How to take a Face closeup?

gurpal · Dec 5, 2010

Hi every body please help me to take face closeup? I tried so many times to take face closeup of my girlfriend but every time her nose become bigger than other parts of the face. May be becuse nose is always closer to camera lens. I use canon Camera.

enzodm · Dec 5, 2010

It depends on lens, just use a longer focal length (between 80 and 150mm) and stay far.

UnderThePink · Dec 5, 2010

I was just reading up a little bit it on this last night. Our tendency (well I guess as beginners =P ) is to stand really close when we want to get a close up shot of someone's face, when in reality we should be stepping back and zooming in really close. I guess it has something to do with when the camera is close to the object (face of person) your trying to shoot, the wide-angle lens is exaggerating the distance from the tip of the nose to the rest of the face, so in essence makes the nose look bigger.The person who wrote this article I was reading mentioned to think about the photographers who take pics of the Sports Illustrated models....when they take the pics, they are like halfway across the beach! They just zoom in really close to get the right perspective and proportions. I hope I explained this right!

skieur · Dec 5, 2010

To avoid the results of lens distortion, one usually shoots at around 80mm focal length, which means a 50 to 55mm lens on a crop body digital camera or an 85mm lens on a full frame camera.

Then remember that the point is to flatter the subject by means of your shot, so you need to look at the face closely and think about how you are going to de-emphasize such things as perhaps a long nose, mole, high forehead, pointed chin, bloodshot eyes, very thin or very round face etc.

Some of this needs to be done in the planning stage as in the use of make-up, lighting, camera angle etc. and some by postprocessing. You will need to be quite practiced in portrait postprocessing to really do it well, without overdoing it.

skieur