Which lens should I use?

Marisa Heymach

Hi,

I am an amateur photographer who was asked to shoot first communion photographs for our local church. I will do a mix of outdoor and indoor portraits and am wondering which lens is best to use outdoors from 10 to 11 for individual and family portraits --- I have the Nikon 18 to 200 vr and Nikon 85mm 1.8. I plan to use diffused fill flash because of the time of day. Also, there is very little shade where the pictures are going to be set up and a lot of background distractions, so I would like to use as wide an aperture as possible for shallow DOF. Any advice is appreciated. I know the faster lens will come in handy for indoor portraits, particularly if flash is not allowed.

Thanks in advance,
Marisa

ccpickre

If you are documenting the event, I say use both (if you have 2 bodies, yay. Otherwise just swap them). I'm sure you will kick yourself by limiting to one lens, and wish you had the other. On many of my shoots for my school paper, I end up using 3 or 4 different lens (my 17-50 f2.8, my 50 f1.4, my 135 f2, and my 70-200 f2.8) And I still have my 70-300 and 100 macro in reserve if I need them.

That early in the morning you MAY not need flash (depending on which direction you're facing).

As for the background, try getting low and shooting up at the sky. Or get closer and shoot wider, which will force a smaller depth of field.

SloYerRoll

I'd stick more with the 18-200 than the 85 1.8.

If your shooting PJ style which it sounds like. You don't want razor thin DOF. If you shoot at 1.8/2.4 the whole time, your going to end up having shots where subjects are OOF due to the very narrow DOF. It's allot easier to blur things out in post that make things sharp.

Utilize your strobe. Make sure you use it as a fill flash just to knock out the hard shadows. You don't want it it to compete w/ the sun, just add the slightest bit to it. You can fine tune with e/v control

Try to get some high angle shots w/ everyone in the same area (not posed) they look neat and it's one thing that other P&S shooters won't think of.

Good luck w/ your event.

-Jon

Marisa Heymach

Thanks for the tips. I will post a few after taking them.

SloYerRoll wrote:

I'd stick more with the 18-200 than the 85 1.8.

If your shooting PJ style which it sounds like. You don't want razor thin DOF. If you shoot at 1.8/2.4 the whole time, your going to end up having shots where subjects are OOF due to the very narrow DOF. It's allot easier to blur things out in post that make things sharp.

Utilize your strobe. Make sure you use it as a fill flash just to knock out the hard shadows. You don't want it it to compete w/ the sun, just add the slightest bit to it. You can fine tune with e/v control

Try to get some high angle shots w/ everyone in the same area (not posed) they look neat and it's one thing that other P&S shooters won't think of.

Good luck w/ your event.

-Jon

joshhuntnm

A bit of an echo here: for group shots I would be very cautious about using that 1.8 all the way open. I shot a picture of my son the other day and his nose is in focus and his eyes are out. And his nose is not that big!!! If you have groups of people, and some are standing behind each other, you will need to close down the lense quite a bit. Take some test shots of a piano keyboard from the end or something like it and test to see how wide the depth of field is.

gus

That DOF will change over distance. Big diff between photographing a models face & photographing a group of people.