Shooting skills of portrait photography

Portrait photography skills-photometry and exposure

Photometric determination

Usually portrait shooting and photometry are done on the face, or more strictly speaking, on the eyes. Use central focus or spot metering to move the metering point in the framing window to the face position, move to the correct composition after metering, and press the shutter. Because we usually take negative pictures of portraits, it is best to overexpose them by about 0.3 to 1, and the effect will be better when developing them. "The negative is on the top, the positive is on the bottom" is a mantra that many photographers often talk about.

hole

When shooting portraits, the author uses a large aperture to obtain a shallow depth of field. It will be more prominent when the proportion of the main body is not very large. Another advantage of using a large aperture is that the shutter speed will not be slower than the safety limit when the weather is dark.

Shutter speed

What is the safety limit of shutter speed? It is a "critical value", faster than this limit, which can avoid the jitter of hands and the blur caused by the movement of the subject, but the shutter safety limit varies from person to person. First of all, it depends on whether the subject is moving and to what extent. The moving subject usually needs to freeze the picture, and 1/250 may be safer. If the subject is fixed, the camera bracket can freeze for about 1/8 seconds or even 1/4 seconds. Thirdly, we consider the stability of the photographer's own hands. Everyone's hand stability is different, about 1/60 seconds and the picture is not blurred, everyone can achieve it. For example, the stability of the author's hand is not very good, probably below 1/30, so I have to rely on a tripod. What is the safety limit of my hand? To sum up, it should be no problem to shoot a fixed model in 1/60 seconds, and it should take more than 1/250 seconds to shoot a moving model.