[PIC_THREAD] People, Portraits, Street

Don't often do people shots that I would post but I like this one from France, last in a sequence of shots of a race. With a Samyang 14mm f/2.8 manual focus lens, good thing about snow is it gives some nice fill light as the sun was just out of frame (hence slight flare).

 
Cheers, easy with such a wide lens, bang it on hyperfocal, job done, in fact even less to think about :p
Shame the lens is like every other 14mm and I can't use my filters on it but this was bought for night shots so not a big problem. Sharp lens, can't fault it and I thought I'd have to set aperture manually but it works in shutter priority too.
 
There's something about using ambient light that works for me, I love it! Shooting into the light also create a wonderful effect with the right glass :)

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I really need to start bringing my camera to work so I can get out at lunchtime. Anyway, one of my few photos of people :


Ed by rjdavie, on Flickr

And I just love this one, I love when a shot just turns out exactly how you want it


Dad BW1 by rjdavie, on Flickr
 
munge said:
There's a sort of Hollywood feel to the photo, did you use any lighting and what did you do with PP?
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Believe it or not the lighting is competely natural. There is a window to his right hand side/slightly in front and there is another directly behind him, and that's it. As far as PP goes. BW conversion in LR3, played with contrast and blacks I seem to recall. Will have a look at the workflow this evening and get back to you :)

Edit : The hollywood feel is exactly what I was after, kind of an Errol Flynn look. My Dad was suitably impressed :)
 
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munge said:
How did you get the right exposure for the people? Without some sort of fill light, surely they'd be massively underexposed compared to the window?
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Let's break it down and see what's gone on here, I think it will also be helpful for others who may be wondering about shots like it as well!

That shot was at 1/1000s, f/1.4 and ISO800.

I used AE Lock in Aperture Priority with the reading taken from the man’s face closest to the window because he was illuminated perfectly and knowing how my camera and lens behave I knew the rest of the frame 'should' come out fine. I also had a quick glance at the light meter in the viewfinder to confirm that the exposure fine once locked. Anything a shade over or under is not a problem if shooting RAW anyway.

The key is to take a reading from an area you know you want exposed correctly (and not always a mid tone as recommended by tutorials as it depends on what effect you're going for), with the sun in front out the window though it is made more difficult because not every camera or lens combination will like that and the metering system in AV/TV can get fooled easily. This is why I mentioned having a quick glance at the light meter in the viewfinder once exposure is locked as there's not enough time to take a quick shot then look on the LCD to check :eek:

So why not use full manual then? I thought about this for these shots. They were taken in a log cabin and the sun was strongest on one side of the cabin with the other side varying in lighting so AV with AE Lock was the most suitable option to go with here.


Willis said:
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Did you submit a shot recently to 500Px "Storefronts" contest? I recognise the similar style! Noir-ish but in colour!
 
munge said:
How did you get the right exposure for the people? Without some sort of fill light, surely they'd be massively underexposed compared to the window?
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The window is technically massively over-exposed to get the correct exposure for the people. However the window or outside, deceptively doesn't look as overexposed as it is due to the trees outside being a little backlit. The side we can see of them is the shaded side, so that's why we can still see detail outside.

mrk gave a good explanation of his technique from a Canon users perspective, however it may be a little different if you shoot with a different brand.
As a Nikon shooter, I would have my metering set to spot. The metering is linked to all the AF points. So I would aim a suitable AF point at the man's eye, and the camera would expose correctly for that area. Basically it achieves the same thing, but you don't have to go through the step of locking exposure.
 
Yup on the 5D you can do similar but I'm just too used to using exposure lock. I have 61 af points to use but still find myself locking exposure or focus then re composing certain shots!

We all have our own way of working I guess, there's no right or wrong here :-P


Interesting to read how others reach the same results though.
 
Huh. This is useful to read.

I was getting all frustrated at my metering last night. It was throwing up some nice overexposure quite often....

As such, I tended to just shoot a stop underexposed according to the metering. Worked quite well, but obviously didn't guarantee results. Solution thinking about it, would clearly have been to swap to spot metering.

kd
 
mrk said:
Yup on the 5D you can do similar but I'm just too used to using exposure lock. I have 61 af points to use but still find myself locking exposure or focus then re composing certain shots!
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Yep, I pretty much always have my camera set to only 11 focus points. When you have to scroll through them, sometimes more is less imo.
 
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