Canon Powershot Vs Elph
best lighting for self portrait with canon digital camera?
okay, so i have to do this self portrait for photo class and i need help doing it
my biggest problem is the lighting. my teacher really didn’t teach us anything about how to arrange light, nothing! i know there are different types of lighting: Rembrandt, Broad, Butterfly, etc, but i can’t seem to do them right. every time i do a picture I just look weird!
which lighting is best for someone of african american descent? i’s say i’m a more medium brown over dark brown.
so your help would be greatly appreciated
advice and tips in:
makeup
lighting
hair styles
smile vs no smiling
backdrop/ background
another note: i have a canon powershot sd750 digital elph, so any settings on the camera i should do that you think would help, would be greatly appreciated as well.
You probably don’t have the lighting to even setup in any of the lighting diagrams anyway. So I’d just totally forget about all for now.
I’d keep it as simple as possible. If you have something like a clamp light, the kind you can get at walmart or home depot, that would be optimum. The kind you can screw in a regular style light bulb and had the metal reflector on it. A good sturdy clamp is very good to have, or someone to hold it. Get a flood bulb about 120 or 150watts. Brighter is better.
You’ll need to set the timer or have a remote or have someone push the button. I think as long as you compose and light the shot, that qualifies as a self portrait in my book.
You probably should have something kinda dark in the background. Shooting it at night with a uniform, not distracting background behind you is good. Even outside works, so long as there aren’t any stray lights around or in the background. Turn a little to one side or the other and point the light to the side of your face that is not facing the camera. You’ll probably want it 4 or 5 feet away from you, focused on your face as much as possible. You may have to move it a little closer to make it less dispersed. You want one side of your face lit pretty well and the other side almost not at all BUT you want your other eye to show up some. You almost have to aim the light at your short side eye so that it carries across the bridge of your nose enough to light the broad side eye a little. The broad side is the side that’s facing the camera. This should light pretty much just your face and maybe a little of your hair. This is all you really want lit.
Camera settings… flash defintely off. You want to set the exposure value (EV) to -1.0 to start with and put it in just a regular mode. If this isn’t working well for you, you might have to try night portraits but I’m not sure if you can turn off the flash in this mode. If you can, then maybe start there. Set the ISO to 100 and take a pic or two. The picture is going to kind of dark. You want it to be but you have to have the shutter speed to support a still shot. If the shutter is slower than 1/60 sec, and the shot is pretty much just showing your face, maybe turn the ISO up a couple notches. Ideally it would be around 1/125 sec. This is where the brightness of the light factors in. You can also change the EV if its too bright to -1.3 or whatever works. This also speeds up the shutter some, so try to only change one thing at a time.
I’d keep the expression somber / serious, the makeup slightly heavier than normal OR just lipstick… not sure how your complexion is. Hair almost doesn’t matter at all. You want it to be pretty much black behind you. You don’t need to define too much when the majority of the portrait is dark. You can crop this how you see fit, or zoom in to take the shot. You can put yourself however you see fit in the finished picture. If you want to look isolated, make yourself small. Lots of negative space that way. If you want yourself bigger and more focal… make it look more like a headshot.
Good Luck.
Canon Powershot Vs Elph
sony vs canon?
http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Canon-PowerShot-SD600-Digital-Elph-Camera/sem/rpsm/oid/146235/catOid/-13062/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do
http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Sony-Cyber-shot-DSC-W50-Digital-Camera/sem/rpsm/oid/143909/catOid/-13062/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do
which do you think is a better camera?
Canon has better low light shot quality, and more favourable reviews – comparatively.
The Canon’s processor will also mean superfast processing from ‘click’ to ‘displaying on your lcd’.
Looks like Canon has the upper hand – and this from a guy who owns, and enjoys, a Sony DSC-W5!
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Reviews from Cnet suggest the Canon is also better. The reviews I’ve read on my camera (DSC-W5) are pretty spot on, hence I would trust what they say about the two options you’ve presented…