Legal Headshots... C&C

du8die

A friend of mine is starting to do some advertising for his law firm. He hired me to do some headshots for him. I'd be grateful to receive some feedback on how I can improve, etc.

This is my first attempt at using an umbrella - I have a lot to learn.

My setup:
40d ~ 70-200 f/2.8 ~ Bracket Mounted Flash bounced off ceiling - mostly to trigger the Vivitar ~ Vivitar 283 on an umbrella camera left - optical trigger.


1)

My thoughts: I think the color is spot on here, there's a highlight just off the mouth on the right that I'm not thrilled about. Or, did I cool this down too much? Also, the collar looks like it's blown out. What else am I missing?

2)

Face, for some reason looks soft. I don't get that, because the focal point was the eye. Though I did shoot this at f/2.8 with the Tamron 28-75 f/2.8, and I've noticed that lens tends to be a little soft at 2.8. My main question with this one is the color? Is this 'temperature' better than #1?

3)

Ugh. DOF problems here. I was having exposure issues (too dark), so the first thing I went for was a bigger aperature. How is the pose here?

Thanks for looking, and for providing feedback. Any comments you have will be tremendously helpful.

ivar

As far as sharpness, I think #1 is the winner; However, he seems to look a bit uncomfortable. #2 and 3 have a more relaxed expression I think.

The second one is very soft; The books on his right side (left for the viewers at home) is actually what it focused on. As far as color, I actually prefer #1.

In general, I don't think you should need to go to f/2.8 - especially since they are fairly static shots. I'd go a little smaller with the aperture, also because most lenses, as you discovered already, don't have their sweet spot wide open.

mayassa

I agree #1 is the cleanest, and books are in focus in #2

zoomer

Retake number two. Move him a couple feet out from the books. Make sure to use spot focus and focus on his nearest eye.

Crop him just a bit off center facing into the more open side of the photo and crop some from the bottom.

Wallah nice legal portrait.

You are halfway there. Good luck.

du8die

Make sure to use spot focus and focus on his nearest eye.

Yeah. I don't get it, because that's what I did. Something must have shifted somewhere.

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

d8

ChatKat

Too wide Open
I find with these portraits that the magic number is f4 for DOF. Blurs the back just enough but no blur on the subject.