Hi everybody welcome to another episode
of Exploring Photography right here on
AdoramaTV.
It's brought to you by Adorama,
the camera store that has every
conceivable piece of photography equipment.
Make sure you check them out at Adorama.com.
Well we are continuing, this is Part 2
of help with "Which lens should I buy?"
Specifically, which lens should you buy
for portrait photography.
Joining me today is Natasha,
she is going to be helping us understand
some things about the distance
of our camera's lens from our subject.
Now if you didn't check it out,
make sure you watch last week's episode
where I talked about field of view,
depth of field and distance from subject to lens,
all kinds of technical things.
Now we're going to put that into practice
in this very small studio.
One thing I want to point out is,
this isn't a tiny studio
but we're trying to emulate a tiny studio.
Specifically because a lot of people
want to buy wide-angle lenses
when they shoot in very small studios
but a lot of seasoned professionals
will say don't do that.
Make sure you use a longer lens
of 50mm or 70mm, or longer.
So what we've done here in this studio is,
we've sort of shrunk it by not using
this space back here.
We're not using this intentionally
so we've got a gray background here
We're trying to shrink this studio just a little bit
to make it look more like a tiny studio.
So why is it that so many photographers
will tell you to buy a lens that is 70mm or longer,
maybe 50mm at the very edge,
to shoot portraits?
Well it all has to do with the angle of view
problems that we get and most importantly
the distance between our camera
and our subject and what that does.
So let's start with a misnomer
and that is that wide-angle lenses distort faces.
They actually don't, it's the distance.
Let me walk you through this.
So what I have here is a Canon 5D Mark III
and I've got a 24-105mm lens.
So I've got a wide-angle lens and I've got
a telephoto lens all in one.
First I want to show you that wide-angle lenses
don't actually distort faces,
it's the distance that does that.
So I'm going to go back here,
there's a little stool
and I'm going to shoot two pictures.
The first one I'm going to shoot at 24mm
and we're going to get everything in this shot.
So it is the studio and it's Natasha
and it's the background lights.
What I'm doing is, I'm keeping Natasha's
face right in the center of the screen.
I'm going to take a second shot from the
exact same location but this time zoomed in.
What I'm going to do here is,
I'm going to take these two shots
and I'm going to crop both of them
so that they match.
So we have the same amount of
Natasha's face in both shots.
Now watch what happens when we
crop them and put them side by side.
You'll notice from the wide-angle shot,
her face looks the same
as it does from the telephoto shot.
The wide-angle lens is not distorting her face.
Watch what happens when we put our
wide-angle lens on our camera
and I fill the frame by getting close.
Now what I'm doing is,
instead of going far away
and cropping, which you shouldn't do,
I'm going to get the frame nice and full
by getting close.
Watch what happens.
I have to get really close
and that is not something
you normally want to do with your model
because look at this shot,
now her face looks wonky.
It is distorted because we're so darn close
that it starts to warp things
and it makes Natasha feel
a little bit uncomfortable.
Nobody wants a camera right in their face.
That's really the main reason
why you don't want a wide-angle lens
because you have to get really close
and it makes things wonky when you're that close.
We also have field of view problems,
in other words, we're starting to see
these striplights, the backlight
and this light up here and everything,
it's really messy.
By zooming in, it cleans everything up
our field of view shrinks,
like we saw in our last episode
and it's really nice and simple.
The other reason that a wide-angle lens
messes things up is because the
relationships between things get all wonky.
Let me illustrate this.
We already said that Natasha is a little
annoyed when I get close to her
and so Natasha give me your
best 'stay away'.
Watch what happens to her hand.
So I'm going to have your hand
about right there.
Take a little picture here.
Oh my gosh her hand is gigantic, it's huge!
The reason for that is because
her hand is so much closer to the camera
than her face, it makes her hand look gigantic
and her face look really small.
That's sort of the distortion that people
are talking about.
It's not the lens necessarily,
it's the distance between the subject
and the lens.
Watch what happens when I walk back here.
We're going to take the same picture
but now I'm going to zoom my lens.
So I'm going to zoom in, we'll sit
down here.
Natasha give me the 'get back.'
I'm going to take a shot.
Now look, her hand looks more proportional
to her head.
It looks just like it should
It's a little blown out because it's
too close to the light but you can see the
difference there.
The point of this is if you're shooting portraits,
even in a small studio,
you need to get back and zoom in.
That's going to put distance between you
and your subjects, that's going to make
things look more natural,
it's going to narrow the angle of view,
that will clean things up,
it'll make your model more comfortable
in the space and everything is going to be
much better.
So the question is, what do you do
if you want to shoot full-length shots
in a very small space?
Well, my suggestion is find a different space.
Find something that works for what
you're trying to do.
The other question is,
is there ever an exception to the rule?
Can you shoot portraits with a wide angle lens?
Absolutely. That's what we're going to do next.
Well this is the quintessential exception
to the rule, it's the environmental portrait.
What that means is we want a portrait
of a person in their environment.
We're going to mimic this by having Natasha
here in this kitchen having her morning coffee,
getting ready for the day.
I want to make sure I get a great
portrait of her but also I want to get
some of the surrounding area here
so I can put her in context.
To do that I am using a 35mm lens,
that's not an extremely wide lens
but it's definitely wider than what you'd
normally use for a headshot
or an in-studio portrait but a lot of
people consider a 35mm lens the perfect
environmental portrait lens.
This guy here I can open all the way
up to an aperture of f/2.
That's great because with a wide-angle lens
that allows me to get nice, soft, shallow
depth of field but not so shallow that
this falls completely out of context.
I can still see these shapes and it's nice
and identifiable but it's also nice and soft.
Now as with all wide-angle lenses,
this is something that you really should consider
as a close-up lens.
I'm going to be shooting pretty close to Natasha
but I want to make sure I don't distort her
too much by putting her at the edges of the frame.
So what I'll do is I'll put her either
to the right third or the left third
and then let the scene take up the other two thirds
of the image.
I'm saying a lot of words, let's put it into
practice and show you exactly how you
can make a portrait that looks fantastic.
I really like that shot of you having the coffee,
you got a nice after coffee smile going on,
it's pretty good.
Thank you so much for joining us, Natasha
Thank you for joining us for this episode
of Exploring Photography.
Don't forget to subscribe to AdoramaTV
that way you don't miss a single episode,
like last week's episode that helps us understand
what we're doing this week.
Also, make sure you check out the
Adorama Learning Center because we have
videos and articles and things that will help you
understand things like depth of field,
field of view, aperture, shutter speeds
and all that kind of stuff.
All of it is absolutely free,
so make sure you check that out.
Thanks again for joining us and we will
see you again next time.