I find even in landscape photography I use the 70-200 a lot to go in for detail in a scene. Instead of a sweeping vista, it's the small slices of what makes up the scene that intrigue me. In the film days my favorite lens for personal work was a Nikon 300mm F4. I couldn't afford the 2.8. Today my go to lenses for my Canon bodies (6D and 7D) are the Tamron SP 24-70mm and 70-200mm F2.8 Di VC USD G2 lenses. The 24-70mm f2.8 and 70-200mm f2.8 be it native or good third party is a great lens combo for a variety of subjects. Appreciate how you were using the backlight as rim lighting and bringing the rest in balance in post. My old film mind still goes to the idea of needing fill flash. It's good to see and be reminded that we can use in camera and post in tandem to produce images without the flash we couldn't have done before. Like anything else, you have to have that in mind and part of planning and setting your shot. Already know what you mean to do in post while you are shooting. Not just, "Eh, I'll fix it in post." As an old fart I do need reminding of these things and need to change up that workflow.
My workhorse lens for senior portraits. Like in your video I can get two to three different looks without having to move around like with my primes. I hope to see a follow up to learn how you edited Scenes #3 & #6. I typically would throw a strobe into the mix to keep the ISO low and not have to pump up exposure in post.
Nice one Pye, and great job to Bushra as well ( I hope I spelled that correctly). I have had a 70-200 lens and it spent years on the shelf, the I saw Peter Lindbergh, one of the masters, use one for an entire shoot. I dusted mine off, and experimented with it. Now it’s always with me on shoots. 👌🏾
To use a flash to shoot these images exactly as he did (same distances, etc) would mean carrying a light stand, a light, a softbox, and a sandbag. And an assistant if he wanted this session to go smoothly and not take forever. And he’d then have to worry about getting permits, depending on where the session was conducted. Adding just one light to an outdoor photo shoot means going from walking around with a backpack or a shoulder bag to hauling a bunch of equipment that has to be set up and broken down every time you change locations. It would have been way more work to light these images with a flash than it was to select all the images and boost the shadows by two stops in post.
Well, between having a great lens (with tons of options for shots) and having a model with eyes for days...how can you go wrong?! I get the feeling that even hacks like me could get a good capture or two with that combination. ;)
Really interesting video. For me a 70-200 is not one lens, it's an infinite number of focal lengths. It would be good to see a similar video, with, say, a prime 135mm or 80mm and the need to zoom with your feet. Still a very informative video, thank you
interesting and very helpful video...halfway done ...still watching....can u please try 35mm next...it will be nice to see how you compose your model using that lens
I'm absolutely loving this series of videos! I would love to see you cover the rest of what I consider to be the classic prime trifecta (35mm, 50mm, 85mm) and maybe also the 15-35mm. What if you used some of those lenses to shoot non-human subjects like flowers and dogs?
If he went any brighter overall then the background would blow out. Another way to do it would be to use a reflector to bounce light onto her face, but it's just as easy to do it in post like he did.
it is easier to recover the shadows in an image, than it is to recover blown out highlights. This is photography 101. If you have a scene with lots of dynamic range (lots of really bright areas, and lots of really dark areas), you typically want to try to expose for your highlights so that those bright areas are properly exposed. Of course, the dark areas will be really dark, but given that you shoot in RAW, and you have a good camera and lens combination, you can recover those shadows in post.
He’s not underexposing, Chaz, he’s exposing to the right (ETTR) to protect the highlights. When shooting raw, you have lots of latitude to recover shadows in post. But if you blow out the highlights, there’s just nothing there to recover. If you’re not using a flash, the way he shot these images is the way you have to do it to have a balanced final image where the highlights are highlights and not just pure white. Shooting to the right, as you put it, means shooting to protect the right side of the histogram. That’s going to produce darker shadows that can easily be lifted in editing. That’s the workflow for a lot of natural light photographers.
