Questions of People Shooters
anonymouscuban
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So I've been wondering a few things.
One of the things I feel like struggle with is getting the shot in focus quickly. It feels like I take too long. I typically shoot in AF using the single focus point. I don't often have my cam on the tripod so I have to refocus often. Also, when I am switching camera angles, I move my focus point around in the frame to get it over the eye, this seems to take me a while. It could just feel like it takes me a long time when in reality it doesn't. :dunno
- Do you guys shoot with your cams on tripods mostly when shooting portraits?
- Do you use manual focus or auto focus?
- If auto, single focus point or multiple focus point?
One of the things I feel like struggle with is getting the shot in focus quickly. It feels like I take too long. I typically shoot in AF using the single focus point. I don't often have my cam on the tripod so I have to refocus often. Also, when I am switching camera angles, I move my focus point around in the frame to get it over the eye, this seems to take me a while. It could just feel like it takes me a long time when in reality it doesn't. :dunno
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I almost always use auto focus and sometimes in continuous servo mode.
And almost always single point
It usually doesn't take much time to lock focus when changing tings up, it may seem like that but I rarely miss the moment I was aiming for....
Autofocus
Single point (change it often).
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- Avoid tripod whenever possible (I really like to move around when I shoot)
- AF. For all its problems, it's more accurate than I am!
In addition to a repeatable framing/zoom I also have less cases of "oh, sh%t, where did I put my camera?".
Light stand - initial AF then switch to MF and control model's position distance wise. At f/5.6 and 10..15 ft shooting distance the DOF is about 2-3ft deep, so it's easy to keep that in check. Repeat focusing after every pose change.
Handheld - always AF.
mostly AF, MF sometimes
single point only (love the joystickymuhthingy)
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That is quite the cool stand!
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Another question... do you guys fire quite a lot of shots?
I tend to take a lot of shots and then purge in post. I look at it from a perspective that I am not really wasting anything other than my time. Also, I hate it when I see that I got the perfect pose, expression, etc. but it's just a tad out of focus. Since I've started being liberal on the frames I take, I've had less issue like this.
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Sounds about right.
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If you are close to the subject, less than 10 feet with a large aperture you do need to play with focus points focus and recompose does not work in this instance.
If the subject is further than ten feet and especially if you are using an aperture larger than 2.8 then you can focus on the eye and then recompose the photo, which will be quicker until you get really fast with moving the focus points around.
If the subjects are more than 15' or so then you can switch to continuous and focus is not so critical so you don't have to focus on the eye so that will speed you up.
Yes I always take a couple safety shots of set ups that I really like. The camera screen cannot be trusted for evaluating the sharpness unless you zoom way in, faster to take safety shots.
Lots of shots is kind of a strategy with me, I mix them up so they never know when I am actually going to take the photo....especially with people who are nervous....or that get that waiting for the camera to go off look on their faces right before every shot.
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It's a bit flimsy, but the next best thing would be anywhere from $900 to $1500 plus tax plus rather expensive shipping, and I can't justify an upgrade for now.
Tripod in a studio is absolutely useless imho, at least in a crowded common-room-turned-studio type like mine. Its legs are thin and hardly visible, so it's quite easy to knock off, plus it takes eons to adjust the height. :-(
This stand has moderate footprint, legs-base are flat, the pole itself is shiny and clearly visible, and I can change vantage point from a few inches above the floor (try to get that low with a tripod to begin with) to ANY height up to its top (8ft) within a couple of seconds.
Adjusting any tripod height significantly takes minutes, since you have you adjust all three legs, level them, etc...
These days I barely shoot a hundred frames per shoot. Two hundred or more is a relatively rare case. Before I could take 20-50 shots per look. These days it's typically less than 10, sometimes just 2-3.
I think it's a normal process. We humans learn like this. It's a basic principle of any neural network: do a lot of seemingly identical actions and analyze the results. It does take time, but in the end you can do it nearly automatically and right off the bat.
Case in point: when Joel and I went for our Joshua Tree adventure with Cheryl, the first shoot was in the hotel on Friday night. I brought a couple of ABs. New - unfamiliar - room. Rarely used modifiers (I brought umbrellas for compactness instead of my typical softboxes). I kinda questimated the distances, the environment, dialed in power settings and fired a test flash to meter it. One light was spot on and another was about 0.2 stop off (Cheryl is my witness;-). :ivar
All I'm saying - we learn, and we get better!
Nik, I totally understand what you are saying. Even me in my noobness, I've noticed I need much fewer shots to get it right. Especially when it comes to dialing in my lights... I'm really beginning to get a hang of it. However, where I struggle is the posing... I have the subject make an adjustment, then I shoot a couple shots, chimp, then another minor adjustment, and so on. I guess this too will come with time and also with working with more experienced models.
