I figured I would start with one of my favorite shots of my son. It was taken when he was 14 months old.
No, he didn’t fall asleep like that…the only true thing in this image is that he IS asleep. Once he was out, my wife and I placed him in his chair, posed him, and placed a book in his lap. I took an accent lamp from an end table as it was just the right height for him. His “ottoman” is actually a flipped over canvas basket that just happened to almost match the color of his chair.
This shot was taken with my Canon 5D II in manual mode and my trusty 50mm f/1.2L lens.
ISO 100
1/200 shutter speed to help kill the ambient light.
f/4.5
white balance was set to cloudy to warm it up a bit.
gridded 22″ beauty dish above with a 580 EX II @ 1/2 power, triggered with Phottix Odins in manual mode.
Here’s a pull back of the shot. As you can see, I didn’t have a lot of room to work with. I was laying down on the floor probably 6 feet away.
At the time, I had also rented the 85L, which people swear by as being THE BEST portrait lens ever… I wasn’t all that impressed. Yes, the images it can produce can be stunning, but I was not impressed with the autofocus speed. I have no doubts of its capabilities….but is it an outstanding lens for my “mini me” that runs at full speed during his waking hours? Not a chance! My 50L did an outstanding job and focused quickly. The finished photo is from the 50L.
The finished shot was literally out of camera. The only thing I edited was applying a bit of vignette and a little sharpen.