How to Create Studio-Style Portraits With a Compact Digital Camera

There are two reasons why most snapshot portraits of family and friends can turn out unsatisfactory. First, the on-camera flash creates strong shadows and hightlights every flaw and blemish in the subject’s face. Second, the wrong zoom setting gives a distorted perspective. Both these faults are easily fixed. In this post I will show you two simple ways to create studio-style portraits with your compact digital camera.

Light

The on-camera flash on most digital cameras is never very flattering. It shows up the blemishes in the person’s face, creates harsh shadows and creates red-eye. Studio portrait photographers use one or more flash heads on stands with ’soft boxes’ to diffuse the light. For the ‘Home Studio’ all you need is an overcast day. Sit your subject beside a large window so they are slightly facing the daylight. Ideally, your subject should sit in front of a neutral background. This should generally be white. Sit them in a dining chair to promote better posture. If you think the other side of their face looks a little too dark, you can use a large sheet of while card to bounce some daylight back onto them. It’s as simple as that!

Zoom

The best results are achieved by using the telephoto end of your camera’s lens. For example, if your compact digital camera has a 3x zoom you should step backwards and use the longest zoom setting. If your camera has a longer zoom setting (eg. 5x or more) then aiming for the halfway point will give you good results. Setting your camera lens to a longer focal length in this way will give your portraits a more flattering perspective.

Quick Tips:

• Generally, it is best not to ask your subject to ‘pose’ for the camera, unless they are very confident.
• Keep talking to them.
• Suggest where they should place their head and where to look.
• Keep framing tightly. The head and neck are usually enough.
• Always focus on the eyes.
• Use focus locking by half-pressing the shutter and re-framing.
• Use the widest possible aperture to minimise depth-of-field.
  
• Keep your camera level with your subject’s eyes.
• Take lots of shots.
• Check the results every so often in the LCD.
• Expect to spend about an hour capturing your shots. The best ones tend to happen towards the end of a shoot.

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