Indoor Portrait Help
- This topic has 13 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated Aug 31, 2009 at 1:20 pm by
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Grant if you have a flash unit that is on the camera (not a built in flash), you could rotate the flash to face a near by wall that will reflect the light back onto your subject. Because the area of the wall that is reflecting the light is bigger than the small flash, the light will be softer when it falls on your subject.
In this photo, the flash is on camera and facing the wall behind the subject as opposed to facing the subject. The result is nice, soft light that mimics window light.Same goes for this shot, the light from the small flash is bounced off a wall.
http://society6.com/grainfarmer Fly Fishing and Landscape open edition Photography prints.
http://grainfarmer.vsco.co/ iPhone photos
http://instagram.com/chad_simcox InstagramLike Chad, I would recommend bouncing the flash.
If you have a room with white ceilings try there first.
Also, a little bump in the ISO to 200 or 400 and a faster aperture setting like f4 or under will help with adding ambient light to the flash for a better look..
(hard to say without seeing the room)You can check how much ambient light is in the shot by doing a test without the flash and you can make adjustments to the exposure before doing the shot with flash.
I like the flash to do most of the work on the subject, but think you need enough ambient light to avoid black areas around the subject.www.dsaphoto.com
A picture is thousand words that takes less than a second while a thousand words is a picture that takes a month.
Grant, if you don’t have a flash, you need to wait for a nice cloudy day with great diffuse light, and then put the little munchkin next to a window or big slider. I have a couple big pieces of black and white velvet type material that makes for great backgrounds, you should be able to find something similar at any fabric store. I was just at the camera shop today looking at the light disc type reflectors, those look like they would really help in that kind of situation too.
This one was shot with natural light.
Nice shot Erik, love the feel… I apologize to everyone for my absence and sporadic posting, seems that I may be getting some of my life back and free time here soon :).
As Erik mentioned, diffused sunlight is awesome and along with David, I also agree with Chad. Bounce or diffused light is an excellent choice. The only problem with using flash and ambient together is the fact that you may end up with conflicting Kelvin’s that may ruin the shot.
Another option would be to use the ambient only and use controls for the character of it. What I mean by this is that you want your subject to have separation from the background. Two approaches jump to my mind: First is diffused bounce onto the baby’s face, against a white background, for a high key shot; the other is shooting through a doorway, into a darker room, for darker background. The goal is either a minimum of 1-2 ratio of specular on subject to background or at least a 2-1 separation.
I am posting a quick snap shot that I took of my nephew. This was very unplanned so, I will share what I would have done if it were a planned shot with the same tools. The side specular was from the overhead kitchen light (on camera left side) with the diffused density (on camera right) created with a white paper plate, held as a bounce to soften the specular to shadow edge transfer while still maintaining the conveyance of puffy cheeks. This helps maintain a better contrast-diffused density with a more balanced shadow edge transfer on the subject as well.
What I would have done differently and if this was a planned shot? I would of liked a white wall or reflector in front of the baby so that there would be better specular detail in the eyes (catch light) as opposed to all of the lights from kitchen appliances and other multiple specular bounces. I would probably of not dialed the background out as much as well as held the bounce a bit closer to subject but this was just one of those “love the angle and light grab camera real fast kind of moments”. Hope this helps some…
F3 1/50 ISO 1600
Thanks guys – I’m going to shoot some more pics over the weekend and I’ll post some of the better shots.
That’s an awesome frame Ben.. 😉
www.dsaphoto.com
A picture is thousand words that takes less than a second while a thousand words is a picture that takes a month.
Thanks David :). I would love to be able to say that it is borrowed from the cosmetic side but the truth is that I just grabbed the fx and it happened to have the 105 on it, a lucky frame if you will. 😉 Even though there are a lot of technical issues with the shot, I like this style of framing as well.
I took advice from Douglas and checked out strobist.com – cool site that gave me some good ideas. I pulled the shades open on our big window upstairs when the good morning light was pooring in and covered the window with a light colored sheet to soften the light.
This was my first try. I’m going to try to work on some new lighting ideas this week. Thanks for the tips; I’d appreciate critiques of the pics to help me along.
A little warm?
A little over-exposed?
That finger up the nose shot is going to be PRICELESS at her wedding… 😉 ;D
Nice work..
www.dsaphoto.com
A picture is thousand words that takes less than a second while a thousand words is a picture that takes a month.
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