Digital Advent Calendar 2010 - Day 13

© Ben Mullay Photography. All rights reserved.

Improve your portrait images

For nice portrait images this Christmas I suggest you reduce the depth of field on your camera so that your subject is sharp but your background is out of focus.

To do this on a digital SLR or bridge camera turn your camera to the ‘AV’ setting which puts the camera into ‘Aperture Value’ or ‘Aperture Priority’ mode.  This mode allows the user to select the desired aperture and the camera will select the shutter speed for you.  I suggest an aperture of f5.6 or lower (lens dependent) for pleasing portrait images.  If you are not using flash and your shutter speed is too slow (blurry photos), I suggest you put up the ISO rating a notch until the shutter speed is fast enough to get a sharp imge.  You may have to uprate the ISO maybe 2 or 3 times before you get an acceptable photograph.

If you have a digital compact camera you can select the ‘Portrait Mode’ on the camera which will do what I described above automatically for you – pretty good eh?!

-Ben