Photography And Useful Tips And Equipment

[Grizwald Yue]

[deleted]

[BulkLover]

Are you sure you need an F1.8 lens? At 1.8 and short distance, the depth of field will be very small, and if you stop it down, well, it stops being an F1.8 lens Not trying to discourage you or anything, since the Nikkor 35/1.8 is a great lens, just saying.

As for some general tips:

- try using a different background and/or some props

- experiment with light: you have a good overall lightning, maybe buy a spot light (a halogen or LED lamp) to highlight some areas; get dimmers for the current lights so you can play with intensity and balance between the lamps and natural light; used colored cloth or paper as diffusers

- get a radio remote: unlike an IR remote, it doesn't require line of sight to the camera, so it can be hidden in your hand, inside a mitten, under a blanket etc. which gives you more freedom in posing and composition

- experiment with camera position and overall composition of the scene

- experiment with exposure: use exposure compensation (if it is available in Auto) to underexpose or overexpose the picture on purpose and see what you get.

- stop using Auto: this mode does a good job, but it desperately tries to average everything by design. Auto tries to produce a properly exposed picture where everything is in focus. In general this makes sense, but sometimes you want something else. Especially when playing with different lightning setting the exposure manually is very important (you often need to underexpose to get the right effect). If you get the 35/F1.8, you'll need to switch to A or M modes anyway to use the lens wide open (Auto sticks to F5.6 - F7.1).

I've done some with incandescent light (in the shower stall, for example) but those come out looking too yellow.

Wrong white balance - set it manually to incandescent or simply correct in post-processing.

[babyterry]

Best advise as you have digital just experment and yes the RF remote is better

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[BulkLover]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_of_field

DoF decreases (gets more shallow) as the aperture number gets smaller and you move closer the the photographed object. So it may turn out that at F1.8, it is too shallow for you and too much stuff is out of focus. Of course, it may also be the other way round, as shallow DoF really draws attention the the object that is in focus.

I can't tell you if you'll like it or what the effect will be in your case, I'm afraid. Maybe try borrowing a similar lens from someone, or do some math and calculate the DoF in your studio, this should give you some sort of estimate.

My point was that if you buy an F1.8 and constantly use it at, say, F5.6, it's kinda wasted money, since you get nothing that you don't already have.

I'm doing all my mess stuff in a 12x12 bedroom, typically at night after people have gone to bed, so natural light is out of the question.

Still, the point about lights still stands.