How to take candlelight portrait photography

Lead: There are different styles of lighting candles. However, the beating fire will make us encounter many problems. Pick up the camera and follow the photographer to create romantic movies by candlelight.

There are many problems when shooting with candlelight as the main light source. For example, the light source is weak and scattered and the light is unstable. Actually, it can be solved in a simple way.

Enough candles to ensure the atmosphere.

The biggest challenge of candlelight photography is the lack of ambient light. Using more candles can enhance the light and improve the shutter speed. Of course, we should pay attention to the maximum brightness of candles under the main light source to ensure that we can shoot faces with candles under the main light source. As for other environmental protection candles, as long as they show the warm atmosphere at that time. When we use only one candle or put several candles together, it will cause obvious shadows on our faces. Attention should be paid to scattering candles in a small space to create a romantic atmosphere.

1 A candlestick with a certain height is used as the main light source.

Threaded candles are more sculptural and classical.

Short candles can be placed in many places to increase the brightness of the scene.

You can also take close-ups of your face.

In order to strengthen the outline and lines of the model's face, we can make a close-up of the model's face, let the model naturally lie on the table and photograph the model's natural lazy state. Note that the model's hair should not cover her face at this time and push her bangs aside. The model's eyes can turn down or to one side without paying attention to the camera, creating a thoughtful and hazy romantic feeling. In this way, under the warm candlelight, the outline of the model's face is particularly moving, and the uniform light will not make the model's face have obvious shadows. You can blur the candle in the foreground with a large aperture, leaving only a halo.

Taking a close-up of the model's face can show the model's facial lines incisively and vividly, and the thoughtful eyes of the model will deepen the romantic artistic conception.

Brighten the facial triangle

Place the candlestick of the main light source on the front of the model, and the candlelight creates a bright triangular light. If the light on the model's face is not enough, we can use natural reflectors such as white walls to enhance the light on the model's face. If we don't have these items, we can use the reflector to fill the light for the model, and try to use the golden reflector, so that the warm light reflected will be consistent with the shooting theme.

The most important triangle light for shaping the three-dimensional sense of face

Large aperture creates halo

When shooting by candlelight, the light may not meet the requirements of hand-held shooting. We can use a tripod. We try to keep the sensitivity as low as possible in order to get better picture quality. You can choose a lens with a large aperture to shoot the model. On the one hand, the lens with large aperture has more luminous flux per unit time, which can ensure faster shutter speed. On the other hand, the shallow depth of field produced by the large aperture can blur the candlestick in the foreground, making it a beautiful halo and highlighting the main characters. In the aspect of white balance setting, the warm light from candles will create a better atmosphere. Don't cool the white balance of the camera, and deliberately destroy this atmosphere.

When shooting with a large aperture, the candles in the foreground and background will blur into beautiful halos.

Use low sensitivity to suppress noise, and use manual color temperature of 5500K K.

Check the position of the candle.

Because we may use a lot of candles, we must pay attention to the relationship between the model and the candle when shooting, so as to avoid the candle touching the model's head. Because shooting scenes are often complicated, before shooting, we can use the viewfinder to observe the positional relationship between people and various objects in the lens.

When shooting, I found that the candle was directly above the head of the character, which affected the picture effect. A fashion blockbuster with flash as the main light source.

In addition to using candlelight as the main light source, adding off-camera flash can shoot another style of portrait works. The flash is used to shape the outline of the characters, and the candlelight is used as the rendering and foil of the romantic atmosphere, thus shooting exquisite fashion blockbusters.

Eliminate shadows with reflectors.

Because we use a flash to orient the model and use a beam tube to focus light, a strong flash will cast a serious projection on the model and destroy the atmosphere of the whole environment. Therefore, we need to use a reflector to eliminate the shadow on the model. We tried to use a white reflector. If we use gold or silver plates, the reflection will be strong, which may expose the model's face. Using the whiteboard can reflect softer light and reduce the shadow on the model to some extent.

Use a white reflector to make the light on the model more uniform and the overall atmosphere more harmonious. Use a strong flash as the main light source.

We put candles behind the model to show the atmosphere of the picture, so that these candles can play the role of auxiliary light source. Place an off-camera flash on the front of the model. Conditional film friends can add a beam tube in front of the flash to form relatively concentrated light, otherwise the bright range is too large, which will destroy the overall dark tone atmosphere. If there are no conditions, we can wrap it in black cardboard and stick it on the position of the flash lamp holder, or we can gather light.

Whiteboard not used: the strong light of the flash casts a very ugly shadow on the model.

After using the whiteboard: the light on the model is effectively averaged, which makes the overall atmosphere more harmonious.