help me with outdoor portraits please

[lenfisher1973]

having some trouble taking my portraits to that "next level" might be a lighting issue and getting used to angles of natural light, using reflector, or maybe even flash lighting, any help would be fantastic as i have 2 weddings to do this summer, canon T1i, ef 100mm 2.8 macro, 50mm 1.8, sigma 70-300mm apo dg macro, and 17-55mm kit lens, 5 in 1 reflector.

[Iguanasan]

Welcome to the forum, Len. I hope you get the information you are looking for to help you out. It's often hard to critique more than one or two images, however, I'll see if I can help out a bit with one main suggestion around lighting.

First, all of these images are quite soft. That may be because you uploaded an image that was larger than 250KB. Images larger than 250KB are automatically resized by the board software and can end up rather mangled. Assuming that's the reason behind the softness I'll make some comments on some other items.

While shooting outdoors is great, it's often much more preferable to move into a shaded spot and avoid the direct sunlight which can be used nicely, as Marko's recent podcast explains, however, for portraits I find it very difficult to get good exposure in that light. In that last shot, for instance, her dress is just a big white blob because it's way over exposed as in the first shot one as well.

[lenfisher1973]

Thank you for the welcoming words
overall, the softness was intentional due to the fact that the model is an older woman, and i figured that sharpness and detail would accent some wrinkles that wouldn't be too flattering, that being said, i believe the last one was way overdone with too much gaussian blur and am going to fix that one for sure, thank you for your advice on exposure, especially pertaining to her dress, what i really want to achieve is to have a subject "jump" out of the background, but still retain a natural look, not sure if i'm explaining it properly, i wonder if some flash might achieve this, i don't have good off camera flash as of yet but that is my next purchase quite soon
Thanks

[lenfisher1973]

i just looked at your shots on flickr WOW!!
the trash the dress shots are exactly what i was talking about when i said i wanted the subject yo jump out of the background, can you tell me what lens(s) you were using? i shoot with a T1i and I'm trying to figure out the best lens for me to use, whether its worth the money to go with an L series or not

Thanks

[Iguanasan]

Thanks, Len. I'm shooting with the Canon XSi and have almost exactly the same lenses you have. The 50mm f1.8, the 17-55mm kit, and the Sigma 70-300mm. For portraits, I go with my 50mm or my 70-300mm as I get the sharpest results with those. The Trash the Dress set was done with a borrowed 17-40mm L series which was a bad choice for me that day as I couldn't always get close. I ended up using my Sigma quite a bit as well.

For me what you want to try and do most of the time is match the depth of field to the subject which lets the background blur out and the subject will "jump out" as you put it. The 50mm f1.8 at about 10 feet to 15 feet away will give you a depth of field between 2 and 5 feet. If you make sure there's a reasonable amount of distance between your subject and the background, the background will blur out and the subject will be in sharp focus.

And Marko's rule number 1, always make sure the eyes are sharp. I also live by that rule.

Hope this helps!

[lenfisher1973]

thats awesome advice, i'm thinking i will explore the 50 and the sigma zoom for portraits a little more, if i'm not mistaken, alot of the features between my body and yours should be quite similar, that being said, any advice for me on settings to use to achieve the vibrant colours you get, with out things like anoying colour halos and such? do you edit with lightroom and photoshop, or do you use other software?

Thank you so much for your help, you're obviously very talented and passionate, i had more time to explore your shots and they are fantastic

Len