Child Portrait

TheCheesehead

Hi,
Newbie here. Just bought a background stand and black muslin (Adorama) and here's one of my first shots, looking for some pointers. Canon Rebel XSI with 2.8L 24-70 at 57MM. 580EXII shooting through Zumbrella camera right, +1/3 stop EV.
Shot manual 1/200 @ 2.8 ISO 100. Edited through Photoshop Elements 7. Thanks!

divamum

Adorable little girl!

Excellent first effort with artificial light - way better than mine, I can tell you that!!!

- Main thing I notice is that it's underexposed - if you didn't have enough light in person, then go ahead and lift the brightness a little in post. Yes, you will introduce some noise by doing this, but sometimes that's unavoidable (and if Elements isn't much good with noise reduction, check out the free "Community Edition" of Noiseware). Next time, bump up your ISO - if the shot is properly exposed the xsi produces beautiful results at iso 400, and 200 is pretty much clean as a whistle in all circumstances. Unless you have LOTS of light... I'd start at 200 and go up from there (I own an xsi, btw )

In the situation you have above, I would definitely have bumped up the FEC while shooting - it's simply too dark as it stands. Also.... shoot raw (if you don't already). Best to get it right in camera, of course, but raw gives you WAY more latitude to adjust that in post if needed.

- It looks a bit soft to me at this size - it sems that the point of focus is on her sash, not her eyes. Portraits at 2.8 are a tricky thing, and while it is an effect I love (I frequently shoot portraits with a very shallow depth of field), you have to absolutely NAIL the eyes. Anything else can meltaway into a blur, but the eyes need to be crystal sharp. Shoot with one focus point, avoid focus-and-recompose, and get it exactly over the eye (some people use the bridge of the nose, but I've found that results in more missed focus for me.)

- keep an eye open for details. Her skirt is flipped up at the hemline. No biggie, but it's the kind of thing to start noticing.

- you may want to site the light fractionally higher. The rule of thumb I've seen is to try and get the catchlight at either 10-11 o'clock or 1-2 o'clock. If that casts shadows, a reflector in front of the subject will minimize those. Anything light-coloured can act as a reflector - cheap foamcore posterboard is a quick, inexpensive solution.

HTH!

Qarik

yup..cute kid but underexposed

mpaulie

I tried to make some exposure/brightness adjustments to bring the exposure up to around where is should be. In doing so I think I found out why it may have been underexposed... I think your light may be too close to your subject or not diffused enough. When bumping up the exposure parts of her face and arms started to get blown out very quickly, for more even light you may want to pull your lights back a little and bump up the power. Try to find a simple explanation of the Inverse square law which has to do with how intensity of the light changes with distance. Or I could be way off because I don't how your is flash setup or where it was located.

There is also a blue cast on the bottom of her dress. Nice first try though, my first ones came out almost exactly the same way.

TheCheesehead

divamum wrote: »

Adorable little girl!

Excellent first effort with artificial light - way better than mine, I can tell you that!!!

- Main thing I notice is that it's underexposed - if you didn't have enough light in person, then go ahead and lift the brightness a little in post. Yes, you will introduce some noise by doing this, but sometimes that's unavoidable (and if Elements isn't much good with noise reduction, check out the free "Community Edition" of Noiseware). Next time, bump up your ISO - if the shot is properly exposed the xsi produces beautiful results at iso 400, and 200 is pretty much clean as a whistle in all circumstances. Unless you have LOTS of light... I'd start at 200 and go up from there (I own an xsi, btw )

In the situation you have above, I would definitely have bumped up the FEC while shooting - it's simply too dark as it stands. Also.... shoot raw (if you don't already). Best to get it right in camera, of course, but raw gives you WAY more latitude to adjust that in post if needed.

- It looks a bit soft to me at this size - it sems that the point of focus is on her sash, not her eyes. Portraits at 2.8 are a tricky thing, and while it is an effect I love (I frequently shoot portraits with a very shallow depth of field), you have to absolutely NAIL the eyes. Anything else can meltaway into a blur, but the eyes need to be crystal sharp. Shoot with one focus point, avoid focus-and-recompose, and get it exactly over the eye (some people use the bridge of the nose, but I've found that results in more missed focus for me.)

- keep an eye open for details. Her skirt is flipped up at the hemline. No biggie, but it's the kind of thing to start noticing.

- you may want to site the light fractionally higher. The rule of thumb I've seen is to try and get the catchlight at either 10-11 o'clock or 1-2 o'clock. If that casts shadows, a reflector in front of the subject will minimize those. Anything light-coloured can act as a reflector - cheap foamcore posterboard is a quick, inexpensive solution.

HTH!

mpaulie wrote: »

I tried to make some exposure/brightness adjustments to bring the exposure up to around where is should be. In doing so I think I found out why it may have been underexposed... I think your light may be too close to your subject or not diffused enough. When bumping up the exposure parts of her face and arms started to get blown out very quickly, for more even light you may want to pull your lights back a little and bump up the power. Try to find a simple explanation of the Inverse square law which has to do with how intensity of the light changes with distance. Or I could be way off because I don't how your is flash setup or where it was located.

There is also a blue cast on the bottom of her dress. Nice first try though, my first ones came out almost exactly the same way.

