Bsic Portrait

[jerryph]

I haven't played with my 30mm F/1.4 Sigma for a while, so brought out the strobes and flashes and setup a 3 strobe setup (actally 4, but 1 was just to set off the other 3).

I had a 15 minute break, and since Beyonce Knowles and Madonna were not able to make the session, I was stuck using me... lol

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3043/2362717558_9aab1b64ca.jpg

Biggest lesson learned here, just becaue a lens can produce a narrow DOF, doesn't mean we should always use it. I set it at F/3.2, but should have gone likely closer to F/5.6 or so. The halo effect (no I am no angel... lol), was made by using my SB-800 flash and simply shooting it upwards into the black sheet background that I use as a poorman's backdrop. I realized that I had the camera sitting low on the tripod a couple of inches... I was just rushed but still had fun! :D

My biggest challenge was the fact that I had both strobes set to minimum already, so I moved them both further away, and on the strobe on camera left, I actually shot through it and lifted only half of the black backing to cut down more light. I think I need a bigger studio!

[dkippen]

Jerry -

I think you should have waited for Beyonce (just kidding).

Since I don't typically do portraits or have experience using my flash, I think this is very impressive.

[ladyups]

I'm not a portrait shooter but I'm impressed....you are talking above my head when you talk about strobes and such...I still don't know how to use my external flash...which reminds me...the basketball pictures didn't come out too good. I'll post a couple but they are mostly all a bit blurry...thought I'd checked everything on my camera and forgot to check the IS...it was off because I'd used it that morning on the tripod...duh...

[jerryph]

I think you should have waited for Beyonce

She'sdefinately cuter... lol


...which reminds me...the basketball pictures didn't come out too good. I'll post a couple but they are mostly all a bit blurry...

I think I mentioned it that it is a lot more challenging than it looks. The first few pictures I took in a low light environment came out very bad, but as I learned and practiced, they got better.

I'd like to see them, we can perhaps look at what happened?

Thanks for the nice comments. :)

[Snappers]

Nice shot Jerry. How did you focus your shot. I take it you did it on self timer?

[jerryph]

At 30mm, the camera was within arm's length for me, so I sat down in the center of the chair, reached out it focused and yes, I had a 5 second delay. That gave me enough time to get ready and have the shot taken.

What I had done earlier was place a tripod on the chair, focus on that, then set it to manual focus. The problem with that was that when you sat just a *little* bit forward or backward, the DOF was so shallow that the wrong parts of the face went out of focus. That was when I was playing at apertures between F/1.4 and F/3.2. I now know that I shall be at smaller apertures above F/4. Ears look strange in portraits when blurred... lol

Just as I am sitting here, I had a question pop into my head, what would happen if I used a gel on the rear flash? I've never used a gel (which is simply a piece of coloured plastic placed over a flash to colour the light). I'll try it out this weekend just for fun.