first time family pictures

[undrtow]

So some good friends have asked that I take some family pictures for them. I've explained to them that I'm just barely getting my new nikon figured out and they understand there might not be any quality pictures at the end of it. I'm just looking for any advice to help me prepare somewhat in the next 2 days to hopefully given them a shot or two worth hanging in their house. Thanks in advance and the following is what I've come up with so far, along with a couple questions. It's a family of 3 btw.

Before the shoot, I am going to take some time going over DoF calculators to make sure I'm allowing for adequate DoF to keep them all in focus. It will be an early am shot so hopefully there is some interesting light, and I will be sure to use fill flash.

1. As far as focusing, I know you are supposed to focus on the eyes during portraits, but how do you do this with more than 1 subject? I assume you focus on the person in the middle. Or should I be using AF-A?

2. When metering, I'm sure that it will depend mostly on the light at the time, but should I even try spot metering on a single face, or should I stick with either matrix or center weighted? I'm just not sure if spot metering on the center face is a good idea.

3. I have the 18-55 and the 55-200 kits lenses for my d3100. I'm not really sure which lens I should be using. I assume the 55-200 to help isolate the people, but I don't really know.

Thanks again guys. I'll post some pictures afterwards to show you how it went.

 

[Judobreaker]

If your DoF is large enough it could be just a simple as focusing on the middle person. You're probably going to want to make sure your DoF is at least slightly larger than your subjects are (I'm assuming you want them completely in focus, not just their eyes) so I don't think focusing should be too hard.

As for the lens, a longer lens helps separating subject from background... However, you're going to have to find a lot of space to walk backwards because at 200mm you're going to need some distance to fit 3 people into the frame. ^^
A little wider may make it a lot easier in terms of distance. I'm guessing 55mm wouldn't do that bad at all. 50mm is usually considered a rather nice focal length for portraiture, so I can't imagine it doing very bad on a group of 3 people. If you do have distance however you can simply try both.

 

[tirediron]

You want the eyes to be in sharp focus, but depending on your composition, you may not want to focus there. You don't specify make-up of the group (eg. two adults, one child), but when you look at your DoF calculator, notice that for any given aperture, there's a distance in front of the focus point that's in acceptably sharp focus, and one behind, so, if you can't keep all three on the same plane, then focus on a point where the "in front" and "behind" distances cover the whole scene, in other words, assume you have mom and dad beside each other and junior in front. With your selected focal length and aperture, your DoF is 12". If you focus on the eyes of the parents, you may find that the face of the child in front is soft, so try focusing on the child's ear; that way the 6" in front will cover his face, and the 6" behind, the parent's face.

I would avoid spot-metering. It's a vaild technique, but it does take a little more experience. My suggestion would to find some nice open shade and use your regular matrix metering.

The longer the focal length the better (to a point), but also the less DoF you will have. Bring both lenses, try a variety of different lengths. Don't be afraid to tell them to wait just a minute while you change lenses and see what the scene looks like.

Good luck.

 

[undrtow]

Thanks for the advice guys. I didn't consider the fact that I would need quite a bit of space if using the 200mm. The question just came to me, but if using a focal length of say 55mm, would it be preferable to use the 18-55 or the 55-200? Just curious. And yeah, I think I'll just stick with matrix metering.

I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[undrtow]

Alright, so as promised, here are some of the better pre-edited/un-cropped shots pictures from the shoot this morning. All these shots were done in aperature mode, with an aperature of 4-5.6. I went back and forth between the 18-55 and 55-200, but mostly stayed around a focal length of 55. I made sure to use the fill flash in most all the pictures. I only have the Nikon photo-editing software at this point, but if you guys have any advice on how these should be edited I would appreciate it. All comments welcome.

1. The shadows from the flash bug me in this picture, but I'm not sure how to avoid that.

DSC_0666 by buangka77, on Flickr



2. I'm thinking maybe the sun should have been more from behind instead of the side as there are some harsh shadows on his face. I guess the built-in flash wasn't powerful enough.

DSC_0651 by buangka77, on Flickr

3.

DSC_0639 by buangka77, on Flickr

4. This picture looks underexposed, even with the flash.

DSC_0616 by buangka77, on Flickr

5.

DSC_0592 by buangka77, on Flickr

6.

DSC_0558 by buangka77, on Flickr

7.

DSC_0540 by buangka77, on Flickr

8.

DSC_0505 by buangka77, on Flickr

9.

DSC_0494 by buangka77, on Flickr


I think I was a little underexposed for most of these pictures and am just wondering what options I have to increase exposure. Obviously there is ISO. I didn't want to increase shutter speed since I was hand-holding and the kid wasn't sitting very still and didn't want to risk having too shallow a DoF with going with a lower F/stop. I suppose I could have used exp. comp. but didnt think of that at the time. Anything else?

Anyway, just looking for any advice on how to do better next time. Thanks again.

 

[Judobreaker]

If you don't want to change either the aperture or the shutter speed the only options you have are increasing the ISO or extra lighting.
Don't worry too much though, the shots might be a bit underexposed here and there but it's nothing you can't fix with a bit of post processing.

 

[fotomumma09]

Cute family pics. I really like the last one, it's a nice crop. Unfortunately all the other photos are underexposed and it is very challenging to fix in post. I know because I used to be a chronic underexposer (I know that's not a real word)

Once you spend some time learning exposure and lighting you'll be golden!

 

[undrtow]

Thanks for the comments. After coming home and looking at the pictures on the computer, I no realize that I probably should have increased ISO a little. I kept it at 100 and didn't even attempt to increase it, fearing noise. It was fairly light out, but neglected the fact that camera's aren't as sensitive to light as our eyes. Oh well, I'll know better next time. Thanks again.