Irina – Outdoor Portraits – Varying focal length

This was another portrait session for my course, and once again, as it was decent weather we did this one outside, around the time the sun was starting to drop behind the buildings.  These photos were in a quiet corner of a busy little park in Moscow, the Hermitage Gardens and the purpose was to take a number of portraits with roughly the same pose but using different focal lengths and possibly different lenses.  In order to keep the composition the same it was necessary to increase the distance between the camer and the subject by stepping backwards.

Consequently these images look pretty similar, but as the lenses increase in focal length to their maximum length you will notice that the proportions of the face look different.  Compression distortion ‘flattens the appearance of the face, the angle of view changes and eliminates many of the shadows, these therefore result to more flattering portraits.

50mm (On a 50mm prime), Aperture – f/5.6, Shutter Speed – 1/125 sec, ISO 200

58mm, Aperture – f/5.0, Shutter Speed – 1/200 Sec, ISO 200

170mm, Aperture – f/5.0 , Shutter Speed - 1/200 sec, ISO 200

250mm, Aperture – f/5.6, Shutter Speed – 1/200 sec, ISO 200

340mm, Aperture – f/5.6, Shutter Speed – 1/200 sec, ISO 200

400mm, Aperture – f/5.6, Shutter Speed – 1/125 sec, ISO 200

Taking the shots whilst increasing the focal length became more difficult as the telephoto lens is heavy, but in order to demonstate this effect effictely on portrait shots it was necessary.

Here is the gallery of all the shots I took of Irina, click the thumbnails for full image:-

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 18th, 2010 at 2:37 pm. It is filed under Blog, Photography, Portraits and tagged with Hermitage Gardens, Moscow, Park, Portraits, Russia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.