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Learner's Tips For Shooting Great Portraits

Chris Gampat
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02/04/2010
3 Mins read

Last Updated on 02/04/2010 by

Alex in Central Park With Polaroid Look

So you want to take portraits? Great! There are a couple of basic tips and reminders that you should always check before you press that shutter button. Now that you’ve learned some of the terminology you can put it to good use. To aid with the process, here are a couple of basic tips for shooting portraits in the studio or anywhere else.

Get the Right Lens

Shooting portraits with a DSLR requires first and foremost, the correct lenses. The reason why your lenses are so important are for premium sharpness, detail, depth of field, etc. Here are the most popular and affordable portrait lenses for different systems:

Canon- 50mm F1.4 for a cropped sensor camera (7D, 50D, T1i) and the 85mm F1.8 for Full frame (5D Mk II). An alternative can be the 50mm F1.8.

Nikon- 50mm F1.4 for cropped sensor camera (D300s, D90) and 85mm F1.4 for Full Frame (D700)

Sony/Minolta- 50mm F1.4 for cropped sensor (A230) and 85mm F1.4 for Full Frame (A850)

Pentax- 50mm F1.4 For all their cameras.

Olympus/Panasonic Four Thirds- 50mm F2 For all their digital cameras

Olympus/Panasonic Micro Four Thirds- Panasonic Leica 45mm F2.8 For all their cameras

Stop the Lens Down

What this means is closing the aperture/F stop. If you’re using flashes, you should use your camera TTL or E-TTL settings to get this right. Usually, some lenses are closed down to F4 or beyond to get full sharpness of the facial features but balance that with a blurry background (bokeh.) You should be able to see all this through the viewfinder or LCD.

If you’re shooting at a slow shutter speed, then use a tripod for best results. If you’re not, then hold steady or try to raise your flash output so you can raise your shutter speed. This can be done via your flash (for later and more advanced ones like Canon’s 430 EX II) or through your camera.

Get the Right Light

The Gary Fong Lightsphere is Freakin' Awesome
Great portraits need to be lit correctly. For that you need to be able to take careful notice of how the light is around you. If the sun is behind your subject, then you’re going to need to set your camera settings correctly so that they don’t come out looking too dark. Or you could just use a flash.

Generally, having your subject look into the sun can cause them to squint and that doesn’t make for great photos. Flash is probably your best bet unless you have studio strobes available.

To not overpower your subject with too much lighting, I recommend the Gary Fong Lightsphere. I used it to take the picture above.

Focusing Strategies

Alex and Serenity
Always make sure the eyes are perfectly and sharply in focus. Try to balance this with perhaps a blurred background if you can.

That’s really the most effective way of shooting portraits. The eyes always tell us quite a bit. Be sure to prep your model’s mentality as well for the type of photo you’re looking to shoot.

Make It Fun

Shannon Making a Funny Face

Fun portraits are not only fun to shoot but also make for photos that are stared at much longer. To make it fun, try doing something non-traditional in your shot. Perhaps make funny faces, dress up differently, etc.

Be creative and random.

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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.