Even in a snapshot, you want to;
If you do all that, your pictures will be better than Uncle Fred’s.
As a shooter, and as a teacher,and as a tech blogger, I need the most recent equipment. So I have no obtained a Canon 1D MkIV to replace my 1D MkIII.
So far it seems fine. Not the same great focus system as the 7D, but th same solid feel as the 1D MKIII and the same software options, which Canon has left off the 7D (e.g. the option to name the files to your liking). And lowernoise than the 7D (of course, if only because it is a 1.3 crop factor sensor). Fast 10 fps shooting that lasts much longer than on the 1D MkIII. Sozen of full RAW shots before the buffer fill sup even with a slow memory card.
So far. so good. You can be sure I will post detailed information, rather than these very first impressions, in the next days.
Bokeh means the blur, or the quality of the blur, in parts of your image that are out of focus.
And you can use this to effect. For instance when shooting city lights, or Christmas tree lights, you can make them into circles by throwing them out of focus:
That was shot with a Digital Rebel with a 50mm f/1.8 lens. You cannot get simpler than that!
A few words on light meters.
When shooting studio shots like the ones I talked about, you use a flash meter. When doing that to accurately judge the right exposure, keep this in mind:
Then use the measured aperture as your starting point and check the histograms on your camera for fine adjustments. I believe that “exposing to the right” is generally a good idea.
Also, don’t forget to use a grey card to get a nice white balance reference target.
We appear to have an issue: clicking through to blog post links gets you to an empty page. Problem at WordPress.com I presume – if so, it’s one I hope they will fix soon!
Back to the standard “small studio” setup I described earlier. This time I shall talk a bit not about how it works – I assume light sensitive slave cells and Pocketwizards and cables are all old hat to you now – but instead, I will talk about how to use it.
As a reminder, here is such a four-light setup, again:
Four lights; and after the click, more about how you use them.
Have some fun with your photography.
This is trial and error, but you will succeed in the end, with shots like this one, fo a student who recently kindly volunteered:
The flash “freezes” the subject, but your background shows the zooming effect.
So when I pack by bags to do a location shoot, like today’s executive headshots shoot, you saw in a recent post that I bring rather a lot.
And what do I use? How does it look when it’s all set up?
That setup process, which takes about 45-60 minutes including carrying it all from the car in stages, results in this:
This setup consists of:
It doesn’t look like all that much, but when you write it out, and then add the power cables, connection cables, bags, and so on, it’s quite a lot.
One common sexy model look is the “look over the shoulder”.
Like here, in this shot of Nemo, a somewhat Rubenesque but nevertheless pretty model:
In an “over the shoulder” pose women can look over either shoulder, but for men, if the shoulders are angled, avoid them looking over the higher shoulder. This is a feminine look.
As so often with available light portraits, in the shot above I used my Canon 7D with:
Yes, you can take pictures on a 7D at 2000 ISO and have them look just fine.
Bright pixels are sharp pixels, but also, bright pixels are noise-free pixels.
(And you know to focus accurately, using one focus point, aimed at the closest eye, right?)
Mainly because it breaks the photographer’s back.
Here is part of what I am bringing to a multiple corporate headshots session tomorrow:
This kit consists of:
Not pictured:
I am now going to bed early, so that I can build strength!
The serious point, of course, is that when a photographer visits with a portable setup, he really carries with him a full studio and everything that includes.