Help with digital portrait photography?

creatives · Nov 9, 2006

Thanks for the great advice, such a good forum!

Ok, well here is a link to one of my portrait attempts of my boyfriend, who happens to be a guitar teacher

Click here

Can you see how its a bit grainy/blurry and quite dark. If I open the shutter, i risk more blurryness, if I close the shutter it becomes darker. This photo was taken with kit lens, canon 400D, ambient light with no flash that was coming from lamps.

Sadly the guitar got more focus than he did!

The settings this photo was taken on were as follows:-
1/40 shutter, F5.0, ISO 400 (couldnt drop it because of low light) on manual setting.

Let me know what you think and how I can get round my niggly problems!

Thanks

woodsac · Nov 9, 2006

Overall, that's not a bad job.
The 1/40s is your main problem. That's more than likely what caused the image to be a little soft. With strobes, you could up that to about 1/250s. Even with a single strobe and reflector.

craig · Nov 10, 2006

The main shapes his face well. The hair light is on point.

1/40th at 5.0 is workable. Try to move back and zoom in. This way depth of ield issues will diminish. Shooting @ 2.8 will get you that much closer to the friendly 1/60th. Also the ol' holding your breath and sticking your elbows into your ribs works wonders.

creatives · Nov 10, 2006

Thanks for the advice! I will definatley have a mess this weekend

By the way, I forgot to ask. I am thinking of buying a cable release, or a remote control to take the photos without touching the camera to avoid camera shake. The photo above was taken on self timer, but to be honest its really laborious waiting for the self timer all the time

so, my question is, can the Canon 400D take a cable release? if not, would you suggest a remote control is better, but then can I use the remote from behind the camera?

Because I am using slow shutter speeds, I need something apart from self timer to avoid the wait!

Thanks again