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#11911
cameraclicker
Participant

Who regularly shoots at f/18?

We could also ask who regularly shoots portraits with 50 mm?    And, I don’t often try out the self portrait thing either.   But I have some time while upgrading my computer’s drives and I’m not going to get a model in for this.  It’s faster and easier with a model though.  This started out simply as a comparison of some lighting systems with a basic body and kit lens.  For the second set and the shot here, I moved from the kit 18-55 to the 50 mm f/1.8 II which is another lens almost anyone can afford.  At f/2.8 DOF is a little over a foot, good for a portrait but not so good for a self portrait if you are moving around.  By f/8 DOF is almost 4 feet so if you lean forward or back you are still in focus but the backdrop is getting soft.  At f/18 DOF is about 11 feet and the backdrop is fairly sharp.  The folks shooting stock will tell you diffraction starts to soften your photos at f/11 but this is a portrait, not a product shot and do we really need ultimate sharpness for a portrait?  Opinions vary but a few less wrinkles might be good.

The challenge for low key is to have light where you want it and to keep it away from where you don’t want it.  Having a space with a stucco ceiling painted high gloss white and walls painted with yellow semi-gloss makes a nice bright space, perfect for our original use, but too reflective for low key photos.  More space and flatter paint would definitely make low key easier to achieve.  I like the idea of V Flats.  The local art store sells a plastic honeycomb in large sheets, 4 x 6 or 4 x 8.  A couple of those and some gaffer’s tape would work well.  The ceiling is just under 8 feet so if two or three inches were cut off the eight foot length, they could be moved into position folded, then opened out just clearing the ceiling.  An extra piece cut a couple of feet wide could be clamped between two, just below the ceiling, would also help.  Snoots, grids and barn doors also help.

Anyway here’s the latest photo, back at f/8 with the lights brought down a bit.  The backdrop seems to have about the same amount of light on it as before.  Some of it comes from the kicker, even if it has a snoot on it.

2013-08-13_13-10-16_IMG_5271

So a simple solution was mentioned in another thread… Just get it close and adjust to taste in Photoshop.  Here’s the same photo finished up a bit.

2013-08-13_13-10-16_IMG_5271p

It doesn’t matter how much you brighten this up, most of the background will stay black because it is just a black layer with me masked out.  If the background is very dark anyway, masking only takes a moment.