Exercise 2.4
Find a location with good light for a portrait shot. Place your subject some distance in
front of a simple background and select a wide aperture together with a moderately
long focal length such as 100mm on a 35mm full-frame camera (about 65mm on a
cropped-frame camera). Take a viewpoint about one and a half metres from your
subject, allowing you to compose a headshot comfortably within the frame. Focus
on the eyes and take the shot.
Longer focal lengths appear to compress space, giving a shallower depth of
acceptable sharpness, which is known as depth of field. This makes a short or medium
telephoto lens perfect for portraiture: the slight compression of the features appears
attractive while the shallow depth of field adds intensity to the eyes and ‘lifts’ the
subject from the background.
These settings provide a much more flattering look to portraits especially taken at the same level. The 3 images below show this to quite good effect I feel.
The look is defiantly more aesthetically appealing.
