Eos Discovery Roundup 1/3 – portrait tips and tricks
I got lots of e-mails from people who were sorry they couldn’t make it to the Belgian Eos Discovery Days and there must be some people for whom it all went a bit too fast or couldn’t understand my personal version of the French language. That’s why I decided to try to remember what I’ve been rambling about and write that down.
Let’s start with the “natural” light part. Because we didn’t have any real window light in the studio, the people from Hotz got us a Broncolor flash head with a huge beauty dish. This is basically just a source of soft, yet more or less directional lightsource like a window. I only used the pilot light to show how anyone can achieve similar results with window light and not too much equipment.
I could have used just about any DSLR to do these portraits. The initial plan was to use the brand new 5D mk II but since they had only one pre-production sample I’d risk being lynched by hundreds of people who wanted to get their hands on it for a moment. To show that this kind of portraits is not exclusively for the expensive pro models, I decided to shoot with the 50D. Thanks to the WiFi grip for the 50D we could show the images on the big screen behind us, seconds after they were shot.
I also declared once more my love for the 50mm as one of my favorite portrait lenses. There are affordable to dirt cheap versions of it and they all make for great portrait lenses (in particular on crop camera’s). I like to use a wide aperture for portraits to gain a very shallow depth of field. By focussing on the eye closest to the camera, the attention is drawn to the eyes and most of the skin gets a free beauty treatment from being slightly out of focus. The background becomes so blurry that it’s easy to camouflage disturbing things in it.
Using lenses from 50mm and up, also avoids distortion of the natural proportions and limits the amount of background distractions in the frame.
A good and safe starting point when it comes to lighting is a large light source (because it gives you soft flattering light) at an angle of about 45 degrees from the camera. I prefer to place it just a bit above eye level. If you are using window light you may not be able to move your light source unless you’re a skilled construction worker, but you can move your camera and model so the light strikes from such an angle.
This kind of lighting will give you this nice upside down triangle under the eye on the shadow side like in the pictures below. I learned this a long time ago from a friend of mine and discovered since then that this magic triangle of light is often the secret that separates really good pictures from just ok pictures. If you start studying pictures you like (from yourself of other photographers) you’ll probably find lots of these triangles.
Another triangle (works with soft light as well as with hard light btw)
These tips are by no means arbitrary rules. But having this simple way of creating a quick flattering portrait is a hell of a skill to have in your toolbox.
Over the next days I’ll try to write down what I did with on- and off-camera flash.
Hey Bert,
good stuff. Very interesting. Looking forward to the other two parts.
“If you are using window light you may not be able to move your light source unless you’re a skilled construction worker, …” And more of that too, please
Cheers,
Mariano
thx Mariano
Thank you Bert! It was nice workshop (I attended the very first one).
Love the Portraits! Are those the results right out of the camera or did you photoshop/lightroom them?
Thx
@Phil: I only did some minor color and exposure corrections in Lightroom
Thanks Bert. If you are ever in Munich, let me know and I’ll pay you a beer or two. Your blog is a great source of inspiration.
When you mentioned your “friend” who taught you about the triangles under the eye, I thought you meant this one. Also a friend of mine…
Bert,
I attended saturday morning presentation and it was really interresting.
There was no problem with your french, it was perfectly understandable.
Nice article, I like the way you controlled the light ratios for dramatic portraits.
Creating the light pattern with the triangle of light is also referred to Rembrant lighting after the painter. I read a book by Monti Zucker a while back and in America they call it something like loopback lighting – I think because the shadow from the nose loops back and meets to the shadow side of the face.
Bert,
Thank you for this tutorial. I’m a big fan of your photography.
Many Thanks Bert ! I didn’t know about trianglr light on the face at all .
I willing to see more in your next post .
Hi Bert!
I wish I could attend the workshop.. it’s only that I live thousands of miles away.
If I’m not mistaken, the inverted triangle lighting is called Rembrant lighting.. then just many variations came from it.
Thx all
@Phil: I’ll take you up on those beers one day
@Barak: Rembrandt and I used to date these two hot sisters, that’s how we met
@Fred: thx, I’m happy it was understandable
@Suffolk Wedding Photographer @ Pepin: That’s kind of what I understood under Rembrandt lighting too. I was a bit hesitated to mention it because on the net there are so many wrong definitions of it.
This is great Bert, simple tips but with the examples they just glow
Almost as good as being on the workshop, thanks!
hi bert. may I know how did you achieve the shallow depth of field in those studio portraits. Ive always wanted to achieve that but shooting at 1.4 and with the flash, the image turns out over expose.
@Fido: One of the most important feature of studio lights to me is not how much power they have but how low can you dial it down. I couldn’t have dialed the broncolor down enough if I had shot with the actual flash. I used just the pilot light that gave me plenty of light at wide apertures and doesn’t limit my shutterspeed to the flash sync speed. You can also use an ND-filter on your lens (or flash) to reduce the amount of light. If you have a polariser lying around, it can do the trick to because it eats up 2-3 stops.
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