What, asks a reader, do I need for portraits?
First, read http://www.speedlighter.ca/tag/portraits/ — this will give you an idea of the technologies and other needs.
For a minimum portrait with off-camera flash, you need:
- A stool and a backdrop (can be improvised).
- A camera.
- A flash—nikon user, an SB710 or SB910 (or predecessors).
- Aim the flash behind you 45 degrees up. Make sure there is a, preferably white, ceiling/wall where the flash points. Shoot.
That will give you a one-light, bounced portrait:
For a minimum portrait with off-camera flash, you need:
- A camera with a pop-up flash that can drive other flashes (most Nikons, most recent Canons).
- A flash—nikon user, an SB710 or SB910 (or predecessors).
- Set up your camera’s flash option in the “pencil” menu to not do ordinary TTL, but to do Commander instead. Then, in the commander settings screen, turn off the flash on the camera (top option), and set the A and B group options to “TTL”. Note the channel.
- Ensure that your flash is set to the same channel.
- Optionally, use a modifier such as a small softbox or a
That will give you a one-light, camera flash portrait:
Finally, for a “real”, i.e. traditional headshot, you would have four lights. To see how these work, I will repeat here a post from the past:
When you make a portrait using standard “studio settings” (i.e. you have the ambient light do nothing; and to achieve this you use f/8 at 1/125th sec at 100 ISO), and you use one flash, modified with an umbrella or softbox, you get a portrait, but it is very dramatic: only what you light is lit.