Family portraits with limited resources

[ashishgarg]

<p>Hi,<br>

I am currently traveling and have limited equipment borrowed from a friend to take some family portraits and need some tips. I have a Canon Rebel XT with 18-55mm lens and no tripod. I know this may already be very limiting, but I am not looking for miracles, though I would love to make some good shots of my family to cherish later on.<br>

Could you all please chime in and provide your input on what to do or rather not to do. I mostly will be shooting indoors with limited light, there is possibility of going outdoors for some pictures (and I intend to try doing that as well). I plan to make use of RAW mode to help with some post-processing.<br>

Thanks for your time!</p>

[JAPster]

<p>here are some basic tips...<br>

1) indoor or out, carefully evaluate the existing lighting.<br>

Ask questions like this? How bright or dim is the scene? What kind of light is it? How many light sources are there? Can I use the existing light or do I really need to use the popup flash?</p>

<p>2) On a bright & sunny day, generally avoid putting your subjects out in the bright sunlight. Why? If you follow the old maxim, 'put the sun over your shoulder', and also have the subjects facing you in the bright sunlight, then your pic will have very strong bright light falling on their faces, but equally strong shadows. The result is not the best portrait. Its better to put your subject under some shade, perhaps the shade of a large oak tree, or the shade of a house. Even in the shade, there will still be enough light bouncing in from the bright areas to illumine your subject.</p>

<p>3) Set the camera's White Balance setting to match the predominate light falling on your subjects. This setting affects how "true" your color tones look in the resulting image. Set it correctly, and your colors should look pretty good (close to what was there in the original). Set it wrong, and your colors will definitely not look right in the image (if accuracy is your goal). So to get the best color renderings, you need to pay close attention to the type of lighting that will predominate on the subjects, and then, try to set the camera White Balance setting so it matches that type of light. For example, if you place your subjects in the shade of the tree, set the white balance setting to its Shady setting. But if you decide to shoot an indoor shot using the popup flash, set the White Balance setting to its Flash setting. Or, if you take an outdoor group shot on a cloudy or overcast day, set the White Balace to the Cloudy setting. Taking the time to do this will increase the chances the colors will come out looking great and not require fixing in post.</p>

<p>4) Check the camera manual to see what the range is for the camera popup flash. When you shoot flash, try to stay within that range as it describes the effective zone for flash pictures.</p>

<p>5) Shooting indoors w/o tripod and w/o flash using just existing light can be very challenging, assuming you really want good results. I anticipate you will want to shoot some existing light natural portraits w/o flash, and you say w/o tripod. You did not tell us how fast your 18-55 lens is (what the aperture range is, on that lens). Be ready to increase the ISO SETTING on the camera, in order to make the image sensor more sensitive to existing ligght and be able to get a correct exposure.</p>

<p>6) Here is just a beginners rule-of-thumb for setting the camera ISO... basic starting points:<br>

a) subjects in bright sunny daylight.... set ISO to 100 or 200<br>

b) subjects in shade or cloudy daylight set ISO to 200<br>

c) subjects inside w/good lighting or outside in late afternoon good lighting .. set ISO to 400<br>

d) subjects inside w/marginal lighting and no flash ....... start ISO at 800, adjust up if needed.<br>

The basic idea is that as your scene lighting goes down, the camera sensor needs to be made more sensitive to light, and you do that by bumping up the ISO Setting.</p>

<p>6) Not having a tripod means you have to be more conscious about camera shake. The general rule-of-thumb is that its harder to get a sharp image when hand-holding at shutter speeds 1/50th sec and slower, even after setting the ISO value quite high. Slow shutter speeds keep the shutter open long enough to capture any camera movement, resulting in everything in the pic being blurry - not what you want in good pictures, unless you are are shooting for artistic effects. So, lacking a good tripod, and when shooting indoors with existing light w/o flash, - try and take advatage of any nearby stationary object you can brace your hands, arms, or even the camera, against, to try and minimize camera shake. This improves your odds of getting a sharp image.</p>

<p>7) Be aware of bright backgrounds. If you shoot your subject indoors in existing lighting w/o flash, and you have a bright background, the chances are good the subjects will end up too dark, almost like silhouettes, and the background will be bright. That can ruin your picture. You have to be aware of this, especially in rooms with windows opening up to bright outdoor sunlight. The work-around is to: a) move the subjects around, so that the window light falls on them from the side or the front, b) use the camera popup flash to provide full frontal illumination, which also acts as "fill" flash, or c) move close and take an exposure reading off just the face of the subjects (such that the face fills the whole frame) and then move back to your shooting spot to reframe, refocus, but use the same ISO, Shutter, and Aperture you noted when up close.</p>

<p>8) When shooting outdoors w/o flash, and you have a lens hood, use it. The lens hood will block any significant light from entering the lens from a side angle. Strong side light, if not blocked, can wash out colors and contrast in your images, and make a bad image. Using the hood blocks such light so you get better colors, better contrast, better images.</p>

<p>But, take the hood OFF, when you shoot popup flash indoors. In that scenario, the lens hood can actually block light from the popup flash, causing a dark band across the bottom portion of the picture. And that will ruin a good picture.</p>

<p>As you intuit, from these hints, there are no magic rules to get great pictures using the setup you describe in the scenes you decribe. This is basic handheld D-SLR, so you have to focus of the basics - pay attention to the light, pay attention to your color balance, when you use popup flash, stay within the effective popup flash range, adjust the ISO according to the prevalent light levels, take advantage of existing objects to steady that camera.</p>

<p>good luck...</p>

 

[markonestudios]

<p>Ashish, do you have an external flash?</p>

[ashishgarg]

<p>Alan: Thanks for your help. It is a kit lens EF-S 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6 II.<br>

Mark: No, unfortunately not. I am hoping to borrow a tripod and possibly external flash, but so far I don't have either.</p>