Critique Close up portrait

Michael Batten

Michael Batten

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Michael
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A little more practice with the studio flash.

I tried to feather the light so that it was the outer third of the flash on the face rather than aiming the flash directly at the face and shoot the image at 55m (as I wanted to see whether it was worth investing in the Zeiss 55m 1.8 FE).

Thanks for looking.View attachment 94029
 
That's a really nice shot, as has been said the eyes are superb as is the mouth. Personally I would have set up for more DoF, not loads but more than you have with this image but that's each photographer,s preference, would have been nice to pick a little more detail in the ear jewelry to compliment those eyes.

Regards

Tim
 
Very nice, and the lighting works well. I'd either crop the top or have included more at the bottom; it feels a little unbalanced as it is.

As for lens choice.. what would the Zeiss give you over this?
fwiw I prefer longer e.g. 85 or 135mm equivalent - for tight shots like this.
 
juggler said:
Very nice, and the lighting works well. I'd either crop the top or have included more at the bottom; it feels a little unbalanced as it is.

As for lens choice.. what would the Zeiss give you over this?
fwiw I prefer longer e.g. 85 or 135mm equivalent - for tight shots like this.
Click to expand...

Thanks Simon.

To be honest now I think that the 55mm Zeiss would be a waste of money. I'm currently using the 24-70mm f4 Zeiss so IF I went for a longer lens then I'd love the 85mm Batis. I saw a second hand one a while back at a great price and missed it.

Where would you crop down to on the head? With the positioning of the reflector under the chin that's as low as I could go. I wanted to get the eyes a little higher in the frame but didn't really know where to put the crop in.
 
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Michael Batten said:
Thanks Simon.

To be honest now I think that the 55mm Zeiss would be a waste of money. I'm currently using the 24-70mm f4 Zeiss so IF I went for a longer lens then I'd love the 85mm Batis. I saw a second hand one a while back at a great price and missed it.

Where would you crop down to on the head? With the positioning of the reflector under the chin that's as low as I could go. I wanted to get the eyes a little higher in the frame but didn't really know where to put the crop in.
Click to expand...

As a starting point.. put the eyes on the 'thirds' intersections - or in this case just below, I'd probably want to leave a bit more hair than straight thirds would allow.
Of course, feel free to discard the rule of thirds if it doesn't suit your needs.
 
sk66 said:
The lighting is nice. But IMO the FL/subject distance is way too short for her face...
Click to expand...

Could you expand on that Steven?
 
The short FL/distance is causing a significant amount of extension/expansion (often called perspective distortion). Note how her ears are waaay back and her nose/lip/chin/cheeks/forehead are disproportionally larger.
You've basically created a "wide angle perspective" which makes things farther away notably smaller and things closer notably larger... other than lens distortion, what causes the "wide angle perspective" is the shorter working distances wide angle lenses are commonly used at. This is why most prefer to work at 85mm or greater (200-400mm is not uncommon), because it forces a longer subject distance and a more flattering perspective (along w/ other things).
 
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Thanks Steven, I wanted there to be an amount of distortion in this portrait. I know that this might not be the traditional/most flattering portrait view.
 
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