Post Your Best Portrait Shots!

[jkt]

Hi, this is my first post on this forum. I've been shooting with Panasonic LX-2 for a few years, and moved to Canon 500D with kit lens this fall. Since then, I've bought a 50mm 1.8 II, a 430EX-II flash and recently a 17-55 2.8 IS USM (which was the best thing I could've done). I don't have any fancy lighting kit, not even a wireless transmitter, but I do try to follow Neil van Niekerk and his advices about using on-camera bounce flash. Last weekend, my lens was generating a bit of an attention which I decided to abuse a bit and get a nice girl to pose (I read some posing tips the other day, and I managed to remember a few points). We both have zero experience with that, so the image has a few flaws I'm aware of (chopped hand, I should've arranged her fingers to be visible):


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The setup -- 17-55 at 43mm, Manual mode (for control of the lighting), F/2.8 (for the DOF), 1/50s (I wanted some ambient light to register), ISO 800 (arbitrary value, I didn't want to hammer the flash too much and ISO 1600 seemed too much), on-camera flash in TTL, no flash exposure compensation, bounced up and to the right (the 430EX-II won't rotate more than 90° to the right, so I'm pretty sure it was aiming just to the right and about 60° up). Shoot RAW, but the camera got the WB right in this case. The "venue" was a hall in an old (pre-WW1) house in a village, about 2 meters wide, dark brown wooden ceiling and one wall, the other wall which I bounced from was painted white with some obstacles like doors. RAW->JPEG converted in Canon's Digital Photo Pro running under Wine in Linux, cropped. Further PP in the Gimp, adjusted levels of the red on the face, some cosmetic retouching (eyes, teeth, skin blemishes), skin softening, added vignetting, eye & hair sharpening. This was the first time I was PPing a shot, so it took me about two hours .


The flaws I'm aware of:

• Weird position of the right hand -- the elbow looks kinda strange here (or doesn't it?)
• Palm and fingers are not visible, that's a pity IMHO
• Some disturbing background stuff on the very right

Still, I was really happy when a strobist friend of mine nodded "hey, nice window lighting" when he saw the shot for the first time, and was rather surprised to hear that it was an on-camera TTL flash . Any suggestions about how to improve stuff are welcome.

[Sean Setters]

Welcome to the forum jkt! We're glad to have you here. Personally, I think you did a fantastic job on the exposure (you just enough ambient in). The pose is a bit awkward (having the elbow so much closer to the lens than the face makes it seem disproportionately bigger. In fact, I thought this was shot at the wider end of your 17-55 until I saw "43mm" (which can cause more distortion in your subject). The pose aside, I think you nailed the bounce flash. It does indeed look like window light--it works perfectly with the scene. Overall, well done!

[peety3]

Welcome JKT! For the sake of mention, if you go with Manual mode and ambient light is a factor in your shot, ISO values aren't "arbitrary": they influence how bright/dark the ambient is just as much as shutter or aperture settings. I'm not sure about the 430II, but I believe some of the newer Canon flashes interpret their color temperature and report that to the camera, so if you have the camera on auto WB it'll be "calibrated" to the flash and unaware of the ambient light.

[Sean Setters]

And one from Good Friday...

[Sean Setters]

And a follow up on Easter...






click on pick for strobist info

[bouwy]

Real Thinker.7D, 70-200mm IS, hand held (bit shaky LOL)


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[Madison]

[Rodger]

Terrific lighting Madison!


I'm so excited I finally have some more portraits to add to the thread! Well, one.. but, I got to play with a friend's Alien Bee 800s a few days ago! Four light set up!!






Strobist Info: 2 AB 800s @ 1/3 power, standard reflector, behind subject on either side. One Vivitar 285HV @ 1/4 power, 43" Westcott shoot-through umbrella, below and aimed up to fill in below the nose and eyes. One Canon 430EXII @ 1/16 through another Westcott 43" shoot through, on a human boom, on axis, slightly above and aimed down for soft light on the face.