photo gear

more professions – light setup

people, Personal Pictures, personal tips & tricks, photo gear, Tips and Tricks

And my project on profession portraits goes on.
I have quite some people spontaneously offering to pose for my series of professions. A classical portrait with a – small/not so small – glimpse of the job they do.
Below, you’ll see the library assistant, the plumber, the health coach and the actuaris. For you to find out who’s who, can’t be too hard I guess. – click on the images to view larger if you have difficulties finding out –

for my fellow photography enthusiasts, I’ll include a more detailed light setup, which is actually very simple:

1. I have a black cloth hanging up in the back of the room 3 to 4 meter behind my subject.
2. I have a reportage flash (Canon 580 EXII) in a 70×70 cm softbox from Lastolite on the right of my subject, which is my only light source. It is set at 1/4 +0.7 power and very close to the subject (maybe half a meter). I put it so close because this allows me to lit only my subject, and have the background almost black, thus reducing the post-processing. it is at the subjects head hight, slightly aiming down.
3. I have my large Lastolite tri-grip on the left side, on the ground + my diy reflector on a small stand, I had to use this extra reflector, because otherwise I don’t get enough light on the shadowside, and I recon my own reflector is just a bit more reflective than the trigrip, which is larger but softer.
4. I’m at about 3,5 meters distance from my subject, at about hip-height, to make my subject seem larger and fiercer, more ‘standing out’ I use my 85 mm 1.8 lens, at f8 on a full frame camera, to get a decent sharpness overall.
5. I have different subjects 🙂 They are all uncomfortable with posing, believe me! I ask them to turn their body slightly towards the main light, looking at me. Then we do about 15-25 shots, until I think we have a good shot, representing both the personality and a good pose.

The images are taken in colour, as raw files, and treated in LR afterwards. I use the standard BW settings, but have some minor local corrections with adding or removing exposure. I then remove the unwanted parts in the image (my background is not large enough for this distance, so I need to remove some ceiling that is not black, sometimes I need to move a small part of the reflector on the left.

I hope you like the pictures, if you are willing to pose for me, please give me a sign trough email or by reacting to this post. In return, you’ll get the chosen image in high resolution, free for personal use.
If you have any questions about the setup, ask it.

85 mm lens test

photo gear

I was able to test some 85 mm lenses at doubleyoushop in Brussels Yesterday.

I would like to buy an 85 mm lens as portrait lens, and wanted to have some comparable results of different makes.

the tested lenses are:

the Canon EF 85 mm f1.8. A lens selling at about 370 Euro’s here in Belgium

the Carl Zeiss Planar T* 85 mm f1.4 ZE. A slightly wider max aperture, selling at 1050 euros approx.

the Sigma 85mm f1.4 for Canon. Also at 1.4 slightly faster than the Canon, selling price 889 euros.

test setup was very limited, the view from the frontdoor of the doubleyoushop, and the car that was there, in front of the roundabout.

first, to give you an idea on the scene, full images, reduced size.

CLICK IMAGES TO VIEW FULL SIZE!!

Canon 85mm f1.8 at 2.8

Carl Zeiss at 2.8

Sigma at 2.8

following are some 100% crops of the different images:

first, wide open, 1.8 for the Canon, 1.4 for the other 2

one at the center, one for the bokeh of the background -in the canon image, there’s a car passing by- :

then at 2.8, one at the center of the image, one for the bokeh in the background:

then, all three at f9, one at the center, one at the edge of the image:

for me the results were quite surprising. I had at least expected more difference in the Carl Zeiss. They are often praised for a superb sharpness and better color rendition. This test proves none of the two statements. Neither did the Sigma impress me. Both show huge chromatic abberation (color shift at highlights) the Zeiss a bit blueish, the Sigma in Pink. They do not visually prove to be sharper than the Canon, and the Canon costs less than half the price of the Sigma, about a third the price of the CZ.

Ideally I should have been able to test these lenses also with a portrait subject, since this is the intended use, but unfortunately the occasion did not allow for this.

I would like to thank the vendor at Doubleyoushop for its willing cooperation, since I have not been a customer before in this shop, and still I could, without questioning, test all three lenses.

for me it is clear that the Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 is a very good choice, for a very reasonable budget.

I hope this test will be of help to those out there, looking to buy a 85mm lens.

Ch.