For the focal length part of this project I’ve again looked at Michael Freeman ‘Photographing People’ book at the section ‘Lens focal length’. This explains that wider angles may be useful if perspective is required in the portrait, but there will be some distortion in close features. Longer telephoto lenses will produce more realistic, more flattering images.
Langford’s Basic Photography gives a good explanation of the focal length relating to the ‘normal’ 50 mm lens for a 35 mm camera – this relates to 28 mm for the DSLR, so zoom settings above that should produce very little distortion.
Planning:
I’ll be using two lenses for this exercise:
· Nikkor 18 – 200 mm f/ 3.5 – 5.6 VR
· Sigma 10 – 20 mm
Knowing how much distortion will be evident on the wide lens, I’ll get my sitter to angle her head to one side – it should produce some interesting results!
Starting with the 18 – 200 mm lens, I’ll use settings of 200 mm, 100 mm, 50 mm – (I expect little distortion at these settings) – 30 mm and 18 mm. After changing the lenses I’ll then use settings of 20 mm, 15 mm and 10 mm. With the head angled centre / left / right for each lens setting, it should provide at least 24 images for the exercise.
The session:
After waiting for 3 days for favourable weather conditions, I decided to use Sneaton forest as the location. Viv and I set off early, to avoid other visitors to the attraction. The choice of Sneaton forest was due to the windy conditions at home, with no change for the better in the forecast – at least it was dry. The weather was partially cloudy, but the leaf cover should provide a reasonably steady light to work with.
The forest was much darker than I had expected – there was more leaf cover and it was earlier in the day, but with the additional flash and reflectors it should be OK.
I set up the remote flash with a white reflector and yellow diffuser on the mini beauty dish. I managed to drop the dish – I bent it slightly and snapped a clip off the diffuser – this should be remembered for next time: always set up the stands securely, before mounting the lights. The flash stand is a modified microphone stand, which allows it to be set up at height of about 2.5 m with the boom fully extended.
I positioned the gold reflector board behind Viv, to hopefully give some highlights in her hair. This was set up on a spare tripod fitted with a bulldog clip.
The camera was tripod mounted in shutter priority (for the flash), pattern metering and single shot exposure.
Following the plan, I took the images at 200 mm, 95 mm, 50 mm, 29 mm and 18 mm using the Nikkor 18 – 200 mm lens then 20 mm, 14 mm and 10 mm with the Sigma 10 – 20 mm lens, as follows:
200 mm, ISO 200, f/5.6, 1/50 sec.
I like this picture. It’s a good likeness and she looks comfortable with the situation. With this setting I’m not crowding her by being too close.
The backdrop is quite dark here – I assume it’s because the camera is exposing for less light as a smaller sample is being used by the metering.
95 mm, ISO 200, f/5.3, 1/50 sec.
Another good likeness and all in proportion as expected. The background is slightly lighter, probably because the aperture and angle of view are wider, so more areas are being sampled. Moving closer into her space, she doesn’t seem as happy with the situation.
50 mm, ISO 200, f/4.8, 1/50 sec.
I like this picture too. It’s still in a good likeness and she seems comfortable with the shoot. The background is lighter again as the angle and aperture widen, which lifts the image.
29 mm, ISO 200, f/4, 1/50 sec.
Moving closer still, the wider aperture available at this zoom is allowing more light to the sensor – probably a little too much for my liking. Maybe I should have bracketed to allow for this. Her features are still in proportion but she seems to be getting a little concerned about the proximity of the camera (now less than a metre from her).
18 mm, ISO 200, f/3.5, 1/50 sec.
The proportions are wrong here. Her head is too wide and her nose too long. She also seems to have a very large shoulder. We can see more of her surroundings, but the lighting on her face from the flash is too bright. Again, bracketing may have helped, but her features are wrongly depicted here.
20 mm, ISO 200, f/5.6, 1/50 sec.
Changing to the Sigma lens, with a smaller aperture at this setting has reduced the lightness of her face, but obviously her features are wrong. The smaller aperture has also allowed a slightly better depth of field for the background. The camera was 0.5 m from her face here, so there’s serious encroachment here and she’s not comfortable. I’m not happy with the results of this shot.
14 mm, ISO 200, f/4.8, 1/50 sec.
Closer still and her features are being portrayed worse again. Her chin and nose look too big and she’s not comfortable with the camera being so close. There’s too much distortion altogether – but we can see more of the background. I had to remove the reflector board here because it was coming into view in the frame and was too distracting.
10 mm, ISO 200, f/4, 1/50 sec.
The wider angle and aperture have produced an over exposed image with features that are now totally wrong. Her face is too wide and her shoulders too big. She’s not happy with the camera as close as it is and I’m not happy with the shot.
Having gone through the exercise I then fell back and took some more portraits which I think have turned out really well – Just as I’d expect from a good sport and a lovely lady.
It’s been interesting to see how the exposure is affected by the aperture setting as the zoom is made wider. In future it may be worth ether bracketing the images or using the auto-ISO facility. I could have reduced the amount of flash manually, or used TTL metering in commander mode, but I think that would have been poor at the close shooting range.
Anyway, it was an interesting exercise and I’ve gained more confidence with taking portraits.
No comments:
Post a Comment