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Photographing Models


tedtaylor

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First find some gorgeous girls and..... :oops: wrong sort of model.

We have all see those Magazine Photos taken in their studios by professionals with lots of expensive equipment and wished we could take a pic like that to show friends of skills in the modelling world, well now we can.

The advent of the digicam makes all things possible simply because there is no cost or time wasting by using film and if we don't like the results we can do it again immediately. The trick is knowing a little about photography and how to use the camera to get the best results so I'll start the ball rolling with my set up and some tips I use.

I am trying here to do all this without great expense

First Item is the backdrop, now I like a plain one so there is only the model to catch your eye but I have seen some excellent shots posed against a "real " background but you need a good base and some real outdoor backdrop, I won't go into that but what I will say is I have also seen some awfull grounds using a crumpled sheet or cloth, nothing is worse.

So what do you need, well a table of some sort with a solid back wall, I use my spray booth which has hardboard for the wall, this is it ready for spraying though 01-my-spray-booth.jpg

from my local art shop I buy two A1 size sheets of thin card I use a light blue normaly but I have red, yellow and white for those items that won't show out on blue. These are clipped to the wall and curved onto the table top to get rid of the horrible joint line in the corner this is known as the infinity curve. My model stands on this taking care not to let a wing etc touch the back and casting a shadow.

Lighting, I have strip lights with colour adjusted tubes one above and one on my wall opposite and lower down which cuts out most of the shadows created there is also natural daylight in the room. If you can only manage strategicaly placed lamps make sure you set the white balance to suit the bulbs in question

Cameras, I use two, one a point and shoot Finepix 2650 for real close up and detail shots or low res overall and a Canon DSLR Rebel (300) for high res overall shots. The finepix will take better close ups because the Macro lens is meant for genral purposes but the canon takes beter/larger (for the magazine printers) overall from a fair distance with it's zoom lens.

For those who don't understand camera technology, a rough guide is

The bigger the f stop # the smaller the aperture which lets in less light and why you have a long exposure time but it does give you a bigger depth of field, means the back and front are both in focus.

The smaller the f stop # the bigger aperture and more light, less time needed but the depth of field is so short that you may not get each end in focus.

If i want close detail shots then I use finepix macro and no flash this means a long exposure so a tripod is used and the timer function to avoid shake, of course the camera is auto focus.

For overall High res shots I stand back aways and use the zoom lens at 50mm if possible and use F-22 or above with no flash for my shot. I set my white balance on auto or the propper light setting if I am taking the pic in other circumstances, again I use the tripod because of the long exposure and the remote switch or timer function to shoot.

Where should you focus you camera, a rule of thumb is one third of the distance between the front and back of the subject then the front third will be sharp and the back two thirds will also be sharp. Some SLR cameras have a depth of field setting which can help a lot.

Avoid getting too close and using a wide angle setting as this will give some distortion to the shape of your model.

OK so what can you add here?

to be continued after tea

Edited by tedtaylor
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Heres my method(s) for photoing my builds.

My Photo Setup

My equipment:-

Current Camera = Nikon Coolpix 5700 [5 megapixels 8x optical zoom]

Backup Camera = Nikon Coolpix 775 [2.1 megapixels 3x optical zoom]

Location = Office at work. (Also where I do my modelling)

Lighting = Mainly fluorescent, occasionally I will supplement with halogen desk lamps with plain white paper as a diffuser.

Accessories = Tripod, AC adapters for cameras, plain card for backdrop (available from any craft shop - different colours help), USB Card reader, Adobe Photoshop CS (Adobe) and ACDSee V5 (ACD Systems).

Last year I picked up a softbox off evil bay >> 1StopPhotoShop <<

Taking the photos:-

After using the 5700 camera for a few years now, I have found the best way to shoot my models, is to set up the white balance using the manual selection, before shooting. I take the photos at the largest size the camera takes and with the least compression, in this case 2560 x 1920, and camera is set to Aperture priority (more on this later).

I will place the model in the center of the card, place the camera about 4-5 feet from the model, turn off the flash (unless needed), set to macro mode with self-timer, and using a combination of the zoom and distance, adjust both to frame the shot, and give you the maximum f-stop the the camera will give you - in my case this is F-Stop 8.0. What the higher F-stop does is to give you a better depth of field, ie less blurring of the objects in the background, by increasing the amount of time the shutter is open, hence the need for a tripod and a self-timer (to stop camera shake)

Here is how I started of back in 2003, using a Coolpix 775

Photo_101_002.jpg

giving

Photo_101_001.jpg

A shot of the setup for the next two photos, using my backup camera Coolpix 775 (without tripod).

Photo_101_006.jpg

Here are two identical photos one taken at an F-stop of 3.2 and the other at an F-stop of 8.0 (Coolpix 5700)

F-Stop 3.2

Photo_101_007.jpg

F-Stop 8.0

Photo_101_008.jpg

Except for resizing down to 800 pixels no other further editing has been done, but you can see the difference between the photos. The F-Stop 8.0 is slightly brighter and the Thunderbird text on the back wall is not blurred.

Once I have a few test shots, I then remove the memory card from the camera and download onto my PC, check the photos in Photoshop and then make any necessary adjustments to the camera, lighting as required.

I then snap a few shots of each view I want of the model. Once the shots are on my PC, I load them one at a time into Photoshop and crop each image to frame the model. Then I adjust the levels, and apply an "Auto Colour" adjustment, if required.

Original photo...

Photo_101_004.jpg

and after being tweaked in Photoshop

Photo_101_005.jpg

Once happy with it I crop to between 800 and 1024 pixels wide and 72dpi and save as a different filename. Once all are done I copy these modified pics to my web directory and open them in ACDSee, save at 85% compression, and resize and save as a second file, 400 pixels wide for a thumbnail for my website.

Here is my latest setup using the softbox. Just saving up to be able to afford a proper lighting setup.

(Coolpix 775)

Photo_101_009.jpg

Giving this photo (Coolpix 5700).

HS_A4B_001_014.jpg

Edited by Andy Mullen
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  • 2 weeks later...

This is really great stuff guys and like the man above said.....................MORE PLEASE.

Just got myself a new camera and have been wondering about setting up for shots and so the above is priceless info :speak_cool:

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  • 10 years later...

hi ted, re your photo using the two white cards for a backdrop, professional photographers when taking still life photo,s  use white paper( or similar) and drape it with a gentle curve between the base and the back of the backdrop, it prevents a line at the joint between base and back.just a small thing ,but works.

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