Beginner Portrait shoot - what kit?

macs

macs

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Rich
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My sister has asked me to do a photoshoot of her son and my 2 kids as an anniversary present for our parents. I've never done this sort of thing before so bit unsure what kit to take. I've taken some glorified snaps of my kids but never done a "shoot" or portraiture either.

The kit I have is D7000 body with Nikkor 18-55 kit lens, Nikkor 35mm f1.8 and a Tamron 18-200. I have a Jessops flash but not really used it much. I have no off camera equipment and hoping to use natural light.

We're going to head to a local park/lake/country-house-with-estate-land type of place in the spring so natural light should be fine. Hoping for some daffodil shots or similar.

Also got to try and get a few shots with everyone in (4 parents and 3 kids) with no extra person to hold the camera so will take the tripod and remote release for these shots. Anyone done that sort of shot with any success before?

Anyway, what would your set up be for the shoot given my options?
 
Thanks for that. I was thinking that the 35mm was the best lens, certainly very sharp when I get the focus spot on. My only issue with that lens is that the dof when used at anything close to f1.8 is so shallow that it's can be easy to miss a shot because it's out of focus.
 
35 is a great lens, and will be brilliant for close up photos of individual people, stop it down to f2.2 for its best performance and more room for error with depth of field.

The best lens for the group photos for me would be the 18-200 if you have enough light. It will compress the background and at long focal lengths like 100mm will give you a nice blurred background even at f5 (which you would need to be at least to get them all in focus).

For the close up shots, do you have a reflector? Even in poor light you can bring the eyes to life with a bit of bounced light. If not then tinfoil taped to cardboard is worth a shot to see what results it gives.
 
Easy answer is don't get too close. It's not a typical portrait focal length so it can distort a little if you get too close. Like Dan says, compression from a longer lens is always a good thing, but you will need good light unless you're not too fussed about raising the ISO.

ISO 1250 (with some NR i think) from the D7100 wasn't really that clean, but the 180mm focal length has compressed the background and given some nice separation from the subject even at F5.3


Laura by David Raynham, on Flickr

The 35mm was probably my favourite lens on APS-C. It was a real do it all lens.


The Lil by David Raynham, on Flickr

@macvisual Yes, those were taken with the Nik 85mm, It was slightly soft on my D7k tbh but everytime i tried to mess around with the fine tuning of it, i just made it worse so just left it as it was. :LOL:
 
snerkler said:
Nothing wrong with that imo, DOF is spot on for me. Could maybe give it a bit more pop with PP but that's about it.
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A lot of the comments I received about that shot were that the focus was slightly out so I checked the full res version and it is slightly out of focus. But f1.8 at about a foot and a half distance might explain most of that.
 
macs said:
A lot of the comments I received about that shot were that the focus was slightly out so I checked the full res version and it is slightly out of focus. But f1.8 at about a foot and a half distance might explain most of that.
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Well it is slightly out of focus but I was referring purely to the DOF. Being out of focus is down to technique (unless you have front/back focussing issues) rather than shallow DOF, you can have wafer thin DOF but still be in focus. Obviously the more shallow the DOF the more critical the focus has to be and therefore technique has to be spot on. But for me the actual level of DOF is just right on that shot (y)
 
Ok thanks. Sorry, I must have got the won't end if the stick first time.

If I'd have used f2.5 or something it would have given me a bit more leeway when it came to getting the focus spot on as the depth of the shot that was in focus would have been greater.
 
macs said:
Ok thanks. Sorry, I must have got the won't end if the stick first time.

If I'd have used f2.5 or something it would have given me a bit more leeway when it came to getting the focus spot on as the depth of the shot that was in focus would have been greater.
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Depends on how you define it tbh. In reality all extra DOF does it disguise your missed focus point. I know this is a bit pedantic but imo it's important to get the concept right. You should not rely on depth of field to get your focus point right. Your focus point is your focus point and no matter how wide or how shallow your DOF, there is only one area/plane of critical sharpness, all depth of field does is give you an area of acceptable sharpness. Obviously the larger the DOF the larger the area of acceptable sharpness, but within that there is still an area of critical sharpness. Technically this is even true in landscapes, the whole scene is acceptably sharp but there'll still be an area of critical sharpness.

So in your example using f2.5 would not have given you more leeway of getting your focus spot on as you'd have still missed focus, the focus would have still been missed. All it would have done is help to disguise your missed focus. I hope this makes sense?
 
snerkler said:
Depends on how you define it tbh. In reality all extra DOF does it disguise your missed focus point. I know this is a bit pedantic but imo it's important to get the concept right. You should not rely on depth of field to get your focus point right. Your focus point is your focus point and no matter how wide or how shallow your DOF, there is only one area/plane of critical sharpness, all depth of field does is give you an area of acceptable sharpness. Obviously the larger the DOF the larger the area of acceptable sharpness, but within that there is still an area of critical sharpness. Technically this is even true in landscapes, the whole scene is acceptably sharp but there'll still be an area of critical sharpness.

So in your example using f2.5 would not have given you more leeway of getting your focus spot on as you'd have still missed focus, the focus would have still been missed. All it would have done is help to disguise your missed focus. I hope this makes sense?
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Makes total sense! I appreciate all your input into this.
 
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