Originally posted by Neville I have been covering most of the track and field athletics meetings for our provincial athletics federation (KZN Athletics Federation) for more than a year now - you can check out my photo blog at
KZNA Photos by Neville Bailey | This blog is dedicated to all the KZN athletes – enjoy, share and please give feedback!.
One of the participating clubs has asked me to do a photoshoot of their club kit, modelled by three of their female athletes and three of their male athletes. It will be an outdoor shoot on Saturday morning at 8.30am, either at the local athletics stadium or on the beach. The weather forecast for Saturday is 90% chance of rain with overcast conditions.
My camera kit consists of:
- Pentax K-5II
- 50mm F/1.7 prime lens
- 300mm F/4.5 prime lens
- 18-135mm WR kit lens
- 55-300mm lens
I do not have any studio/portrait equipment, such as external flash units, umbrellas, etc, so I am very "unprofessional" in that sense!
The club insists on using me (I am not charging for the photoshoot) as they love my action shots, but this is something quite new to me, so I am a bit nervous...
Any tips and tricks that I can use, taking into account my limited equipment and the possible weather conditions?
I would suggest taking nearly all your shots with the 50mm lens.
If you can buy one of those 5 in 1 reflector kits before the shoot that would be very helpful. Some fill in flash with your pop up flash might also help if conditions are very overcast. You might also have some big windows available to use as reflectors for some of the shots. Other shots could include the track to emphasize the subject matter.
Never, ever, photograph people's legs from eye level (ie: with you and the subject standing up) if they are wearing shorts. "Lovely legs" shots, regardless of the gender of the subject, require you to be shooting from their waist height and not up too close. 50mm is a very good focal length for that.
Fashion photographers often focus on their models clothes to the detriment of decent focus on their faces. I'm not keen on that. I think any photo where you can clearly see the subject's face should have her/his eyes in sharp focus and the rest of her/ his face in good focus. You will need to use single point auto focus for that. The auto- auto focus setting is a no no for portrait photography.
For getting your subjects exposed well, manual settings usually beat all the others. Point metering beats centre-weighted or full frame metering. Set your ISO, then adjust your shutter speed and aperture until the meter is telling you that you are two to three squares over "correct" exposure for Caucasian subjects and around "correct" exposure for African/ South Asian subjects. Metering off your subjects' foreheads is usually best. Changing orientation relative to your light source/ sources obviously means you need to re-meter.
If you are taking head and shoulder shots with your 50mm lens, avoid trying to fill the frame at shooting time. Leave some space with your shots, then crop in closer in post processing.
Above all, enjoy yourself and take plenty of shots and you are sure to get plenty that everyone likes. : )