Tip: always look for, and when you see them consider using, curves.
We like curves. While straight lines take us (and in the case of photos, our eyes) like a freeway to our destination, curves are more like a gentle river, or a winding mountain road, where it’s more about the trip than about getting there.
Imagine putting a bride on these stairs: wouldn’t that look good?
Another recent user question:
How do you determine the background you use for portraits?
That’s a tough one, because there is no one answer. What’s better? Look at these three “Autumn” and “Hollywood” series Honl gels:
Or this?
Or this?
Of course as usual, the answer is “it depends”.
In general, the most important concerns I have are:
The basic rule: have fun, and keep it simple if you can. Try different colours but avoid very bright colours except for special effect. Have some very subtle blues and yellows and greens available just in case you want to add a splash of tint.
Tint is a good thing. Colour is more difficult!
I hope this gives those of you who use colour gels some ideas to try.
When shooting a subject in a studio or studio-like setting, ensure that there is always music playing in the background. It sets the mood and avoids awkward silences as you grapple with your equipment and test settings and light.You will get a much more relaxed shoot.
Just one image from a portrait shoot of a very nice realtor, yesterday:
Lit with a Bowens key light in a softbox, an Opus fill light into an umbrella, an Opus hair/kick light with snoot, and for the background, a 430EX speedlite with Honl gel (fired through a Pocketwizard).
I like tilting realtors a little, for that contemporary dynamic look.
Reader Jeffrey recently read my post about focus points and commented to me. Because this is such an important issue – sharpness is essential – I thought it would be a great idea to reproduce his point here and to give my response below.
The distance to the plane of focus is the shortest in the center, longer
everywhere else. If you compose focus then recompose, you’re guaranteed to put the target in front of the plane of focus.To test an exaggerated example, use your 16-35 2.8L at 16mm f/2.8, and
focus on something relatively close to the minimum-focus distance. Then
recompose with that something to the far edge of the frame, and shoot.
Inspect in Lightroom.Unless unintended in/out movement of the camera during recomposure just happens to offset the change in distance to the focus target, you should find quite a difference… (and even if you don’t, do you really want to rely on a two-wrongs-make-it-lucky close-your-eyes-and-hope philosophy?).
Modern bodies have a bazillion focus points for a reason… so you can have one in the part of the frame you actually want to focus on, specifically so you can avoid the pitfalls of “Focus, Recompose, Shoot”.
Jeffrey is right that there is an issue. I understand the geometry (I am an engineer): when you recompose, the plane of focus as you move about your camera in a circular fashion around you is not a plane: it is a sphere. The sphere of focus means that seen from the subject you focused on, your focus points gets closer to you as you swing the camera.
But there’s a few moderating factors, and reasons focus-recompose-shoot often still makes sense:
That is why “focus-recompose-shoot” makes sense, or is often even necessary. But Jeffrey is right that it should be used with caution when close.
In fact when I use my cameras wide open at f/1.4, I hardly recompose, and when I do do it, I compensate by moving my camera ever so slightly before pressing the shutter. Works for me, but be careful and check your focus!
Reader Craig asks:
Is it possible to get auto ISO to play nice with external flash (I’m using Nikon equipment)? I haven’t played with it in a while, but I specifically stopped using auto ISO because I was finding it would give me ISO 800 based on the camera metering when the flash had plenty of power to push it to say ISO 200. It seems odd to me that since there’s a preflash, that that information wouldn’t be shared with the camera to set the proper ISO automatically. Just curious if that’s your experience as well or if there’s a way around it. There are a a few scenarios where I’d be happy to use a (functional) auto ISO limited to ISO 800 and just deal with the noise reduction in post.
Good question. And as always… the answer is “it depends”.
First: if you take my “Advanced Flash for Pros” workshop, I go into all the nitty gritty details of both Nikon CLS/iTTL and Canon E-TTL. That will answer some.
But let me give a simple answer here. Typically when I am using flash, I will not use auto ISO. I prefer to keep things simple. Setting it myself means simple.
