I started attending photography classes with a successful photographer and there’s couple of things I was apparently doing very, very wrong. I do not want to question the photographer knowledge, but more so just to ask for “2nd opinion”.

1.Studio portraits should only be taken with aperture of 5.6 or higher.

Is this true and does the same apply for outdoor portraits? Most of my outdoor portraits were taken with aperture 1.4 to 2.8, mostly because of less than optimal lighting conditions and I just love this beautiful bokeh.

  1. I am apparently supposed to use viewfinder only and not camera screen to frame the pictures, with both eyes open to see the model. Also taping the screen to correct the focus is a no-no.

I was usually only using the screen since I lack the mobility (really bad knees injuries), so I preferred moving the camera around instead of my entire body to frame the pictures, having eye contact with the model is also easier this way for me. The focus on camera is also often not perfect and being able to quickly “correct it” by telling camera where to focus is very, very useful.

  1. Using tons of lights and equipment to get desired results. The photographer that leads the lectures is very fixated on complicating the scene by using multiple of expensive lights and giant reflectors.

Personally I don’t own a ton of equipment, so I always look a ways to achieve things without resorting to that many lights and reflectors and usually I can find people being able to achieve those results with two or even one light, simply by adjusting the angle, distance or power of the light.

I absolutely understand that more equipment offers more possibilities, but I just feel like it’s sometimes unnecessarily complicated by some photographers.

  1. Having a large team of assistants. Last lesson we were split us into groups and had role assigned to each of us. Two people responsible for lights, director, photographer and so on. According to our teacher and the way he teaches us, having group of assistants is necessary or at least highly advised.

As someone who only ever worked alone (excluding the models of course) and plans to work alone in foreseeable future, I am not sure what to think of that.

  1. DSLR are better because they are more stable due to their heavier weight, compared to lighter mirrorless cameras. Also apparently information displayed on mirrorless cameras is lagging behind compared to DSLR, but I am not exactly sure what he was talking about.
  • taspleb@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago
    1. I think it really depends on what look you’re going for. I wouldn’t have a set rule like that. And absolutely you have to make adjustments based on conditions for any “rule”. In challenging conditions you make the best of it because if you rigidly followed rules you’d end up with no photos.
    2. I think viewfinder if preferable but definitely if you’ve got a good reason to use the screen then do it. I use the screen rather than lying in the mud if I am eg taking an outside photo from a low angle. And I certainly would as well if I had mobility issues like you mention.
    3. I mean if you have good lighting equipment and an idea in mind then use it. But again just make the best with what you have. But like the real top fine-art and fashion pros that use big lighting rigs take awesome photos. I don’t think you could recreate eg Julia Fullerton-Batten’s work without them.
    4. I guess it depends what kind of photography you want to do. You probably wouldn’t do magazine quality advertisement/fashion photography by yourself. It seems like that’s the kind of course you’ve signed up for.
    5. Mirrorless is probably better these days and I don’t know that we’ll see many (or any) new DSLRs. Nikon haven’t brought a new model out since 2020 and for midrange ones it’s even earlier.