a few tips please

big dave hull

big dave hull

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David
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ive recently got into photography and my gf has allowed me to take some portrait photos of her, whats the best settings on camera to use and how do i setup to take them,

im using a sony a230, 18-55mm, and a 70-300mm tele macro, whats the best lens and also is it better with a white backdrop and flashes

any help would be great cheers

(id like to get nice warm images, and il be shooting indoors with normal lights and a flash)
 
Strewth - that's a big old set of questions, David!

I'll do my best to give some opening guidance - I love portrait photography!

For most portraits you want the subject to pop out from the background.

There are two main ways to achieve this - blur the background, or use a very plain background.

To blur the background you really need a 'fast' lens - this is one where the maximum aperture is f/2.8 or greater (greater apertures = smaller numbers). However, although I guess your 70-300 is not especially 'fast', a telephoto lens will have less of the shot in focus that your 18-55 will. Sooo...I'd set you a230 to aperture priority, set your lens to about f5 @ 150mm and change the ISO setting to get a shutter speed of at least 1/125sec. You may need a tripod to help keep everything steady.

If you want to go the white background route you can either trial & error it or use multiple flashes and a flash meter. Ideally you want the background to be about 2 stops more exposed than the subject. So camera set at max-sync speed, and say aperture f8. The background would want f13-f16's worth of exposure. Stick a big flash near the background one on the camera.

Hope this helps - please feel free to ask for clarity as I've only given a brief answer!

Phil
 
One other thing - indoors you can get good results bouncing the flash from the ceiling, but with a little white card attached to the flash to reflect highlights back into the eyes.

Phil
 
thats great cheers, now i know what the card does now!!, il have a go soon and post some pics up and see what u think, and then at least i can always improve
 
philthejuggler said:
To blur the background you really need a 'fast' lens - this is one where the maximum aperture is f/2.8 or greater (greater apertures = smaller numbers).
Click to expand...

This is a little off topic but that is not really the case if you know how depth of field works. Sure a larger aperture helps but the main part that affects the dof is magnification also the distance to the background is important. With a 300mm lens set to f8, the subject close up and the background fairly distant, look and see how shallow the dof is.

I appreciate this is not going to help particularly with indoor photography mainly because the 300mm f/l is very long for that
 
i do understand the most basic principles, but i just like to check from more experienced people that im not gonna be wasting time taking photos when none of them will turn out any useful, id like to be to take photos of her and her to be confident that they will turn out good and she herself is happy with them, its taken me enough to get her to let me
 
Get outside - a walk in the park. Use your long lens there.
 
Go to your library and have a read of "Understanding Exposure" by Bryan Peterson.

It explains well the relationship between light and the different settings on a camera.
 
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