Any advice on outdoor portrait shots?

[Mitchp]

In my line of work, the photographs I take are mainly of buildings and trees - not people! One of the companies I work for asked me to do some portrait shots of a couple of their directors - They wanted quite informal shots taken outside with blurred backdrops.

Now, I'm used to taking pictures of things that don't move and with very little depth of field. Anyway, I obliged and took some shots examples shown below...(which they liked :s )



To get the depth of field and flattness to the backdrop I used a 300mm lens (from a fair distance) at F5.6.

The problem - I had a problem with a high number of blurred images because of the shutter speed (1/200) and the moving subject matter.

The other problem is they now want shots done of ALL of their directors and I want to get a higher number of useable shots.

What lens/aperture/shutter would you recommend I use to achieve a similar but better/repeatable result?

Any advice gratefully received.

Mitch

[jon-]

From the EXIF data you were shooting at ISO 100. If you don't want to change you lens you can always crank that up a little for a faster shutter.

A Canon 50mm f1.8 prime will get you a massive depth of field for not much money, these can be bought for well under £100.

[Gemm]

Fill-in flash will normally bring life to the images (and their eyes).

[tim-b]

jon- said:

A Canon 50mm f1.8 prime will get you a massive depth of field for not much money, these can be bought for well under £100.

Also worth mentioning; at 50mm their faces will look a bit more natural than at 300mm as the perspective will be different, so I'd second the lens mentioned above.

[VxDuncan]

Depth of field isn't just a product of focal length and aperture, but the ratio of camera->subject distance and subject->background distance. By being closer to your subject with a shorter focal length you should still be able to through the background out as long as it's away from the subject. You could therefore try the short end of the zomm (70mm) at F4 but keep close to the subject (which will help with fill flash to give a bit of lift) and still through the bg out. Have an experiment in the garden before trying with a client. Would try and keep your shutter speed up a bit as suggested - crank the ISO to 200 or even 400 if needed, as those are a little soft. There's also not much contrast, I'd run a levels on it to lift it a bit.

[andy-xr]

You shouldnt be seeing subject blur at 1/200 really - most of my portrait is 1/125 @ F8 (or as far as F4 in some cases) using speedlights or F11 using studio and that comes out pretty much static. I think that sounds more like focus/IS because you were quite far away. Higher F stop might have helped, maybe get in closer and bring it down to F3.5 if the light allows - it is going to vary each time though

The biggest problem I have with shooting in ambient is controlling the light; reflectors will help here as will flash (and off camera flash seems to work better for me)

Check out nickbbb's stuff, I always go for a wander to his site when I need lighting/tone assistance

Edited by andy-xr on Friday 8th May 20:11

[Simpo Two]

Shorter faster lens is what you need.

[beano500]

Take your pick from 200mm f/2 / 135/105mm f/2 DC / 85mm f/1.4 and compromise on perspective for face detail compared to background. Any one of those will give you pleasing bokeh too.....

[Funk Odyssey]

el cheapo Nifty fifty will do the job ----