Thanks so much! I was wondering why it appeared kind of grainy when I went in close to fix a couple blemishes ( I was thinking "Man, how can it be grainy at ISO 100?"). It looked like it was exposed fine on the LCD, maybe I need to make it look a bit overexposed on the LCD. This was shot RAW, and I think I did bump it up a hair exposurewise in CR. I think I was shooting 2.8 because of the wrinkles in the muslin and I wanted to throw those out of focus. Thanks for the tips on the other details too (dress). This was sort of thrown together quickly in my dining room for a friends Father's Day gift.

Here's kind of the layout. Background about 5 feet behind subject, umbrella (fired from ST-E2) about two feet in front of her to her left, just out of frame. I'm maybe another 2 or 3 feet past the umbrella. Something I learned in another thread was that the 2.8L 24-70 is not best suited for crop sensors, that the EFS 17-55 would have been a better choice. Could this be a partial contributer to the PQ, or is it mostly the exposure? Also, I have a 2.8L 70-200 IS...would that be a better lens to use provided I have the room? Thanks again!

divamum

TheCheesehead wrote: »

learned in another thread was that the 2.8L 24-70 is not best suited for crop sensors, that the EFS 17-55 would have been a better choice.

That's simply a matter of focal length range - the wider 17-55 means you're getting about the same field of vision as you would on a full frame 24-70. Quality-wise, I think they're both just fine, and very highly regarded lenses. The focal length you chose - 57mm - is a good flattering fl for portraits.

If you want to minimize the bg, pull her forward a little more so the bg is further away, get the light closer to her (if it's too hot, turn fec DOWN in that situation) and stop down to about f4, which is a nice aperture for a very clear, sharp, single-person portrait at around 50mm or above - it's enough dof to get both eyes and the whole face sharp, but it should allow some softening of the focus as it drifts towards the bg. That's not to say "don't "use wider aps -I do it all the time - but you have to understand how that will affect the final image.

A couple of examples:

50mm@ f2 shot from very close - note that the eyes are sharp, despite the very shallow depth of field that blurs the lower half of the face and just about everything else (this was the effect I was aiming for, so it was fine)



50mm f4, shot from a little further away. Note that the bg (in this case the wooden floor) is still blurred nicely and it softens her shoulder too, but her whole face is sharply in focus unlike the shot above.

TheCheesehead

divamum wrote: »

That's simply a matter of focal length range - the wider 17-55 means you're getting about the same field of vision as you would on a full frame 24-70. Quality-wise, I think they're both just fine, and very highly regarded lenses. The focal length you chose - 57mm - is a good flattering fl for portraits.

If you want to minimize the bg, pull her forward a little more so the bg is further away, get the light closer to her (if it's too hot, turn fec DOWN in that situation) and stop down to about f4, which is a nice aperture for a very clear, sharp, single-person portrait at around 50mm or above - it's enough dof to get both eyes and the whole face sharp, but it should allow some softening of the focus as it drifts towards the bg. That's not to say "don't "use wider aps -I do it all the time - but you have to understand how that will affect the final image.

A couple of examples:

50mm@ f2 shot from very close - note that the eyes are sharp, despite the very shallow depth of field that blurs the lower half of the face and just about everything else (this was the effect I was aiming for, so it was fine)



50mm f4, shot from a little further away. Note that the bg (in this case the wooden floor) is still blurred nicely and it softens her shoulder too, but her whole face is sharply in focus unlike the shot above.

Wow, those are amazing pics!! Is that with the 50mm 1.4 lens? I have that lens and get no where near that quality! Thanks for the tips, I'll have to try again with my kids.

divamum

yes, that's the 50 1.4. It's not as sharp wide open as I'd like, but once you get to about 2.0 and above it's pretty cracking. I had great light in both of those shots, which is really what makes them. The first one is in a bright atrium with tons of diffused natural light bouncing around, and the second was with the Photek Softlighter, a diffuser I just got and really REALLY like. It's close to a softbox effect, but easier to use in a small space and on a speedlight.

Do ensure you're using a single focus point rather than all of them - it takes a little practice to nail focus at shallow dof (and for SURE you will have a bunch of near misses which wind up in the trash can), but the effect can be fabulous when it works.

TheCheesehead

Child Portrait
Thanks for the tips! Were those taken on your XSi as well?

divamum

The camera isn't really what affects the look in these - it's the lighting and the depth of field. The xsi is a great camera (which is why I've kept mine as a lightweight travel camera and backup even though I now have a 7d).

Here's one from last year taken with the xsi+50mm.


First one above was taken with the 50d; second was my first portrait shoot with the 7d.

TheCheesehead

divamum wrote: »

The camera isn't really what affects the look in these - it's the lighting and the depth of field. The xsi is a great camera (which is why I've kept mine as a lightweight travel camera and backup even though I now have a 7d).

Here's one from last year taken with the xsi+50mm.


First one above was taken with the 50d; second was my first portrait shoot with the 7d.

Wow those are good, thanks! Here's the picture after I did a levels adjustment layer...I put the black eyedropper on something black, and the white on white, and reduced to 70% opacity....is that the proper way of adjusting it? Thanks!

Qarik

this is better but still underexposed imo..look at her white dress. It looks slightly grey still.