Daisy

Nikon D70, 50 mm lens, 1/40 sec, f/4,5, ISO 400
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A budding TV presenter friend asked me to take some portrait shots of her to give to her agent. It was an interesting and fun day, as I've only done a couple of other properly posed portrait sessions, and working with the person involved is a definite skill that shouldn't be taken lightly. Discovering what image of herself she wanted to present, then finding a way of capturing that image in a still, then having the subject be satisfied with it, is not a simple thing to do.

The trickiest thing was the lighting really. I didn't want to put the ISO up too far, and I don't have any lighting equipment beyond an old Jessops flash that doesn't sync with the camera's exposure modes. I tried it a couple of times, bouncing off the ceiling and adjusting a manual exposure to accomodate, but it was proving too fiddly and time consuming.

In the end I brought her close to her bay windows, facing towards them with my back to them, and the wall behind out of focus, and shot without the flash. There was just enough light for it to work well, but as I was handholding it meant keeping very steady to get something sharp at around 1/40th of a second (on average).

Lessons: to stop worrying about sharpness either get a tripod or get more light; read up much more about exposures and how individual settings on the camera specifically interact; get more used to the flash that I have (until I have a windfall and can afford an SB-600/800!).