Several skills of portrait shooting at night

Night portrait is a special type of portrait creation, because the background and characters lack light, and additional equipment is needed to supplement the light. This is a particularly difficult way for everyone to shoot. In fact, in night shooting, we mainly consider the normal exposure of foreground figures and backgrounds. Knowing these can help us quickly master the skills of portrait shooting at night.

Night shooting is mainly divided into:

1, simple portrait

No matter what the surrounding environment is, it is essential to let the picture only show the main body, and the use of flash can ensure a high enough shutter speed. If the requirements are not high, it is no problem for the camera to bring its own flash, but it should be noted that the distance between the flash and the person should be moderate. If it is too far away, it will have no effect. If it is too close, it will make people pale, just like a virgin; Adding a soft cover in front of the flash can improve this situation, but this accessory needs to be purchased separately, but it is not expensive, tens of dollars. Off-plane flash can take photos from the side, which has the advantage of making people look less dull and dull than the photos taken by overhead flash.

2. Portrait and environment

This photo is divided into two situations when using the equipment:

A. don't use the flash.

This situation requires high equipment and environment. First of all, in the equipment, there must be a large enough lens with the largest aperture. Generally speaking, at least f 1.8 is required to ensure a safe shutter. In addition, the grade of the camera should not be too low. It is usually impossible for an entry-level SLR to use high ISO, otherwise the horrible noise on the screen will make you depressed. Secondly, the brightness of ambient light should not be too low, for example, it can be taken next to the shop window. Under control, such a picture will be very charming. If you can't meet the above conditions, let's talk about the following.

Use the light in the window to form a big soft frame, which produces wonderful side light and makes the characters full of three-dimensional sense.

Make full use of the large aperture and the light of street lamps to ensure people's exposure. And choose the background with light, and form a beautiful spot through the blur of large aperture.

B. Use a flash, but unlike the above situation, use a low-speed shutter while using the flash, which can ensure the normal exposure of the characters and also bring the environment into the picture. At this time, it is very important to balance the exposure parameters of the environment and the output of the flash. We can take advantage of the convenience of digital camera and the combination of debugging and exposure to get a good photo.

Practical technology of portrait shooting at night &; Experience sharing:

For ordinary night portrait shooting, the background always needs a long exposure time to leave a normal exposure effect on the photo, while ordinary flash photography only needs a short exposure time. So when shooting, I used manual exposure, adjusted the shutter speed to a slower state, and forced the flash to shoot. Different lenses used in shooting have different effects on portraits at night. We can control the background picture through the focal length and aperture.

Use lens: 85mm F 1.4 aperture: F 1.6 speed:110 iso: 200.

The general night scene, the background is usually very dark. Friends who know the principle of camera exposure know that dark background means that it takes a long time to fully expose the background and reveal the light and color of the background. This time may be110 second or longer. For the foreground model, because we use a flash, it actually takes only1100 seconds to complete the exposure. So if we shoot according to the flash synchronization method, we will see that the people in the foreground are fully exposed and clear, but the background is dark. Such characters appear abrupt and unnatural in the background.

In order to solve this problem, we first measured the background, and found that the aperture of 1.6 and the shutter of110 second can realize the accurate exposure of the background. We directly manually adjust the aperture of the exposure combination of 1.6 and the shutter of110 second, and then we choose to turn on the flash. In this way, we can see that the faint light in the background and the model's face are fully exposed, the light in the background creates a soft atmosphere, and the models are organically integrated in the background, making the whole night portrait more attractive.

In this photo, in order to get the blur effect of the background light, so as to better set off the model, we specially chose Planar T* 85mm F 1.4 ZA with large aperture, and set the aperture to 1.6, so as to obtain obvious background light spot effect with large aperture. From the photos, we can see that the background light sets off the model's expression well, making the whole portrait at night look softer and more harmonious than the portrait during the day.

In addition, it is necessary to use a tripod all the time during the whole shooting process to ensure that the details of the protagonist are clear at the shutter speed of110 second.

If you have more than one flash, you can get more shooting effects, which is often used by professional photographers when shooting portraits at night. Changing the angle combination between these lights, or different flash output and flash focal length settings, can obtain a variety of portrait effects and experience the endless fun of night photography.

Lens: 16-35mm F2.8 Aperture: F2.8 Speed:110 ISO: 400.

In order to get the slender effect of the model, the photographer squatted down to shoot. Flash B plays the role of the main light source, but when only B is used to flash, there will be a hard shadow from top to bottom. At this time, the flash A is added to supplement the light, so that the light on the front of the model is uniform, which is helpful to obtain a softer portrait effect.