pics for free)

What focal length will you be using?

Find a solid background and you can stop down as much as you want, or at least to the point that refraction starts affecting image quality. But before anyone can suggest a particular F-Stop we'd need to know:

• Camera body or at least sensor size
  
• Lens focal length
  
• Distance to subject
  
• Expected size of the final print
  

I have a T4i and will be using my nifty fifty lens (only other lens I have is 55-250 stm & 18-55 kit lens). I will be close for most of the pictures but some of them I will be a little ways away. Size of printing good question, no idea what they will do.

This is a website that is often recommended: http://www.dofmaster.c​om/dofjs.html . Punch in your focal length, f-stop, etc., and it will give you the amount of depth-of-field that you have and it's position relative to your subject....so much in front of and so much behind the subject. If you punch in your 50mm lens and aperture of f/1.8 then you will see that you will only have about 10 inches of depth of field...you will need to be very careful about focus (focus on the eyes, right?) and also make sure that you have both of the subjects on the same visual plane so that one isn't further or closer to the camera. As you play with the DOF calculator you can see how making the aperature smaller will gradually increase the dof. To get some separation from the subject and background have the couple stand well in front of the background so that it's thrown out of focus.

Watch the lighting. No dappled lighting that would result in light/dark/light/dark spots on the couple. Solid open shade is nice...move the subjects closer to the edge of the shade for more pronounced shadows...further into the shade for less. Watch for shadows in eye sockets though it shouldn't be too be of an issue (if an issue at all) if shooting in nice open shade....a reflector might come in handy for getting light into them. Late in the day during the "Golden Hour" just before sunset is a great time to discard the shade and let the low angle of the sun do some wonderful things to your setting.

If you have someone willing you could practice on them in the venue that you are considering shooting in...a little "experience" under your belt before "going live". Also, you might go ahead and get the couple to agree to do a second shoot, letting them know that you want to study the first images, see your errors, and in the second shoot correct those errors. Two shoots would be a good learning tool for you...and the couple would have more (and better) images out of it...."win-win".

This is probably all old news to you and it's definitely not coming from an expert...hopefully I didn't goof on anything and if I did I'm sure someone will (hopefully) correct me. Have fun with the shoot!!!

Ed

Ed I can not thank you enough for this great post! Thank you so much for taking the time, you have helped me a lot!

One more thing...keep your shutter speed up. Shoot 1/125 and up and you should be ok. I think more images are ruined by camera-shake rather than using the wrong aperture.

Ed

Fantastic post. Thank you so much Ed. Very informative

Thanks for the tip. I will make sure I keep an eye on that.

I hope it all helps. And don't forget...have fun.

Ed

I does help! Ha yes I need to have fun...I just like taking pics as a hobby. Taking pics for others is just to stressful

Intheswamp wrote in post #17483546
One more thing...keep your shutter speed up. Shoot 1/125 and up and you should be ok. I think more images are ruined by camera-shake rather than using the wrong aperture.

Ed

I think most of the "soft lens" complaints I hear are really minor camera shake problems.

The old "set shutter at 1/focal length" thumb rule comes from back in the days when negatives were enlarged no more than an 8x enlarged print viewed at normal reading distance (or slides were projected on a screen viewed from ten feet away). Nowadays, people commonly judge images on their monitors at 100x with their noses practically touching the screen. That actually calls for a much higher shutter speed or a tripod.

Yes, the 1/fl rule was what I learned back in the 70's. I hadn't really thought about the comparison of film and digital, though, RDKirk, thanks for sharing. Since starting to shoot DSLRs last year I been wondering about that and feeling as if something was "different" between minimum shutter speeds when shooting film and digital. I should have been more clear with my statement, though...the 1/125 speed was for the OP's nifty-fifty.

Ed

I make the mistake often of using too small of an aperture which of course means that, unless you have your subjects lined up nice and neatly on the same plane, one will be in focus and the other will be slightly blurry.
It is always a balancing act...you want enough DOF to make sure you get both subjects in focus...but you want enough faster enough shutter to stop motion and eliminate camera shake.
Flash helps out very much in this regard.

What do you normally shoot in? I am thinking F4-5 would be a safe bet for me?