portrait distance

[cpeters]

Good afternoon all,
Thanks to everyone's help here I have the photo backdrop almost done. Phots comming sooon. Now my next questions are about distance between subject and camera. A friend of mine wants me to do a lingerie shoot of them. (hence building the backdrop). As I want to get the best photos I can for them what is the best distance between them and the camera? I will be using a olympus c-5060 (not the best compared to some of you, but works great till I can get better)
as always everyone thank you for the great tips and lessons you post here!

 

[markc]

It looks like that camera has about a 4.8 crop factor. Most people photos work best at 50mm - 130mm for 35mm film cameras, with portraits being 80mm-130mm. With that in mind and using the crop factor, I wouldn't go any lower than 10mm on that lens, and for portraits, 15mm up to it's max of 22.9mm. Distance comes as a result of what focal length you choose first. Pick your focal length, and then move to compose.
http://www.hash.com/users/jsherwood/tutes/focal/focal.html
http://www.ctlow.ca/Photo/FocalLength.html
Until you learn what each focal length is like based on experience, I would pick only a couple to shoot at. Don't zoom all over the place. Shoot some at 10mm, some at 15mm, and some at 22.9mm. Don't use anything else. This will help train your eye as to what the differences are.

 

[cpeters]

Markc,
Yhank you for the excellent links! My problem is the c-5060 doesn't come with interchangeable lenses. I am not seeing anything in the manual to get the focal lengths you mentioned. Guess im gonna have to play with it for awhile.

 

[markc]

The ones I mentioned are based on the lens built into the camera. Hopefully there is some way to see what focal length you are at when you zoom in and out.

 

[markc]

I did some digging, and it looks like the viewfinder has a bunch of info, but not focal length. And it's probably not on the lens, so you are kind of stuck. It's hard to learn what focal length is what when you don't have the numbers.