Some more portraits

[loydall]

I was trying to get my set up correct for the white background thing to work. I think I got it working ok - I had my backlight (the one pointing at the background) as bright as possible and then my softbox flash stopped down to about 1/16 (I think). Then I used spot metering to hopefully blow the back out a bit. Anyway - I then tried sticking a blue gel over the back flash and got some interesting results.

Here's a selection from me test shoot - the subjects, as you can see, were just kind of plonked there so their poses aren't too perfect!











Just noticed a bit of a colour cast on 1 or 2 of these.. Never mind.

[frex]

I think it is pretty much what you want...nice natural portraits!

[ctranter]

Nice shots, but im a sucker for a hairlight

[WannaBe_80z]

Hair lights brings a photo to the next level for sure.

In your diagram from the other thread you show that you have a 580 and 430 to use now? I would use the 580 on the background as it can pump out way more power and will blow it out easier.

[loydall]

Hmm - yeah, was thinking about that but would I get such a nice light from my softbox with the 430?

(I suppose the only way to find out is to actually try it!)

Cheers.

[WannaBe_80z]

The "quality" of light SHOULD be the same from each other those lights. The 430 should be plenty to light up some faces/upper bodies. Just experiment with the distance from the subject. Not sure how close you will be able to get the light in some of the shots(like any bigger groups for example) but the headshots you could have the light RIGHT next to the subject almost right out of camera's view and get very close. You'd be surprised how powerful that little guy is.

[WannaBe_80z]

You're also making me REALLY want to get a 5d classic now. The quality of these pictures are exactly what I'm after. The 5D + 24-70 combo is just delicious. I'm trying to trade my gripped 40D + 70-200 for a 5D but no one is biting over at POTN....

[loydall]

Well - you know what, I actually shot quite a few yesterday with my 70-200. This for example:



And a few of the others I posted. It's such a good lens.

And, for this sort of shot, I was shooting at f/6.3 - I may shoot at f/8 tomorrow - I don't really want too much blur on the subject, just on the background so the f/4 of my 70-200 is more than enough and also, shooting at 1/200 sec, means that I don't really need to worry about not having IS.

I'd have to have a very good reason to get rid of my 70-200 (someone giving me the 2.8 IS version for example!).

[loydall]

But yeah, the 5d is great.

The worst thing about it though is the focus points - too close together in the middle of the viewfinder. And it hunts way more than the 40d.

In fact, for portrait, I don't think there's much in it between the 5d and 40d. Sure, the 5D may be slightly better quality because of the bigger sensor but I want focus points that are at 1/3 points on the image - if I align the 5d focus points with the subjects eyes (which is exactly what you want to do), you end up with a too much space above the subject's head. If the focus points were further apart (like on the 40d) you wouldn't have this issue.

It's the main thing that bothers me about the camera - so many of my shots need to be cropped to correct composition because of where I put the focus points.

Other than that, I can't complain. The ISO performance of the 5D almost makes the 40d high ISO seem unusable.

Swings and roundabouts and all that...

[loydall]

WannaBe - your idea to have the 580 behind was awesome. I had it at full power with no diffuser on it and man, that thing's bright! I didn't want to reduce the power so I just flipped up the built in diffuser and that seemed to work.

I still had to do a little bit of pp (just a levels layer did the trick). Here's one of the shots:



I'm pretty pleased with this and feel much more confident going into the shoot tomorrow.

Cheers for your help.

[WannaBe_80z]

Glad that helped!

Like I said in your FB post just watch out for the blown out left side. And I'm sure they are the same original image but the one on FB is much more muted. The one here is tinted more yellow.