Portrait of my wife

anonymouscuban

My wife asked me to take a picture of her new hair style this morning as we were leaving for work. I have no experience what so ever taking portraits but I have lurked around in the People forum for some time taking notes.

I had her sit on the bed next to a window so that the diffused light was hitting the right side of her and then I setup my SB-600 speedlight to the rear and left of her. I stood on a chair and set my focal length to 70mm.

I happen to really love the way it turned out but I wanted to get some expert opinions.

What do you guys think?

BTW, we've been married for 17 years and I still feel like the luckiest guy on the planet.

kini62

1st, she's very beautiful.
2nd, the exposure on her face is pretty hot. Several very hot spots.
3rd, Is her skin really that smooth?

Gene

rookieshooter

where is the flash positioned in relation to the subject? Left, right or center?

Hackbone

Those small round catchlights in her eyes seem to be from a flash hitting from the front? Yes, No?

anonymouscuban

First, thank you for the compliments. I consider myself very lucky to have such a beautiful wife. I do agree about their being some hotspots from the flash on her face.

The way I set this up is I had her sit on the edge of our guestbed, which has a window to her right side. Diffused natural light was entering the window and hitting her on her right side. I then to my SB-600 speedlight flash and place it slightly behind her and to her left side. I set the SB-600 on slave mode. The SB-600 had a plastic diffuser over it. I then used the on board camera flash, on commander mode, with a flash compensation of -0.7. This obviously hit the front of her face. The onboard flash was not diffused at all. I think next time I will try taping a piece of white tissue paper or paper towel over the camera flash to reduce the hotspots.

As for post work, I did do some work to reduct the shadows a bit on her face. Here is the original picture with only some minor curve adjustments:

sweet caroline

Wow, she looks young to have been married 17 years! Gorgeous, and you should tell her everyone says so.

I use to use the little Gary Fong diffuser for my on camera flash and it made a big difference. Now that I have the sb800 in addition to my sb600, I set my on camera flash so it doesn't contribute any light to the shot.

Over all, it's a nice portrait, just a little hot.

Caroline

Tim Kamppinen

Nice portrait, beautiful wife. To get rid of the hotspots on the face, don't use any bare flash on the subject. Instead, set the on-camera flash to "--" so it doesn't contribute to the exposure, and take your off camera flash and point it towards a wall to bounce the light back onto her. You're basically turning the wall into a huge softbox. Of course, a white wall is best but if you don't have one you can do a custom WB to compensate for the color cast, or just hang a white sheet up and bounce off that. A ceiling will also work, but bounce the light far enough from her so that it comes in at a low angle and fills in the eyes. Not only will you banish the hotspots, but you'll eliminate the sharp shadows cast by the bare flashes.

anonymouscuban

Thanks for the feedback Caroline and Tim.

Caroline... As I said, I am very lucky to have such a beautiful wife. Smart as a whip too so she's the complete package. I will have to check out that diffuser. I thought I could try tissue over the on camera for the mean time.

Tim... thanks for the tips on the flash setup. I did exactly what you said with the off camera flash but the on camera flash I did not. I was under the impresssion that when you place the on camera flash on Commander Mode, it doesn't contribute to the flash but I guess it does. Will have to try the settings you suggested.

BTW, what do you all think of the softening I did to her skin in the first picture? The second one posted is the same shot sans softening.