This is a wonderful photo! I really like it. I almost feel like I'm looking through a window. Did you do any retouching to the skin or is it the result of the way you focused it?Originally Posted by rootprompt
yep, it's strictly forbidden to use anything below 250mm for portraits.
Lorena, 178/2.5 Aero Ektar wide open, Adox CHS50 in Rodinal 1:25, Toyo View 57G w/4x5" back
Cheers
Andreas
Glad you like it
Except for a very light curves adjustment, no further post processing was done to the scan. The look of her skin is a combination of a) makeup, b) film used and c) her age (16).
Ah, age, makeup, and film. Very nice. Thanks for posting it. If I could only get my teenage daughters to pose for me...
I'm curious to know why you say that?
I didn't really mean that, I was being facetious.
(I'm a war-monger myself.)
Because shooting portraits with a long lens is too easy, it's akin to cheating. With the longer lens the face will appear the slimmest, with a smaller nose in relationship to the rest of the head. You also get more control over depth of field, so you can shoot strobe-lit portraits at f/16-22 all day with a 300 on a 4x5 and narely ever miss focus. Outdoors in good light you can shoot f/11 with a Verito and they're all purrrfect ;-)
It's the way to go for boring commercial-quality predictable portraits. Like insurance company billboards and the like.... I've done it, it works, but it's like wearing suspenders with your belt.
With a wider lens you have to be really careful not to make people's faces look distorted and gross. Depth of field is tricker to control. And most of all, the clutter in the background becomes a lot more important to the image, so what and where and when you photograph matters a lot more.
It's riskier... any competent photographer can do a headshot against a blurry background... using a wider lens introduces another level of complexity and challenge.
The same goes for photojournalism -- with the classic Magnum/Life magazine-type photo stories -- you hardly ever see the master photojournalists (or the 35mm fine art photographers) (such as Bresson, Davidson, Erwitt, Winogrand, Friedlander, etc.) use anything longer than a 50mm (and rarely did they go extremely wide either)(on 35mm = ~150 on 4x5). Same reasoning. Sticking a 300mm lens on their 35mm and sneaking grab shots like a paparazzi would be considered sleazy and low... oh but wait -- it is!
(How is that for instigating a little conflict?)
I'm a staff photographer at a daily newspaper and I couldn't agree more. Another reason for sticking around the 50mm mark is that it's close to average human's field of vision. So it makes the picture look more "real" without drawing attention to the equipment used. It helps the viewer feel, visually, more like they were there, seeing it themselves.
Well, this is not exactly a portrait, but on the other hand it depicts a person (and on a larger version he is very well recongizable) - and all of you know what he is doing. And it's his breath condensating in the cold of morning...
Xenar 135mm, 9×12cm Fomapan 100 in Rodinal.
Jiri Vasina
www.vasina.net
@ Google+ | @ Facebook | @ flickr
My books @ Blurb (only heavily outdated "Serene Landscape").
sorry, have to disagree on the tele-portrait-lens discussion,
its just a matter of taste, and I would really dislike a headshot
with a wideangle, Example? Here's one, taken with a 300mm (24*36
equivalent). Not easy to focus I can tell you!
BTW, I really like working with a normal lens for portraits, and sometimes
a wideangle, but its just what fits best in your mindset best.
Just my 2 cents,
regards
stefan
testing a 12" Velostigmat II SF lens that I modified to diffuse more than the 0 - 5 standard, had to shoot at f/8, but titled the front to push for a shallower DOF look, on an 8x10 paper neg.
at 5 diffusion, which is max. with factory settings
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