- Settings and Features to Make Great Portraits
- Poring Over the Picture
- Automatic Portrait Mode
- Using Aperture Priority Mode
- Metering Modes for Portraits
- Using the AE Lock Feature
- Focusing: The Eyes Have It
- Classic Black-and-White Portraits
- The Portrait Creative Style for Better Skin Tones
- Using Face Detection and Registration
- Portraits on the Move
- The Rule of Thirds
- Tips for Shooting Better Portraits
- Chapter 6 Assignments
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Using Aperture Priority Mode
If you took a poll of portrait photographers to see which shooting mode was most often used for portraits, the answer would certainly be Aperture Priority (A) mode. Selecting the right aperture is important for placing the most critically sharp area of the photo on your subject, while simultaneously blurring all the distracting background clutter (Figure 6.2). Not only will a large aperture give the narrowest depth of field, it will also allow you to shoot in lower light levels at lower ISO settings. Fortunately, in addition to Sony full-frame FE lenses, you can use the Sony LA-EA3 and LA-EA4 adapters to take advantage of Sony A-Mount lenses as well. And since Sony’s E-Mount is about the closest thing there is to a universal lens mount, adapters are available for virtually any lens mount, from Leica M to Nikon and Canon. This opens up an entire world of lens choices, many with extremely large maximum apertures.
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Figure 6.2 Using a wide aperture, especially with a longer lens, blurs distracting background details.
ISO 100 • 1/2000 sec. • f/2.2 • 55mm lens
This isn’t to say that you have to use the largest aperture on your lens. A good place to begin is f/5.6. This will give you enough depth of field to keep the entire face in focus, while providing enough blur to eliminate distractions in the background. This isn’t a hard-and-fast setting; it’s just a good all-around number to start with. Your aperture might change depending on the focal length of the lens you are using and on the amount of blur that you want for your foreground and background elements.
Go wide for environmental portraits
There will be times when your subject’s environment is of great significance to the story you want to tell. This might mean using a smaller aperture to get more detail in the background or foreground. Once again, by using A mode you can set your aperture to a smaller f-stop, such as f/8 or f/11, and include the important details of the scene that surrounds your subject.
Using a wider-than-normal lens can also assist in getting more depth of field as well as showing the surrounding area. A wide-angle lens requires less stopping down of the aperture to achieve an acceptable depth of field. This is because wide-angle lenses cover a greater area, so the depth of field appears to cover a greater percentage of the scene.
A wider lens might also be necessary to relay more information about the subject’s environment (Figure 6.3). Select a lens length that is wide enough to tell the story but not so wide that you distort the subject. There’s nothing quite as unflattering as giving someone a big, distorted nose (unless you are going for that sort of look). When shooting a portrait with a wide-angle lens, keep the subject away from the edge of the frame and the camera perpendicular to the ground, not tilted up or down. This will reduce the distortion, especially in very wide focal lengths. As the lens length increases, distortion will be reduced.
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Figure 6.3 A wide-angle lens allows you to capture more of the environment without having to increase the distance between you and the subject.
ISO 200 • 1/100 sec. • f/6.3 • 16–35mm lens at 21mm
Metering Basics
There are multiple metering modes in your camera, but the way they work is very similar. A light meter measures the amount of light being reflected off your subject and then renders a suggested exposure value based on the brightness of the subject and the ISO setting of the sensor. To establish this value, the meter averages all of the brightness values to come up with a middle tone, sometimes referred to as 18 percent gray. The exposure value is then rendered based on this middle gray value. This means that a white wall would be underexposed and a black wall would be overexposed in an effort to make each one appear gray. To assist with special lighting situations, Sony a7-series cameras have three metering modes:Multi (Figure 6.4), which evaluates the entire frame in segments before establishing an exposure; Center (Figure 6.5), which looks at the entire frame but places most of the exposure emphasis on the center of the frame; and Spot (Figure 6.6), which takes specific readings from a small area outlined in the center of the frame (often used with a gray card).
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Figure 6.4 The Multi metering mode uses the entire frame.
Figure 6.5 The Center metering mode emphasizes the middle of the frame.
Figure 6.6 The Spot metering mode uses a very small area in the center of the frame.