Candle light portrait
Apr 1, 2014 23:12:30 #
A local brick and mortar camera club had a class in how to use candles to take a portrait. I learned how difficult this is to do! A candelabra with five candles was used as the light source. I used my Sony 50mm f/1.4 lens. I thought that would give me an advantage. I'm not sure it was a good choice for a good lens. If I included the candelabra in the photo, I got a lot of internal reflections. Maybe if I used a different lens I could have included more candles. Some club members did not get all the lens flare and refection that I did. I limited the candles in the frame to just one. This is as good as I was able to do.
ISO=800, 50mm, 1/30, Steady Shot (anti-shake) on. A900
ISO=800, 50mm, 1/30, Steady Shot (anti-shake) on. A900
Apr 1, 2014 23:30:20 #
Forty some years ago at a Bill Stockwell Wedding seminar he taught to shoot at 1/30th at f/1.8 with 100 ASA film and have them close in on the candle until it glowed on their face. Worked every time. Of course they were yellow but it was by candle light. - Dave
Apr 1, 2014 23:33:07 #
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Apr 1, 2014 23:41:34 #
Apr 1, 2014 23:47:56 #
wilsondl2 wrote:
Forty some years ago at a Bill Stockwell Wedding seminar he taught to shoot at 1/30th at f/1.8 with 100 ASA film and have them close in on the candle until it glowed on their face. Worked every time. Of course they were yellow but it was by candle light. - Dave
The guy teaching this class told us to set the ISO=400. I upped that to 800 so I could use 1/30. If we put those five candles much closer to her we might have set her hair on fire.
Apr 2, 2014 00:24:07 #
Apr 2, 2014 09:40:38 #
The candle light is fine, the candle itself in the shot not so much.
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Apr 2, 2014 11:53:02 #
Latent-Image wrote:
The candle light is fine, the candle itself in the shot not so much.
Total agree, but this what the guy teaching the class was asking us to do.
Does anyone have an idea what caused those horrible green spots in my photos? I did have a Teffen haze filter on the lens. I really have no idea where those green spots came from, other than they are an inverted image of the candle flames.
This is how he set up the model for us to capture.
(Download)
I don't follow instuctions well, and took this.
(Download)
Apr 2, 2014 12:45:31 #
You will notice in his set up that the glow of the candel is in on her face as the advice I was given 40 some years ago. - Dave
Apr 2, 2014 13:16:22 #
Nice effect other than the distracting lens flare in the follow up images. Hope you had fun with your project.
With this week's Candlelight theme in the photo contest I experimented with something similar. I used four candles fairly close, and then shot at f5.6. I used f5.6 since it was a pre-focused selfie and I wanted a little extra DOF to allow for that. That extra 4 stops of light loss (compared to your f1.4 shot) was more than accounted for with a 5 stop shutter speed reduction to 1 second (on tripod, of course), and iso 1000. I shot raw and dropped the white balance to around 2150k in post.
I could not get tack sharp eyes at 1 second and iso 1000, but it was fun trying. I did not experience any lens flare from the candles but they did show some nice starburst effects. I believe it was from the longer exposure time.
With this week's Candlelight theme in the photo contest I experimented with something similar. I used four candles fairly close, and then shot at f5.6. I used f5.6 since it was a pre-focused selfie and I wanted a little extra DOF to allow for that. That extra 4 stops of light loss (compared to your f1.4 shot) was more than accounted for with a 5 stop shutter speed reduction to 1 second (on tripod, of course), and iso 1000. I shot raw and dropped the white balance to around 2150k in post.
I could not get tack sharp eyes at 1 second and iso 1000, but it was fun trying. I did not experience any lens flare from the candles but they did show some nice starburst effects. I believe it was from the longer exposure time.
Apr 2, 2014 13:30:28 #
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Apr 2, 2014 13:46:53 #
Davethehiker wrote:
The guy teaching this class told us to set the ISO=400. I upped that to 800 so I could use 1/30. If we put those five candles much closer to her we might have set her hair on fire.
Here are some examples that I scanned. I don't think I would mess with white balance may even use a daylight setting because I like the yellow candle light look in pictures. This is one of the few times I do not use a light meter. Just shoot at 1/30th at f/1.8 the film was ASA100. Now I use ISO 200 and 1/60th of a seconed. This gives the are that the candle glows on a good exposure. - Dave
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