Pages: [1]   Go Down

Author Topic: What f stop for family portraits  (Read 1722 times)

Neil Williams

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 566
    • Neil's Photography
What f stop for family portraits
« on: January 25, 2018, 11:26:47 pm »

guys
I’m going to have my family over this afternoon and plan to do a few family portraits using my Chamonix 4x5. The Lens I plan to use is my 210mm f5.6 and initially thought about shooting it at f5.6 and seeing as the location will be back lit just let the background blow out. What are your thoughts on family portraits f5.6 or f45
Neil


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Logged

tom b

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1471
    • http://tombrown.id.au
Re: What f stop for family portraits
« Reply #1 on: January 26, 2018, 12:15:49 am »

To be honest this is the thing that you should be concentrating on.

Best wishes,
Logged
Tom Brown

Slobodan Blagojevic

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 18090
  • When everyone thinks the same, nobody thinks
    • My website
Re: What f stop for family portraits
« Reply #2 on: January 26, 2018, 12:22:39 am »

What exactly is the family portrait you have in mind? How many people? One, two or three rows? How far you have to stand to get them all in? At 5.6 and say 5 feet distance, your depth of field is very thin, about 2 inches.

Martin Kristiansen

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1527
    • Martin Kristiansen
Re: What f stop for family portraits
« Reply #3 on: January 26, 2018, 04:54:33 am »

Not only would a 210 not give much depth of field at 5.6 the quality would generally be poor overall. Large format lenses have a maximum aperture designed to allow comfortable viewing on a ground glass so you can focus and compose, not neccesarly to shoot with. Of course you may like the character you get wide open but that’s a whole other thing. The modern obsession with bokeh and shallow depth of field wasn’t such a big deal when large format cameras were common.

There was a f64 club. Not an f1.2 club.
Logged
Commercial photography is 10% inspiration and 90% moving furniture around.

BernardLanguillier

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 13983
    • http://www.flickr.com/photos/bernardlanguillier/sets/
Re: What f stop for family portraits
« Reply #4 on: January 29, 2018, 03:00:49 am »

f16?

Cheers,
Bernard

Two23

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 827
Re: What f stop for family portraits
« Reply #5 on: January 29, 2018, 07:31:04 pm »

I generally shoot a lens of that length (on 4x5) at f11 or f16 for portraits.


Kent in SD
Logged
Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris,
miserere nobis.
Pages: [1]   Go Up