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Be wary about "experienced" models. While some of them can indeed do a great job (and typically charge a lot), many so called 'pros' just happened to catch a good luck streak for their natural looks and can't pose for sh#t, even though they *think* they can. In the latter case you'd have to break them first, and sometimes it's just unfeasible.
I say: use that posing book of yours (or, better yet, your own head) and get novice modes. They won't be inclined to charge you, are usually very receptive for suggestions (since they are trying to learn the trade) and you can experiment together for the mutual benefit.
I'm not a "people" shooter in general, but just to defend us tripod fans... I can invert the center column on my tripod and set the camera millimeters above the floor....
...but as you say it does take some time. I can set the whole kit up very quickly, but to do anything "unusual" like floor shots does take a few minutes. And of course full extension on most tripods is nowhere near 8' high.
With a ball head and a level on the quick release plate or otherwise mounted to the camera (or better yet a levelling base), the legs only have to be somewhat near level, and with a bit of practice it is not difficult or time consuming to adjust a tripod, certainly under a minute unless doing anything "unusual" as mentioned above.
All that said, and despite using my tripod as much as possible, I don't know how useful they'd be in studio doing people shots. Unless you simply want to ensure the composition is exactly the same shot-to-shot, and you can freely move about to adjust the model's clothes (well, maybe not in your case, Nik), hair, lighting, etc. The primary benefit of the tripod is stability for either far off subjects like wildlife or birds, or for long exposures. Shooting people in studio you won't typically be doing long exposures or the subject motion will blur the photo, and you're usually not shooting from 1/4 mile away with a long lens. Of course you can't quickly and easily change the shooting perspective, either, although a good quick release system like the Arca-Swiss makes it very easy to remove the camera from the tripod.
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At any rate, in studio environment a tripod doesn't stand a chance against a shooting stand speed-, convenience-, features- and safety-wise.
On a slightly different subject: my next studio purchase probably would be a decent pano head. Ballheads are fine outdoors, since one knob/lever allows you to operate in all 3 dimensions simultaneously. In studio, however, this is exactly what you *don't* need, since you most often want to lock two axis and operate only on one.
Not if you do it right. I'll have to set it up and take a photo, but it's a simple thing to set up the camera non-inverted and practically sitting on the floor using the L-bracket and the ballhead's drop notch. Of course, if that's what you want, you could always just, well, set it on the floor.
I'm not arguing that at all. I was just responding to your comment indicating that that particular maneuver couldn't be done with a tripod.
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Look at this image, for example:
It was taken in a midst of muddy sands of Lake Powell, inverted, 60 sec exposure, in a pre-dawn darkness (my eyes could barely see anything). Anything that touched the "surface" would (and did) get soaked wet and full of sand instantly. While I could (and did) set up the exposure parameters with the camera still in my hands, the final framing adjustments had to be done "in situ" - not the easiest shooting conditions...
I agree. It can be done. Just cumbersome.
I have another question... and this is more of a confirmation than anything else. Do you pose the person, then adjust your lighting (in a studio) or do you pose around the lighting?
I know this probably sounds real stupid but I realized that when I first started shooting with my studio lights, I would pose the person without much thought of adjusting the lights. I guess I was so overwhelmed with trying to get the right pose that I had no brain power left to even think about the lights. More recently, I set my lights up in a general way, pose and then fine tune the position of the lights. Sounds like something that should be basic, and maybe it is for most, but this didn't come to me at first.
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I'm with Nik here...case in point..
When I first got my D80 years ago, I easily shot off 10K shots within the first few months...currently I've had my D700 since it was officially released here in the states but I've only fired off about 25K actuations.
I pick and chose my shots and rarely will fire off more than a couple hundred frames per shoot.
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Uhm, theoretically your Concept should define both the pose and the lighting, otherwise you lose Cohesiveness.
In practice, however, lighting setup typically takes more time to prime than it takes a model to change a pose. Hence my MO is:
1) prime the lighting;
2) do all the poses/looks I wanted with *that* lighting - maybe adjusting it as the pose change;
3) go to the next planned lighting setup;
4) repeat steps ##1..3 as necessary.
Make sense Nik and your steps are kind of what I meant and what I have been practicing more lately. I have a concept that I want to shoot so I already know the light setup that I need/want and the general pose. I setup my lights... "Priming them" as you put it. I then get the pose but from there, I tweak the lighting so its right... you know, no shadows where I don't want and some where I do. This last part is what I lost site of before. I was concentrating so much on the posing that I would really "see" how the everything was coming together.
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