Overview

Patty called me from work last week to ask me if I’d be available on Saturday, January 27, 2018, to take photos of the family of one of her coworkers.  This was just the kind of growth experience I was looking for, so I said, ‘sure’.

Location & Conditions

It sounded like Patty’s coworker preferred to take the photos outside, at a local park, which, because it would allow me to put the background a great distance away, I could easily separate the subjects from the background by putting the background out of focus.

So I started looking into some of the more appealing parks and memorials near Arlington, Virginia.  I had never met Kristin and Eric before, so I didn’t know whether there were specific locations that would be especially meaningful to them.  But just to be prepared,  here are some of the potential locations that I came up with:

In looking into these, I used the Sun Surveyor iOS app to get an idea of where the sun would be (clouds permitting) for a morning photo shoot, an which locations might be best aligned with the sun.  If, by chance, we were to have bright sun, then I would be recommending spots that would put the sun behind them, so that the highlights on their head and shoulders would provide clear separation from the background.  I’ve found the Sun Surveyor app to be useful for this purpose, but I definitely need to become more familiar with it in order to leverage all of its features.

Patty spoke with Kristin about preferred locations, and Kristin suggested the following options:

Patty looked into these via Google and GoogleMaps, and she ended up recommending Woodlawn Park, mainly for its playground and open space.

As it turns out, this location was virtually ideal.  Besides the diverse and age-appropriate playground equipment, it also has a small bridge over Lubber Run creek that’s perfectly aligned with the late morning sun, to create great rim lights, and right beyond the bridge there is an area of lush evergreen foliage that provided great contrast for the background.

Equipment & Setup

Here is the equipment I brought with me.

Light Stand

  1. (1) Avenger C-Stand 33
  2. (1) Avenger D600 Mini Boom with Sliding Attachment
  3. (1) Photoloving iShoot Portable Weight Bag
  4. (1) Nikon SB-5000 AF Speedlight
  5. (1) Westcott Rapid Box Octa 26″ Softbox
  6. (2) Custom 5/16″ Chain Counterweights

Camera Tripod

  1. (1) Manfrotto Compact Advanced Aluminum Tripod with 3-Way Head
  2. (1) NIKKOR AF-S 105 mm f/1.4G Prime Lens
  3. (1) Nikon D850 Full Frame Digital SLR Camera
  4. (1) Nikon WR-R10/WR-T10/WR-A10 Wireless Remote Adapter Set
  5. (1) Sony 128 GB XQD G Series Memory Card
  6. (1) Sony 128 GB SD UHS-II SF-M Series Memory Card

Display Monitor

  1. (1) Apple iPad Pro 9.7
  2. (1) Nikon SnapBridge Bluetooth Photo Download / Camera Control app

Spares

  1. (1) Nikon D500 Crop Sensor Digital SLR Camera
  2. (1) Nikon SB-5000 AF Speedlight
  3. (1) Nikon SZ-4 Color Filter Holder for SB-5000 Speedlight
  4. (1) Nikon SJ-5 Color Filter Set
  5. (1) Sony 128 GB XQD G Series Memory Card
  6. (1) Sony 128 GB SD UHS-II SF-M Series Memory Card
  7. (4) Panasonic Eneloop Pro 1.2V AA Batteries
  8. (1) Dinkum Systems ActionPod Pro Clamp Mount
  9. (2) Padcaster Cold Shoe Adapter
  10. (2) Phottix Varos Pro S Multi-Function Flash Shoe Umbrella Holder

I carried this equipment down to the park in a collapsible wagon.  The only other props that I brought were a couple of colorful blankets.  Other equipment I should consider bringing in the future include the following, which would allow me to mount a softbox in front of the subjects at such a bridge using the Avenger D600 Mini Boom listed above.

  1. (1) Avenger C1575B Super Clamp
  2. (1) Avenger E600C 5/8-Inch Snap-In Steel Pin for Super Clamp

I set up the light stand, flash, and softbox before Kristin and her family got to the park, so I had a chance make sure everything worked before they arrived.  In this case, I initially set up the camera and tripod near a picnic table, so that the sun would provide backlighting on my subjects.  And then I set up the light stand, flash, and softbox above and in front of where they would be, to provide a soft fill light on their faces.

So with this setup, the sun was shining from above and toward the camera, putting quite a bit of light down the barrel.  This made things a little challenging, because I was planning to open up the lens aperture as wide as I could, so that the distant background would be out of focus, but the aperture also had to be closed enough so that the entire family would be in focus (adequate depth of field).  The aperture setting I chose to optimize this tradeoff was f/2.

Then, I set the sensor gain to the minimum for this camera, ISO 64, to maximize the number of distinct intensity levels that the sensor could capture (maximizing the dynamic range).  Then, I set the flash power to provide just enough fill light on my subjects’ faces so that they were well lit, but so that the lighting looked natural.  Finally, my intention was to adjust the shutter speed so that the exposure of the background would make it appear subtle, and not distracting.  I was expecting this shutter speed to be about 1/2000 seconds, which is quite a bit higher than the camera’s maximum flash sync speed of 1/250 seconds (This is the maximum speed at which the flash is guaranteed to fire while the shutter is open.).  But this shouldn’t be a problem, because if I set the shutter speed to something above the flash sync speed, the camera should automatically tell the flash instead to trigger continuously at high speed, so that the flash would would fire the entire time when the shutter could be open.

