basic portrait shots

Peter-T

Peter-T

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Right, so with christmas looming, and a family get together on boxing day, i've been asked if i can do some simple portraits of the family next to the christmas tree.

I'll be using my 500D + Tamron 28-80 and if i need to; a (very) basic external flash, mounted on the hotshoe.

Can anyone suggest the ideal settings? I dont want to light up everything as I want to keep the tree lights intact.

Sorry for all the questions, even though its only family, i dont want them stood round for ages whilst i muck about with the settings lol!

Thanks in advance
Pete
 
sorry mate ive got no advice.. but would love to see what people say about this as i am in the same boat as yourself..:shrug:
 
I've tried this sort of thing before... not with xmas lights though.

All I did was find the place where I'd be taking pictures in advance and work it out from there on in. However not sure what to suggest for the external flash, you could try putting something over the top to 'dumb' out the harsh light, and with that bounce the flash off the ceiling...? Then you should get quite a soft flash.

If it has snowed on christmas day and boxing day... you could go outside? The light will be more natural and flattering. For that I could only suggesting stomping down the exposure comp. down to -1 (or something around that depending whether its sunny or not) so you don't blow out the snow... =)

I hope this is of help! =)
 
defuse or bounce the light, allow time on the shutter speed for the christmas lights to get into the shot, so don't use a really fast shutter
also with that in mind, keep the aperture above f4-5 (maybe f8) so you get the background in focus and nice and clear.

if your stuck for defusers, white tupperware or even grease proof paper will do the job
 
do lots of dummy/test shots with a stand in till you get the expo right and seating

then roll them in one at a time
 
Easy, if you have a tilt-head flash that you can point at a white ceiling. Fit a bounce card made from an index card, or even a small piece of white paper secured with a rubber band. As here www.abetterbouncecard.com You will get nice soft light bounced off the ceiling, plus a dash of fill from the card which lightens faces and puts a sparkle in the eyes. Looks great, but you need a fair bit of flash power for this, which will slow down the recyling (fresh batteries).

Wait until it's dark or you won't see much of the lights. You'll need good depth of field for a group so set f/5.6. White balance set for flash. On manual, shoot some test pics, without flash, and adjust the shutter speed until the Christmas tree looks right. Try not to let the shutter speed get too long, ideally no more than 1/15sec longest or you'll get a some ghosting from subject movement with festive folks in shot. Increase ISO to get this, or lower the f/number a bit. This is your basic exposure setting.

You'll need a test subject for the next bit, eg yourself with the camera on a tripod using self-timer. Turn on the flash, also on manual, and adjust the power output until the test subject exposure balances with the tree.

If you have auto-TTL flash control, the camera will probably make a pretty good job of doing all this automatically. Set it on Av.

The tree lights will come out slightly orange, but this usually looks fine. If you don't want that, then you'll need to gel the flash with some colour (the yellow wrapper from a box of Quality Street works well ;) ) and do a custom white balance, or adjust colour in post processing.

Edit: flash exposure varies a lot with distance, so you need to take your test pics from the same position as you will the real thing. If the distance varies more than a couple of feet, eg if you switch between group shots and individual close-ups, the flash exposure will be out. Easiest way is to maintain your position for all shots, and change focal length to get different framing.
 
A tripod can help a lot with a slow shutter speed. I'd use one for anything slower than 1/60th. Other than that as Hoppy said :)
 
norvic-boy said:
...
If it has snowed on christmas day and boxing day... you could go outside? The light will be more natural and flattering. For that I could only suggesting stomping down the exposure comp. down to -1 (or something around that depending whether its sunny or not) so you don't blow out the snow... =) ...
Click to expand...

If you're metering is affected by snow, you'll be wanting positive compensation, otherwise you get grey snow. :thumbs:

For inside, pretty much what Hoppy said. Shoot the tree, get it as you want. Then expose the people with the flash.

Don't know how many people you're shooting at once, but I'd probably go with as wide an aperture as I can get away with, nice big highlights from the tree lights that way.

If your flash doesn't have a tilt head, you can try to improvise with an inverted bounce card / tin foil. Attached underneath the head and angled up slightly to bounce light towards the ceiling.
 
Jayst84 said:
Don't know how many people you're shooting at once, but I'd probably go with as wide an aperture as I can get away with, nice big highlights from the tree lights that way.
Click to expand...

in order to get the big highlights (I guess you mean the bokeh from the out of focus areas), the second main trigger for this will also be the distance of the subject to the tree. if the family are next to the tree, the tree will be just as in focus and therefore no "big" highlights. get the subject away from the tree with the tree in the background, longish lens and wide aperture and then you will see the difference.
 
EOS_JD said:
in order to get the big highlights (I guess you mean the bokeh from the out of focus areas), the second main trigger for this will also be the distance of the subject to the tree. if the family are next to the tree, the tree will be just as in focus and therefore no "big" highlights. get the subject away from the tree with the tree in the background, longish lens and wide aperture and then you will see the difference.
Click to expand...

Of course, I'm guessing his living room isn't that big though. Also, to be pedantic, focal length will have no effect. The focus distance and the distance between the family and tree will.
 
Jayst84 said:
Of course, I'm guessing his living room isn't that big though. Also, to be pedantic, focal length will have no effect. The focus distance and the distance between the family and tree will.
Click to expand...

That seems incorrect. Lets say you have a subject 5m away and they are 2m from the background. So focus distance is the same and distance to background is the same. Shoot with a 600mm lens and a 17mm lens - What will have a shallower dof?

Of course focal length (or to be more precice magnification) will have an effect and it must be said, a much greater effect than aperture selection!
 
thanks for the help everyone, but ive buggered up my camera anyway so no need to take the portrait shots (see my other thread) :(
 
Got the pic I wanted, I dont think its a world beater, but the MiL and the wife are happy.

Joyce800portrait.jpg
 
excellent work
everyone is happy...thats the bottom line
 
The image does look a bit dark. Perhaps the camera saw the highlights from the camera left and compensated to save over exposure?
 
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