sanyflame

<p>I personally like to be in control of my main focus point so use only the central one.</p>

<p>Thanks for all you answers! They are greatly appreciated. Jeff you are spot on. I do not intend to use such wide lens for headshots. For that I have the wonderful 50 1.8. This lens would be mainly for full body shots like the one attached (taken with my 18-55 kit lens at 23mm). However I would like the capacity of blurry background even at wide shots, therefore the f4 is a concern of mine. I will check some other lenses here recommended. Many thanks!</p><div></div>

<p>I' a huge fan of my nifty fifty 50mm 1.8 lens and it is my prefered lens for portrait/fashion work. However I'm finding out that in my cropped sensor (I have a 450D) I'm feeling somehow limited. I want to acquire something on the wide angle range for portraiture/fashion work. The 28-70mm 2.8 is a good choice as aperture is quite nice but not that wide angle with my cropped body. I also don't want to stop using the 50mm so really do not need another lens with that range. I'm contemplating buying the L series 17-40mm f4. Nice length at widest angle and reaching just before 50mm. A good complement to my prime. But is this a good lens for portraiture/fashion work, given it's f4 aperture? I'm looking for some advice from you all knowledgeable people and those who actually use this lens for this type of work. <br>

Many thanks for your help!</p>

<p>Craig, thanks so much for your explanation! It's not far from what I was thinking but I have now a much better understanding of editorial. The examples you gave are very helpful. <br>

Jeff: yes, they say they want commercial type shoots. My first reaction was to email the model back asking: "what will we be selling?" as in my understanding both commercial and editorial photos are "normal" shoots used to sell/promote/tell a story type of thing! But then I doubted myself as I really only started dealing with fashion photography and models 6 months ago.<br>

So , you cannot do a commercial or editorial work without knowing what the theme is! Makes sense.</p>

<p>I need some help understanding commercial and editorial photography (involving models) but please forgive the dumbness. I think I have a fair decent understanding of commercial and editorial work but not completely sure, especially with editorial. Commercial photography is where you are trying to sell something and editorial features obviously in magazines and would be for example, fashion stories. Is this right?<br>

My main issue, at the moment, is that I have some models contacting me wanting to do some commercial shoots or editorial ones and I have to confess I'm unsure in how to organize the shoot. What would be a correct definition of commercial and editorial and how is this visible in photos. What makes you judge a photo as a good commercial and/ or editorial photo?<br>

Many, many thanks for your patience and help!</p>

It's definitely better to bounce from somewhere but even better, in my opinion, is to use take the flash off camera. You can invest on a light

stand and start experimenting with one flash. Your nikon D80 in built flash can trigger your unit. Try checking strobist.blogspot.com

 

Best of luck!

Thanks for your help!

 

David, thanks for the link. It works perfectly well.

 

In the meantime I'm attempting some fog creation with gradients but it's not easy.

Appologies if question sounds silly or if you don't understand the concept. I visualize it in my head but I'm not very good at expressing it in

words.

 

I have a shoot booked with a friend of mine in December. The shoot will be in a wood and I want to get a "dreamy" feel in the picture.

Having fog the morning of the shoot would help me achieve this but in case I'm not that lucky how can I achieve this in post? Would I

isolate the model and apply a blur?

 

Many thanks for any help!

I started photography as a serious hobby not long, in fact about 6 months ago. Even though I always knew I liked photography I am now

completely in love with it. My full time work is very stressful and is making me very unhappy and I find myself thinking photography all the

time. Saying this I'm reading a lot, joined some photo groups in my area (London, UK) and taken lots of pictures and I think I have

improved since first starting.

 

I was looking to find a mentor. Maybe not so much a mentor who lives near me but more of someone with patience who would be willing to

help me in my development via email. How? Answer any silly questions, provide me with feedback on my photos, etc. Nothing too heavy, I

promise. Very happy with homework as well. Someone with a flexible approach to photography and hopefully not photoshop phobic. I strive

to take photographs in the best possible way but for me photography is also art so I would use photoshop to achieve that if that's intended.

My favorite area is portraiture (fashion, headshots, glamour, abstract) but I also love nature photography.

 

How can I go about finding this type of help? Many, many thanks!

Hi Heather,

 

I'm very far from Seattle, as I live in London, UK but I used meetup.com website to find a local photography group and found one very

interesting. Maybe you can look up to see what's in your area. In a quick search I found this: http://photo.meetup.com/509/

 

Have fun!

I'm not sure I understand your question to be honest. Why wouldn't there be many talented eastern europeans? They're still people, just like

North Americans, Western Europeans or anyone else! I don't see a need for a specific reason for people in a specific group to be creative,

I actually find that thought/ idea quite patronizing!

Thanks again for all your help, I think I just need to keep on doing what I'm already doing. Experimenting!

 

Noel: thanks for your explanation but I do know what DoF is and how it's used. I justed needed a simplification on the maths as my original post explains!

