Headshots

[UdubBadger]

Originally Posted by Chewy734

Seth, $60 doesn't seem like much for a 2 hour photoshoot, imo... but then again I'm an amateur photographer so what do I know.

Now... if she's hot and she's changing in front of you during the shoot, then that changes the ball game

yeah I know, I mean... like I said, she played the broke college student card, I'm not doing anything better right now as I am going to school online and my assignments take me a total of 30 min a day. I just figured $60 isn't too much pressure for my 1st headshot shoot, might as well. I already checked, unless she just took a bad sports photo (shes on the crew team), I will be turning my head when she changes.

[UdubBadger]

Originally Posted by ichiban

use the 50 most of the time for portrait like that. And add in the 70-200 in some of the body shots for a nice compression, i'm not sure about the f4, so it might not give as much creamy bokeh as the 2.8.

yeah, I'm just worries the 70-200 will be too long for a full body shot and getting the flash to hit her for fill light.

[UdubBadger]

Originally Posted by rodi

these are standard "agency-requested headshots and body shots."
i try to stay away. i only did them once, and that was for a friend.
i'd rather produce something that they could "use" for such purpose.

yeah, well I'll see how it goes.

[scollins]

Originally Posted by rodi

#1 - obvious studio shot with lights

#2 - look at the light fall off on the background - it matches the face: that's a big long wall of a window. catch lights confirm. that natural light spill, it wraps smoothly and even.

#3 - i doubt they had a big enough softbox to light that scene so evenly and so soft. if you want to go off the catchlights, you'd think lightsource is coming from the right of frame, but it's not (no harsh light from that side on him). it's coming from above, the front and the flanks. they're outside somewhere on a cloudy day on a sidewalk or something.

#4 - in an alley or something obviously, close to the edge of a building @ the street (light fall off is smooth and gradual).

but more importantly- in all 3 of these, the depth of field is thin - they shot close to wide open and, inherently, a fast shutter. if they were balancing their lights (if they were to use them) with the sun/natural light, they would need a camera that could sync at high-speed (1/1,000+). and well, it looks like those client couldn't afford that type of budget (i.e.: Leica S2 $30k+ lenses and equipment). ;]
in order to sync and balance the sun on a budget, your 1/250th and needs an f/16 - and that means big powerful lights and huge depth of field.


phew.

Thanks! Always looking for opportunities to learn....


Now for a follow-up. Supposedly, based on the manual for my SB-600 flash and Nikon D300, I can sync at any speed up to the max shutter speed available.

High-Speed flash synchronization at your camera’s highest shutter speed is
now possible. In this mode, the Auto FP High-Speed Sync mode is
automatically set when the shutter speed exceeds the camera’s sync shutter
speed. This is useful when you want to use a wider aperture to achieve shallow
depth of field to blur the background.

[BillLee]

good thread is good!


i was in the same situation, i had to do a shoot for a group of girls. i charged them $60 for 1 hour, they saw my flickr and they knew i was a noob. At the end i thought my pictures came out like crap, but they liked it.

[UdubBadger]

so what is the best approach? shoot tight for the 8x10 crop or shoot a bit loose and crop in PS?

[BillLee]

i would shoot with a bit of space so i could mess around with the crop.

[Chewy734]

Originally Posted by BillLee

i would shoot with a bit of space so i could mess around with the crop.

[UdubBadger]

ya probably a good idea

[rodi]

Originally Posted by scollins

Thanks! Always looking for opportunities to learn....


Now for a follow-up. Supposedly, based on the manual for my SB-600 flash and Nikon D300, I can sync at any speed up to the max shutter speed available.

I started typing a bunch of explanations and it was getting lengthy, then I found this:
http://nikonclspracticalguide.blogsp...explained.html

Basically, you're stretching the output of your SB flash across a longer duration so that the small slit of the sensor exposure that moves down the sensor for a high speed shutter gets the same amount of light exposure. otherwise, only part of your sensor (in a horizontal slit) will be exposed to that light.
In order to stretch the time, the power output is reduced. So you'd have to have the light pretty close to your subject. And if you have something to diffuse it, you're reducing the power even more.

