First Portrait Pictures--C&C's please

Hi Everyone,


An unexpected part of visiting my family for an early Christmas this past weekend was my brother-in-law asked me to take a series of portraits of him for an upcoming newspaper ad he wanted to run for his business. This is my first attempt to actually take a staged portrait shot. I tried to remember as much as I could from what I've read on the forum, but my "set up" was a lamp placed on a step ladder to my left, my sister holding another lamp to my right, and placing him in front of a wall in their living room. I opened the shades on all the windows to maximize light in the room. Despite that, the EFS 15-85 still needed a flash to get proper exposure and those pictures where awful (too much detail on the face, odd shadows). So I switched to the 50 mm f/1.8and needed every bit of the aperture.


Please let me know what you see in the photos below and how I could improve.


Canon 7D EF 50 mm f/1.8


1/60, f/2.2, ISO 400


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1/60, f/2.2, ISO 400


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1/60, f/1.8, ISO 400


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Things that I see:

1. The first two have a shadow from his nose created by the lamp on my right (one my sister was holding). I corrected this by the third picture.
2. I should have probably increased to ISO 800 and my shutter speed to be faster than 1/80.
3. I was about 3-4 ft from him, if I had a 85 mm prime, I could of had a little more distance.

Thanks,


Brant

Hi Brant,


Here are my suggestions:

1. Adjust your white balance, which is too warm. For instance, the subject's shirt collar should be white, or on the slightly warm side of white. One way you can do this is by using the white balance tool in Canon's Digital Photo Professional software that is included with your camera.
2. The lighting is better in #3, but there still seems to be an issue with overall underexposure.
3. If you shoot with a tripod, you can use much slower shutter speeds than 1/80 s. If your subject remains still, you can get sharp photos as slow as 1/15 s.
4. Consider altering the directionality of the lighting. Let the strongest lighting source strike the portion of the face that is facing the camera. Notice how the subject's nose is pointed slightly to the camera's right; to avoid creating large shadows, the main light source should then come slightly from camera left.
5. Focus on the eyes. If you are using AF, you may do this by either selecting a specific focus point in the frame that contains the target object; or if this is not possible, use the nearest or best focus point and recompose by tilting the camera after you have achieved AF. Alternatively, if you are using a tripod, you may try using manual focus in a magnified Live View image, which can yield very good results.
6. You need a better quality of light source. Indoor studio-type portraiture of the kind you are doing is 99% lighting. It has very little to do with the camera. For proof, watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOoGjtSy7xY Granted, you don't need something as elaborate as in the video--but it just goes to show that the more light you have, and the better your understanding of how to control, modify, and position the light, the more successful your results will be.
7. In the absence of studio lighting, try outdoor or environmental portraiture, something a bit more creative and less formal.

Hope this helps!

Wickerprints,


Absolutely those comments help. One quickly FYI about #1, his shirt was a cream/yellow color, not white, and the wall behind him was light yellow. I have these pics in RAW so I will play around DPP to see if I can't with the exposure/white balance. Moving the stronger light to camera left makes a lot of sense. Also, thinking back to how I took the photos, with AF center point only, I bet the focus was on his nose, maybe mouth, not eyes. So that is definitely something for meto think about.


BTW, this was definitely an "unexpected/on the fly" shoot....if I ever tried to create my own set up, better lights would be first on my list. In fact, I think the multiple light sources (tungsten/natural/flash) influence on the AWB was part of the issue with the EFS 15-85 pics (not shown)....his skin had a slight purple shade....not good.


Thanks,


Brant

I think this was a great attempt with the resources you had available. Personally, I didn

Great attempt for spur of the moment shoot.


The only things that I would nit pick about are that I personally would like more DOF in the photos. That way his whole face will be in focus, try using at least f4.0 or f5.6. If you don

Thanks everyonefor your helpful comments and suggestions.


A picture with the WBadjusted in DPPusing my brother in law's eye, as suggested, is below. His eyes were a little blood shot, which might have affected the result,as the wall behind him was a light yellow and he is "olive" skinned. But a big difference between the two photos. And the wall doesn't look too yellow in the original either. Overall, the photo below may be closer to reality.


I completely agree that the DOF is too shallow.Playing with a DOF calculator, it looks like I was working with 1 or 2 inches DOF.If I ever get in the habit of taking photos like this, I probably "have" toinvest in a 85 mm to 100 mm lens([:D]) so I can take a few more steps back and get a reasonable DOF with the same framing.


Thanks again for your comments, I definitely learned a few things.


Brant


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