outdoor FAMILY portraits

bellaphoto

HELP, i have a Family Photo shoot coming up in June of about 10 people and a group photo of about 20, i have been practicing with friends but i can't see to get the lighting down. i try to follow the advise about early morning or late afternoon, early evening. i love in florida and have done a family shoot yeatserday at around 7:30, i get shadows and darkness, the sun was beautiful but i can't see to get nice shots! i am new to all this, any suggestions, tutorials, i use a nikon D40, i tried different settings and iso speeds, i maybe got 4 good shots out of 80!!!
and i have a problem with filling the frame, it always seems they are too far away, or to close and cut off even though it does nt seem that way in the viewfinder.!!!!!!!
:cry
what am i doing wrong. any easy tutorials i can read......
romina

PhilCollum

I think, without more information, the possible solutions are endless. If you can post a couple of your test pics, I'm sure you'll get a lot of great suggestions from the folks around here.

bellaphoto

lighting
here is one, i will try to post more tonight, this is a sample but i already edited it. thanks
hoep i downloaded it correctly, never posted a pic before

PhilCollum wrote:

I think, without more information, the possible solutions are endless. If you can post a couple of your test pics, I'm sure you'll get a lot of great suggestions from the folks around here.

pathfinder

Romina, check your gallery settings to see if you have external links turned off - I am not seeing the image, but the coding is correct, and I should see it if your external links are turned on.

jfriend

bellaphoto wrote:

here is one, i will try to post more tonight, this is a sample but i already edited it. thanks
hoep i downloaded it correctly, never posted a pic before

Romina. Two problems with your posting.

First, you used the link:
http://romina.smugmug.com/gallery/4782662_X2CEN#283917227_xHJza-A-LB which is not an image link. That's a page link so it won't show here. Second, the gallery that has this image in it is password protected so none of us can even see that page. If you want to keep the gallery password protected, then make a copy of the image and put it in another gallery that you can link to.

bellaphoto

family portrait outdoors
sorry, again, i am learning all this and keep forgetting about the external links, i will try again

jfriend wrote:

Romina. Two problems with your posting.

First, you used the link:
http://romina.smugmug.com/gallery/4782662_X2CEN#283917227_xHJza-A-LB which is not an image link. That's a page link so it won't show here. Second, the gallery that has this image in it is password protected so none of us can even see that page. If you want to keep the gallery password protected, then make a copy of the image and put it in another gallery that you can link to.

bellaphoto

portrait outdoor
i tried again and it won't post the image, i turned on off the external links and password protection??
how do i post an image

bellaphoto wrote:

sorry, again, i am learning all this and keep forgetting about the external links, i will try again

WilliamClark77

Is this the photo you are referring to?

Scott_Quier

bellaphoto wrote:

HELP, i have a Family Photo shoot coming up in June of about 10 people and a group photo of about 20, i have been practicing with friends but i can't see to get the lighting down. i try to follow the advise about early morning or late afternoon, early evening. i love in florida and have done a family shoot yeatserday at around 7:30, i get shadows and darkness, the sun was beautiful but i can't see to get nice shots! i am new to all this, any suggestions, tutorials, i use a nikon D40, i tried different settings and iso speeds, i maybe got 4 good shots out of 80!!!
and i have a problem with filling the frame, it always seems they are too far away, or to close and cut off even though it does nt seem that way in the viewfinder.!!!!!!!
:cry
what am i doing wrong. any easy tutorials i can read......
romina

If you subjects have the sun to their back or side, you are going to have shadows on their faces. The more the sun is behind them, the darker the shadows. The only way to fix this and not blow out the background is to provide some light on the shadow side of the subject. You can use reflector(s) and/or fill flash to fill in the shadows. For a group of the size you are talking about, you are going to need a couple of flashes. Changing the settings and/or ISO is not going to provide the light to the shadow side of the subject. It will, at best, expose for the shadow side at the cost of blowing out the background. To the best of my knowledge, there are no easy tutorials for lighting - it comes with practice, study, and more practice. But, you have time and it's really not that hard. And, contrary to what most people may say, I find off-camera flash easier to handle/dial in than any ETT-L (that's the Canon name for it - I don't remember what Nikon calls their flash calculation system).

As for getting the frame you see to match the frame you capture - most dSLR camera viewfinders show us something less than what is actually captured. Even the top-of-the-line pro dSLRs only give the viewer something like 95% +/- of the actual image. The less expensive cameras show even less of the captured frame in the viewfinder. So, you need to test. Once you know what the difference is, you can compensate when you are shooting.