I guess test it out?

[Mr Tonka]

I didn't read the whole thread, but i think one of the common aspects of an outdoor headshot or body shot for means of self promotion is a nice bokeh. I'm sure you already thought of that, but figured i'd bring that up since i didn't see it during my skim of the thread. I was thinking the 50 and 70-200 if it would work.....

Everything else seems like you've got it under control. If you're good with PS you can always add a nice catch light after if you miss it. In my opinion it's not worth printing without a catch light.

[scollins]

Originally Posted by rodi

I started typing a bunch of explanations and it was getting lengthy, then I found this:
http://nikonclspracticalguide.blogsp...explained.html

Basically, you're stretching the output of your SB flash across a longer duration so that the small slit of the sensor exposure that moves down the sensor for a high speed shutter gets the same amount of light exposure. otherwise, only part of your sensor (in a horizontal slit) will be exposed to that light.
In order to stretch the time, the power output is reduced. So you'd have to have the light pretty close to your subject. And if you have something to diffuse it, you're reducing the power even more.

I guess test it out?

Thanks for that link! That explains a lot. I did try it out and I noticed that the flash power was pretty weak (with 1/4000th anyway.) I think stepping up to the SB-900 would help, but based on some of the comments in that link, 1/1000th to 1/1600th is about the practical limit for usability.

Still, I'm pretty impressed that Nikon was able to somewhat "fudge" a high speed shutter sync. I'm guessing it will only work with Nikon Speedlights, since most studio flashes seem to have very fast durations, and I don't know if they can be changed.

[UdubBadger]

Originally Posted by MP0WER

I didn't read the whole thread, but i think one of the common aspects of an outdoor headshot or body shot for means of self promotion is a nice bokeh. I'm sure you already thought of that, but figured i'd bring that up since i didn't see it during my skim of the thread. I was thinking the 50 and 70-200 if it would work.....

Everything else seems like you've got it under control. If you're good with PS you can always add a nice catch light after if you miss it. In my opinion it's not worth printing without a catch light.

i've kinda always thought catch lights were annoying... id rather super saturate the eye color than have a big white streak/box in them.

[Mr Tonka]

could work i suppose, unless you have dark eyes..... Seems that the majority of the photog industry thinks differently though. I could be wrong... it's happend once before.

[UdubBadger]

Originally Posted by MP0WER

could work i suppose, unless you have dark eyes..... Seems that the majority of the photog industry thinks differently though. I could be wrong... it's happend once before.

meh, you're probably right. I mean I'm the noob at shooting these so we'll see.

[Mr Tonka]

I'm sure you'll be fine. There are worse ways to make $60. haha

[rodi]

Scott, there's another work around for high speed sync (although you don't get wide aperture).
Use a 1/500th shutter speed, but keep the subject that needs flash towards the top half of the frame. And then just shoot upside-down. :] Well, shoot with your camera upside-down. It's very awkward, but it works.

1/400th (which gave a little leeway with exposing the sky) and i kept the model in the top half of the upside-down frame since it was only important to light her, not the sky.
had i used the same settings and kept the camera upright, everything below her elbow would have been unaffected by the strobes.

[rodi]

example of unprocessed image:

[rodi]

totally hijacked your thread, Udub. sorry.

[scollins]

Very interesting rodi! Does that work because of the direction the curtains travel to expose the frame? In effect, the flash duration is only during the "upper" part of the slit, which when shot upside down makes it the bottom of the composed image?


And yeah, Udub has been

[scollins]

Originally Posted by MP0WER

I could be wrong... it's happend once before.

Reminds me of Danny Vermin from "Johnny Dangerously".....

[UdubBadger]

no no no... this is cool, I might try this