Thanks so much to everyone for your explanations and links, they're much appreciated. Regarding my pictures I'm not entirely unhappy

with them but after asking for C&C for several of them the bulk of feedback was that images were too soft and not sharp and that led me to

wanting to try and master/ perfect the DoF. And I think that's why feedback on your images is good, it makes you want to perfect the

issues, or at least it does to me. Again, thanks for all your help!

Thanks Patrick, I can see it now! This has never happened before and that's what made me wonder but it's there now.

Thanks so much!

I tried to submitted a post to the beginners forum but when I done so it gave me an error message saying that the post already existed by

that name, in that forum. I thought it was strange as I hadn't pressed the submit button. When I went to check the forum my post wasn't

there. In my profile, under the forum posting the topic appears but when I click on it the following message appears:

 

"We had a problem processing your entry:

Couldn't find message 00Qws7. It was probably deleted by the forum maintainer.

Please back up using your browser, correct it, and resubmit your entry."

 

The post was called " Can someone simplify depth of field for me?"

Not sure if this is a technical error or what's wrong, so any help is appreciated.

DoF is slowly driving me mad. I had the opportunity to take some photos with some models the other day. There were other photographers

on site so things were not entirely controlled. I was not very happy with the pictures I took. There seems to be something in common in

practically all portraits I take. A slight softness/lack of sharpness (if at all interested check my flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sanyflame/sets/72157607399371749/

 

I do know, however, that this has to do with how I focus (I'm practicing on that) and the depth of field. This is where I struggle. I understand

DoF and how it works. I know, for example that in my 50mm f1.8 lens if I shot at its widest aperture, 1 meter away I will have less than one

inch of DoF. My problem is all the mathematics required if I shot with different focal lengths at different distances. I'm lousy at measuring

distances or doing calculations in my head. Is there a simplified way I can approach DoF? Or should I just brush up on my math skills?

Many thanks for your patience and help, once more!

No need to apologize Charles, I'm not here to be patted in the back, I have my friends and family to do that. Thanks, I

appreciate your honesty!

Catherine, thank you for your feedback! I still have to master sharp eyes at such wide apertures. She had limited time to

spare so I felt a bit pressured to get the shots I wanted. I have now learnt that quality is better than quantity (not that I

didn't knew it before), and will spent more time focusing next time. The window light in my room can be very good but it's

also very unpredictable.

 

Nathan, thank you as well for your input. I get what you say about the fourth shot and I do have an alternative. Would it

work better in your opinion? http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c285/Sanyflame/Chantelle12.jpg

I have recently done a photo shoot and would love any comments on it. My aim was to get a glamour/ fashion feel in the photos. Some

images are manipulated and some had simply some adjustments. I'm also slowly building my portfolio, so if there's a strong image you

think should be used in portfolio feel free to tell me. I'm looking for constructive criticism, I already know some people dislike photoshop. I

did the shot at my home, in my improvised bedroom with natural window light and a reflector for fill in. I shot with a 50mm f/1.8.

 

Ignore the last pictures on the slideshow as they were, obviously, not for the same shoot. Thank you so much for your input.

 

Thank you Tom. I will look into the wording. Tattoos conventions are a good idea. There's one coming to London next

month so will try there. Like you said being a women might be easiest and as I have a few tattoos myself it might be even

better. Thanks for the tip.

 

Gene, thank you very much for your comments, you are very kind!

Thanks Scott for your comments and wishes. TFCD or TFP is used a lot in the UK. It means "time for a cd" or "time for

prints" as a way of paying a model . It's good for models who are new and looking to expand their portfolio. Anyway, you

are right, not everyone might know it so I'll correct it. Thanks.

Charles, thanks very much for the correction. Sometimes no matter how many times you read something you always miss something.

I really hope I'm posting this in the right place and that I don't upset anyone by asking for some comments. I have created a website with

my mac account and would love any comments on it. I'm not yet intending to sell any services from this site as I'm pretty much a beginner

but wanted something with a good look. I also thought of creating a blog to go along it to write about my photographic experiences but then

I thought it would be too much of a personal website and that's not what I want. What do you think?

 

The link is http://web.mac.com/susieguerreiro/ . I also want to get a proper domain name but I'm unsure how to do it. I'm in the UK and

have googled it but there's lots of options where to buy a domain, so not sure what's the best/safest.

In my opinion there's not much to it. They are two different illegalities and the fact that the photographer was breaking one doesn't give

anyone the right to damage his property. Maybe the photographer received a fine or a warning, maybe we had a camera but wasn't shooting

(improbable I know). For example, if you enter someone's private property you're commiting an illegality but that doesn't give the right to the

owner to beat you. If they do you can them very obviously sue them, even though what you were doing was illegal.

Alan, you are right! I don't know the future. Photography is a hobby for me, a serious hobby and I'm just starting but I also know that if I ever get good enough to turn professional and make some money I won't say no. Thanks for all your advice.

 

Alec, thank you for your thorough explanation. It seems that this is a very complex and not straight forward issue. I will look into your links and try to understand more of it.Will also research copyright in UK.

 

Will get release forms anyway. Better safe than sorry. Thanks again for your help!