Why would you use these settings? Am I missing something

Just for the record, there is nothing inherently wrong with the settings mentioned. If the photo did not turn out, that is a whole new kettle of fish however! Because of both aperture and shutter speed being set at intermediate settings, I would suspect that the photographer had the camera set in Green or P mode, and it looks like they were using available light (or continuous lighting). It's likely he/she had no clue what they were doing.

Maybe it's just me, but how do you get a shutter speed of 1/128? That's not on any dial I've ever seen. Maybe in Green mode the camera can pick what it wants?

Lotto wrote in post #5716135
With the 5D and up close, f8 is not enough keep both eyes in focus if the subject does not face the camera straight sometimes.

From a recent set of really nice head shots I did:

full frame
140mm
1/50th
ISO 800
F/5.6
Strobe

Settings are always hard to interpret, but the image result is really what counts.

pcunite wrote in post #5716546
Strange for sure... Sounds like someone used green box mode!

Highly doubtful. Green box mode in a (relatively dark) studio would have most likely resulted in 1/60 shutter and wide-open aperture (not to mention grossly overexposed images if studio strobes are used).

It doesn't give away a darn thing. The 5D instruction manual recommends 1/125 with large studio flash. In reality, anything between 1/30 and 1/200 probably won't make a difference.

f/14 is a reasonable aperture for studio portraits with a camera of this format. ISO 400 on the 5D is perfectly clean, and would allow lower power settings on the strobes for faster recycling.

There is nothing inherently wrong with the settings used here. That doesn't make the image good or bad, but the photographer in this case is being unfairly maligned by previous responders in this thread who have not seen the picture.

Curtis N wrote in post #5738099
Highly doubtful. Green box mode in a (relatively dark) studio would have most likely resulted in 1/60 shutter and wide-open aperture (not to mention grossly overexposed images if studio strobes are used). It doesn't give away a darn thing.

Thanks for sharing your opinion!

I will take a contrary opinion to Curtis's response, although what he says is not far off. My guess is that the guy had too powerful of flash unit, could not dial down power sufficiently, was stupid about not resetting the camera to ISO 100 rather than ISO 400, metered the scene, set the reading, and fired! 55mm on a FF camera for a waist up portrait?! Much better shot at 70-85mm, further reducing DOF. With 55mm at f/14 there is about 4' of DOF at a shooting distance of 8', so adequacy of DOF was not the reason for f/14...it could have been shot at f/5.6 at that FL, and there would be 2' of DOF. Airhead photographer.