Window Light Portrait

Do you want to create better portraits? One of the simplest and best ways is to focus on the eyes. Countless photos lose their dramatic impact because the eyes are blurry. Of course their are times that you might be creating an artsy, unusual image where the eyes are deliberately blurred, but 99 times out of 100 the eyes should be sharp.

Recomposing

Most photos are stronger if the center of interest isn’t in the middle of the frame. Since we are naturally drawn to the eyes in a photograph, you don’t usually want the eyes centered in the middle of the photo.  This means you will need to focus on the eyes, recompose (move the camera so the eyes are away from the center of the photo and everything else is arranged just the way you want), and then take the picture. This will give you a better composition.

Focusing Tips

If you are focusing the lens manually, focus on the eyes, recompose if necessary,  and take the picture.

If you are using autofocus, focus on the eyes (or on one of the eyes), “lock in” that focus point, recompose and take the picture. You will have more precise control over the point of focus if you turn off all but one of your camera’s autofocus sensors.  My camera has several autofocus sensors but I usually leave only the center one turned on.

How do you “lock in focus”?  That depends on your camera and how you set up the controls via the menu system. For most cameras the shutter button is the default focus lock control (check your camera manual to be sure).  If you haven’t done this before, it is simple to do. Just push the shutter button down half way to focus (make sure the active focus sensor is on your desired point of focus – in this case the eyes), keep the shutter button down half way to “lock in” the focus point, recompose and push the shutter button down the rest of the way and take the picture. If you let the shutter button up while you recompose, you will lose your selected point of focus and the camera will pick a new one the next time you push the shutter button.

Your camera may allow you to pick an alternate button to push as the focus lock button. The alternate button is usually on the back of the camera near your right thumb.  Check your camera manual.  Incidentally, the shutter button is usually the default exposure lock button fro most cameras.  Some cameras will let you pick one button for focus lock and another button for exposure lock – but that’s a story for another article.

If the eyes are at different distances from the camera, you will have to pick which eye to focus on.  In the photo above, the light is stronger on the right side of the face so I focused on the right eye.

The more attention you give to focusing on the eyes (and then recomposing so the eyes aren’t in the center of the frame), the better your portraits will be.

A focusing trick you shouldn’t trust

Don’t focus, change the focal length of your zoom lens, and then take the picture.  A lot of zoom lenses change the focusing point as they are zoomed (the focal length is changed).  Back in the day, you could buy manual focus zoom lenses that would not change the focused distance as you zoomed the lens in an out. This was a huge benefit in terms of more accurate focusing.  You could zoom in closely on the eyes at 200 mm and focus, zoom back out to 100 mm or so, recompose and take the picture. It was a trick a lot of experienced photographers used to insure critically sharp focus. Not any more. Many autofocus zoom lenses change the focused distance as the lens is zoomed so you can’t use that old trick.

Light

The photo above was taken in diffused window light. An accordion blind softened the outside light of a south facing window. Soft window light is one of my favorite kinds of light for portraits.

Careful attention was given to the angle of her face and the play of the light. This is a soft version of “Rembrandt lighting”. The camera sees more of the darker (left) side of her face than the lighter (right) side, making for a more dramatic look.

Exposure

I manually metered the lighter side of her face and added one stop of light to what the camera meter said (+1 exposure compensation) to keep that side of her face light in tone. You can learn more about exposure compensation in this article.

The aperture was set to f/8  for a reasonable amount of depth of field. Ambient light levels were pretty low so the ISO was set to 400 to provide a useable shutter speed of 1/8 second. Ordinarily 1/8 second is much too slow for portraits but it is workable when the camera is on a tripod and you are working with an experienced model. For most people you need a shutter speed up around 1/60 second or faster.

Links

Digital Photography Exposure for Dummies has tips, ideas, suggestions, guidance, exercises, and illustrations for putting pizzaz in your people photography.  You can buy this highly rated book (5 stars at Amazon.com) here and learn more here.  You will  learn a lot about using light, exposure, depth of field, and a whole lot more.

Learn more about exposure and exposure compensation.

Data

Canon 5D, Canon EF 24-105mm lens at 65mm. f/8, 1/8 second, ISO 400.