You expose the background using Aperture and ISO and Shutter Speed. You make it look as dark as you like – say, two stops below ambient as a great starting point. Auto ISO means the camera will likely overrule your brightness/darkness settings. Manual exposure settings become a sort of “exposure priority” setting instead.
So while auto ISO can work well when using flash (just set expsoure two stops below ambient in S/Tv mode), it is not necessarily ideal when using flash:
In fact on a modern Canon DSLR like my new 1D Mark IV, when using flash, ISO will automatically go off auto and will set itself to 400 when the flash is detected.
The preflash helps the camera set the flash power level for the foreground, lit-by-the-flash subject. The aperture, shutter speed and ISO settings set the background brightness. And again, typically I will be in manual exposure, and will set that to -2 stops, metered average (two stops below ambient). Auto ISO negates that!
So while it depends, it does not depend that much. When using flash, I will usually set ISO to a manual. Yes, you can set limits to auto ISO (Nikon is much better than Canon at that!), but it is still better to do your own, and to keep control.
The above applies to indoors flash shots where the light is consistent enough for you to use manual exposure settings. Outdoors it would be different – except there is so much light you do not need auto ISO.
Me, pictured recently on a shoot. Two cameras, Fong Lightsphere on flash (dark indoors shoot), and Domke PJ bag.
And yes, I wear a tie. Even when I am wearing jeans.
For those of you lucky enough to have a 1D Mark IV, here as a follow-up to my review a few days ago is another tip.
Canon by default has the “Auto Light Optimizer” set to “ON”, and this is a custom function you may well miss.
If you shoot RAW (as you really ought to), go into custom functions II, function 4, and take that off zero (0=”standard” Auto Lighting Optimizer” setting) and turn that to custom setting 3 (“Disable”).
What does ALO do to your RAW image? Nothing. And you shoot RAW. So why does it matter? Here’s why.
If you set ALO to ON, your camera will, where necessary, apply “fill light” to the data that comes from the sensor, and use the result to make its little embedded JPG. That will make dark areas lighter.
And that little embedded JPG is what you see on the back of your camera.
So when you look, you will see a well-exposed picture. Happily, you shoot more. But in fact, unbeknownst to you, the actual data is darker. You may well be underexposing the dark areas of your picture! And like me. you wonder why when you import your image into Lightroom (which does not honour that same “fill light” setting) it looks so much darker than on the camera. Or rather, you wonder why the histograms are so different (you should probably not judge exposure just by the image on the LCD).
So when you turn ALO off, the camera no longer shows you an “enhanced mini JPG”; instead, it shows something closer to the real RAW image. And if that is dark, you can fix it by adding light, not by tweaking bits (which can add noise).
UPDATE: Chuck Westfall agrees. See the comment below.
Batteries have come a long way. But I notice that not everyone knows this.
Modern cameras overwhelmingly use Lithium Ion batteries:
They are recognisable by the word “LiIon” on the battery.
These batteries are fundamentally better than Nickel Cadmium (NiCad) or Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) batteries, all of which suffer to some extent from what we call the “memory effect”: if you do not discharge them fully at regular intervals, their capacity diminishes.
LiIon batteries, on the other hand, like to be kept charged. You can charge them daily and this does not harm them or diminish their capacity. So every day when you get home, charge your camera’s battery, so that you have a full charge when you leave the next day.
(And you always have a spare at hand, too – right?)
LiIon batteries also have a low rate of self-discharge: they keep their charge for a longer time without running down by themselves.
This is why I call them “betteries”.
A tip for newcomers to SLR photography.
I often hear: “Why do I need so-called “fast” lenses – like the 50mm f/1.8 lens Michael keeps talking about? Surely my 18-55 lens also covers 50mm?”
Well yes it does. But:
Why is this important?
So in today’s class I took two shots of a student in available room light. One at f/5.6, and that is what you would get with your standard “kit”-lens. It looks like this:
Two things happen:
Now look what happens when I use an aperture of f/1.8 (for which you need a lens that can do that, like the 50mm f/1.8 lens):
Much better – a pretty dramatic difference on both counts!
So the best way to immediately get great portrait shots is to:
Have fun.
(Wow, three numbered lists in one blog post!)