My first problem

Unfortunately, I found that the camera’s shutter speed dial would not let me set the shutter speed faster than 1/250 seconds, and so my test photos were coming out way over exposed.  Hmmm.

It didn’t take too long for me to recognize that this limit was indeed the camera’s maximum sync speed.  So, I fumbled through the D850 PHOTO SHOOTING, CUSTOM SETTING, and SETUP menus until I finally ran across the following setting:

  • CUSTOM SETTING
    • e Bracketing/flash
      • e1 Flash sync speed

I’m not sure why this would be, but I found that the flash sync speed was set to a fixed shutter speed of “1/250 s”.  So, I changed it to the adjacent “1/250 s (Auto FP)” setting, which I believe is the default, and that solved the problem.  The Nikon D850 DSLR certainly has lots of ways to constrain the available settings, and for many of them, it is not obvious how you remove the constraint.

My next challenge

Especially when I’m taking portraits, I want to be able to review the photos, in detail, as I’m taking them, to ensure that I’ve got the sharpest focus, reasonable exposure, and no motion blurring.  The LED display on this (or most any other) camera is just not the best tool for doing this, especially in conditions of bright sun (Hoods and loupes are available for DSLR displays, but using them would be very awkward for some (such as myself) who wears glasses.).

In my early test shots, I started by attempting to use the electronic video zoom capability, made possible by the D850’s Live View display function, to verify that I had sharp focus.  Unfortunately, the conditions were just too bright to make such judgments using the LED display.

To get around this, I set up the SnapBridge app on my iPad, and I established a Bluetooth connection to my camera.  This process is always interesting, because sometimes it takes so long for the connection to be established, even when the camera and iPad are right next to each other, that you have to believe that the connection failed.  And very little useful feedback is provided during this process.

Here is the process I used to set up the connection between camera and iPad:

  1. D850 / SETUP MENU:  “Connect to smart device”
  2. iPad:  Start SnapBridge
  3. iPad / SnapBridge:  Download Pictures
  4. iPad / SnapBridge:  Enable camera Wi-Fi -> OK
  5. iPad / SnapBridge:  “Connecting to camera…  Starting camera Wi-Fi.  Please wait.”
  6. iPad / SnapBridge:  “SnapBridge” Wants to Join Wi-Fi Network “D850_3013584”?  Join
  7. iPad / SnapBridge:  Select the smart device icon at the top to see the 2MB files that were downloaded

Posing & Shooting

With this young and active family of four, posed shots had to be very brief, and we had to quickly move on to something else.  So, for the majority of the shots, we were open-field running, without benefit of light stands and such.  Luckily, I had Patty, my lovely assistant with me to hold the speedlight/softbox in position for the shots.  For the second set of shots, Patty had to hold on to the railing of a small bridge while leaning out holding the flash out over the creek (I suppose I could have rigged up something that would have been a little less sketchy.  But hey, that lightstand is expensive!  😉 ).

At that point, it was time for a break, so my third set of shots were from me following little Evie around the playground equipment.

After a few shots at the Tilt-a-Whirl, we had some posed family shots at a platform swing.  Then it was shots of Evie at the sandbox.  Then some shots of Eric and Hadley, some shots of the family at the swingset, and finally, the family playing peek-a-boo around a large tree.

It was a great day, and I think we all had a great time with this photo shoot.

Post Processing

For post-processing, I used my usual workflow of downloading the RAW photos off the camera disk using CameraBits Photo Mechanic, and screening them as they came in.  Then I used Adobe Lightroom Classic CC to create a new Lightroom Catalog, and I imported the screened photos into Lightroom.

As I was editing the photos, I tried to crop as many as I could to 8″ x 10″ or square aspect ratios, so that when printed they would fit best in standard frame/mat sizes.  Besides that, the editing I performed was minimal, mostly for exposure and targeted boosts in saturation.  Since I thought it was most important to let the family see what we had collected as soon as possible, and because the photos looked pretty good as they were, I didn’t do any further portrait editing (e.g., skin smoothing, teeth whitening) before delivering the proofs to them.  I can always do that later for specific photos that they select.

Results

After completing the editing on Saturday, on Sunday morning, I delivered 71 photos on a flash drive.  Here are some of the better photos that we took during this shoot.

Lessons Learned

1.  Be careful imposing constraints

I couldn’t adjust the shutter speed faster than 1/250 seconds.

2.  Use Manual exposure mode with flash, Aperture Priority without flash

TBD

3.  The location and sunlight were outstanding

The background at the bridge.  The position of the bridge relative to the sun.  It created a perfect rim light, especially with dark clothing and a dark background.

4.  Taking photos in bright sun is hard

Because the sun was so bright, the camera’s LED screen really wasn’t useful for zooming in electronically to the LiveView video image to establish focus manually.

5.  Bring a range of clothing

The color contrast between the kids and parents closing made them standout.

6.  ISO 64 worked well

Luminence noise was almost nonexistent.

7.  The octagonal softbox worked well for this small group

It gave nice catchlights.

8.  The 105 mm f/1.4 lens was the right choice

It created great bokeh.

9.  Aperture Priority worked well

TBD

10.  SnapBridge

TBD

The f/2 aperture setting worked for most photos.




Leave a reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *