Valentines Portrait

[phil_burt]

<p>ON Sunday evening our Church will have a Valentines Dinner and Party.<br>

I am assigned to take Portraits and hopefully make some money for a cause. One good thing to keep in mind is this will be a very forgiving crowd, I doubt anyone will be extremely critical at least not as critical as I will be.<br>

My gear consists of: Nikon D90, Sigma 10-20 f4-5.6, Sigma 30 f1.4, Nikon 50 f 1.8, Sigma 24-70 f2.8 and Sigma 70-200 f2.8.<br>

I have but one Sb-600, I also have a Gary Fong dome (White)<br>

A good solid tripod, with a very good head. Nikon remote control.<br>

The room is large that I will be doing this in so space is no problem. It is well lit and I would be able to bounce or whatever is needed. There will be a backdrop that the Valentine committee is getting but I do not know what it is.<br>

Using above as I have no means to get anything else, how/what would you recommend to accomplish this. Is there any way to quickly get the picture I take to a laptop so I can see it bigger. I do have several sd cards and can swap them out and check after every few shots? <br>

Thank you all very much for reading and assisting if possible,<br>

phil b<br>

benton, ky</p>

 

[brian_osterhout1]

<p>I believe Nikon charges for their tethering software, but if you search the web there are a couple free options, but they can be a bit unreliable, so if you are interested in doing this, start playing with it now.<br>

I think you would be a lot better off if you could get the SB600 off your camera and shoot through an umbrella or softbox. Your camera and flash should support Nikon's wireless triggering so you don't need a cable. All the information for setting that up should be in your manuals. And again, you may want to start playing with this before you get there Sunday.<br>

And remember to take extra batteries for the flash.</p>

[dale_dimmick1]

<p>You've got a huge challenge. Lighting control is the key here. I am assuming that you have little or no experience with lighting and predictably balancing flash with interior ambient light.<br>

If you can mount the light off camera on a stand about 3 or 4 feet to the camera right that would be best, if not do this...<br>

Do the following at the location and have the background in place with at least one person sitting in for your test shots. <br>

The goal is to create a 3 source lighting situation with one flash. Position camera on heavy tripod about 10-12' from your subjects. The background should be about 3' behind them. Use the Fong with the dome off. Swivel the flash to bounce off the ceiling about 6-8 feet and 30 to 45 degrees to right and forward of camera position. Be careful that the Fong base doesn't "spill" light over the top lip toward the subjects. (You can tape a small white card or aluminum foil to the front of the Fong to "Flag" any forward spill ) The Fong is now giving you a fill source from camera and a main light source from the bounce off the ceiling. If the final look of lighting seems to heavy from camera, use a small card or something taped to the front of the Fong to scrim down the amount of front light coming through the Fong.<br>

You must use full manual settings for this to work. You are in control of everything here, not the electronics. Set a manual white balance preset of around 5000k. Set F stop to f4 for minimum depth of field requirements for maintaining group in focus. Set camera ISO to 400 with full room light on. Set shutter at 1/60th. Shoot a test. It may look somewhat warm or yellowish. The point is You want the ambient room light exposure 1.3 to 1.5 stop under exposed. Histogram will look low. If it's really dark, use the shutter speed to fine tune this, but don't shoot slower than a 30th, it's OK for it to look dark, it's ambient room light fill and it's the dimmest lightsource of your setup. By the way please use a pre-release mirror lock up setting if possible and your remote release to minimize camera mirror vibration.<br>

Now you have a slightly under exposed ambient fill exposure. From here on out you CANNOT move the camera. Add your flash in manual mode, FULL power. Position the flash head for the ceiling bounce as described above. Shoot a test. If the flash is overbearing, bring the flash power down incrementally, (my SB800 adjusts in 1/3 stops) until the exposure looks good to your eye and check histogram for overall exposure. Remember that unless you have something white in the shot, the Histogram may not be filled all the way to the right, and that's OK. Also remember to have plenty of battery power for the SB600 as you you'll probably be shooting close to full power flashes. Change batteries as soon as you notice that recharge time increasing. Otherwisw, your exposures will begin to change and the ratio of ambient to flash as well. It could get ugly.<br>

White Balance: Adjust using the degress kelvin presets around 5000 degress, but adjust it so it looks good to your eye. Your mixing 3 different color temperatures so use your best judgement on scene. If you can't do that use the "flash" preset, but DO NOT use Auto white balance.<br>

Now recheck the third paragraph to be sure you are clear on the setup and everything is in order. <br>

Since you have plenty of memory cards, I'd just have the laptop and card reader set up to check images, or let the folks choose their favorites. Unless your laptop LCD has been calibrated, I wouldn't trust what I saw on it anyway. Color is usually good but contrast and overall tonal range of the images would be uncertain. Following the steps above is almost foolproof. Tethering a laptop can get complicated, I don't know what software and equipment you have to make a recomendation about that.</p>

<p>Best of luck. Please reply to let me know how it goes. Dale Dimmick <a href="http://www.theportraitartists.com">www.theportraitartists.com</a> </p>

[oskar_ojala]

<p>It's hard to say how the light will work without seeing the space you'll be working in and the background. You have one light, so you can't do too many tricks. A softbox would be ideal, an umbrella good, nothing requires a bit more trickery, perhaps a bounce for a relatively soft light?<br>

In any case get the flash off your camera, use it in full manual to control the light precisely and use the histogram on the camera to expose properly; the LCD looks bright, which may lead to underexposure, which then leads to blocked shadows.</p>

[phil_burt]

<p>WOW,<br>

Many Thanks to all that have replied. I will be printing all of this out and getting down to trying it before I get to do it.<br>

I do have a spare tripod so I can tape it to that. As long as the SB-600 see the flash from the camera I should be OK.<br>

One other question and I hope that those of you answered will see this: What lens do you recommend? I was thinking of the Simma 30, Nikon 50 or the Sigms 24-70 .... These are all fast glass and I like using any of them. I do use the 24-70 more than anything else.<br>

Thanks again ....<br>

phil b<br>

benton, ky</p>

 

[peter_k4]

<p>Assuming you'll be keeping it down to singles, couples, and possibly small family groups, I think you can pull off something decent. If you can get an umbrella that would be ideal to use the SB600 off camera. If you're on a budget though I've used a piece of white bristol board taped to a chair to bounce the flash effectively.</p>

<p>I just experimented with my first "portrait" session, taking photos of my family over christmas. I found that I needed to keep the flash within about 10 feet of the people to get enough power at ISO 200. And I found myself using a 50mm lens most of the time. You could probably use that 24-70 though for greater versatility</p>

<p>One thing I would recommend is to keep that aperture stopped down to f8. I was very temped to open up to f5.6 or 4 so that I could play around with my flash distance while keeping the ISO low, but after the fact I found that good focus was never on more than one person in the photo.</p>

<p>Get the flash off camera and bounced, stay stopped down, and experiment; would be my advice.</p>

[rob_piontek]

<p>One great idea I saw on David Tejada's site is to preview using a portable DVD player. No software or anything to goof around with. Just hook up the camera and you should be good to go. But I haven't tried it myself. The catch is that I think he said you no longer see the preview on the camera.</p>

<p>There are free options for shooting tethered to a laptop if you want to. I think DIY camera bits or something.. check here:</p>

<p>http://www.diyphotobits.com/download-diyphotobitscom-camera-control/</p>

<p>Not sure if that's the one I tried. The one I tried used Lightroom to preview the images. Worked fine for me, but on my old (7yrs) laptop it was painfully slow.</p>

<p>I would borrow a DVD player if you don't have one, it will save you the hassle of setting up the laptop.</p>

<p>For lighting it might be best just to bounce off the ceiling somewhat to the left or the right with the flash on the camera. But if the room is big the ceiling is probably high and this might not work. If the ceiling is high another idea might be to set up so that your back is not too far away from a white wall, and you can bounce off the wall to one side. Just some ideas!</p>

[oskar_ojala]

<p>Use the 24-70 or the 50. If you photograph more than one person, try to have them at the same distance from the camera so that both look as sharp as possible.<br>

If you have the opportunity, do a practice round with a volunteer/model. If you start chimping a lot, let alone look at the pictures on a laptop during the shoot, the whole thing starts turning into a hassle. Nail the settings then just quickly check that eyes were open and focus were correct and move on.</p>