If you are shooting with glasses on, you may not be getting your eye close enough to the viewfinder to actually see all of the image presented. This takes some practice to work right (that's one of the reasons I switched to contact lenses - I'm too lazy to work that hard ).

bellaphoto

outdoor photography
that is one of the pictures, Thank you, thats great advise and i think it will help me alot. i am going to practice practice.
as far as the sharpness, is that from not using a tripod??? i like the picture but it doesn't seem sharp.
anyways, thanks for all your help.
i do wear glasses, haha. i will use my contacts next time.

romina

Scott_Quier wrote:

If you subjects have the sun to their back or side, you are going to have shadows on their faces. The more the sun is behind them, the darker the shadows. The only way to fix this and not blow out the background is to provide some light on the shadow side of the subject. You can use reflector(s) and/or fill flash to fill in the shadows. For a group of the size you are talking about, you are going to need a couple of flashes. Changing the settings and/or ISO is not going to provide the light to the shadow side of the subject. It will, at best, expose for the shadow side at the cost of blowing out the background. To the best of my knowledge, there are no easy tutorials for lighting - it comes with practice, study, and more practice. But, you have time and it's really not that hard. And, contrary to what most people may say, I find off-camera flash easier to handle/dial in than any ETT-L (that's the Canon name for it - I don't remember what Nikon calls their flash calculation system).

As for getting the frame you see to match the frame you capture - most dSLR camera viewfinders show us something less than what is actually captured. Even the top-of-the-line pro dSLRs only give the viewer something like 95% +/- of the actual image. The less expensive cameras show even less of the captured frame in the viewfinder. So, you need to test. Once you know what the difference is, you can compensate when you are shooting.

If you are shooting with glasses on, you may not be getting your eye close enough to the viewfinder to actually see all of the image presented. This takes some practice to work right (that's one of the reasons I switched to contact lenses - I'm too lazy to work that hard ).

Scott_Quier

bellaphoto wrote:

that is one of the pictures, Thank you, thats great advise and i think it will help me alot. i am going to practice practice.
as far as the sharpness, is that from not using a tripod??? i like the picture but it doesn't seem sharp.
anyways, thanks for all your help.
i do wear glasses, haha. i will use my contacts next time.

romina

What looks like a lack of focus can be caused by a number of things (or any combination thereof):

• Camera shake - elimiated by use of tripod. Mitigated by faster shutter speed.
• Subject movement - eliminated by subject not moving, mitigated by faster shutter speed
• Improper focus - the camera AF focused on something other than what you wanted to be infocus.
• Lack of Depth of Field (DOF) - Part of what you wanted in focus is, but other portions (either close to the camera or further from it) are not in focus. To increase the DOF, close down the aperture (larger f/stop number)

Art Scott

bellaphoto wrote:

HELP, i have a Family Photo shoot coming up in June of about 10 people and a group photo of about 20, i have been practicing with friends but i can't see to get the lighting down. i try to follow the advise about early morning or late afternoon, early evening. i love in florida and have done a family shoot yeatserday at around 7:30, i get shadows and darkness, the sun was beautiful but i can't see to get nice shots! i am new to all this, any suggestions, tutorials, i use a nikon D40, i tried different settings and iso speeds, i maybe got 4 good shots out of 80!!!
and i have a problem with filling the frame, it always seems they are too far away, or to close and cut off even though it does nt seem that way in the viewfinder.!!!!!!!
:cry
what am i doing wrong. any easy tutorials i can read......
romina

Are you shooting with flash.....yes I said flash out doors .....work beautifully....especially in TTL mode since I already know you do not have a flash meter:D........so forthis to work the sun (light source) must be behind your subject....shoot with out any exposure comp....then dial up or down the flash comp.....should be on the same dial area as regular exposure comp, but marked by a lighting bolt arrow.........keep written or tape (digital) recordings of what you do for later study........I try to shoot all my portraits with flash (for fill) unless I have assistants to hold reflectors to put light into the shadows.........

joshhuntnm

My two cents: I would learn about shooting and editing RAW. It is a LOT more forgiving if the exposure is not dead on. I took shots that the other day that looked AWEFUL and was able to get them to so-so by reducing the contrast in RAW. These were taken late in the day with harsh shadows.

If you can find some shade, or use a light colored building as a giant reflector, that might be an idea.