Hi, this is Jay P. Today we’re going to take a look at lens choice and camera settings for photographing a toddler in a studio portrait setting.
We’ve got Gabriel and Jessica here with us. They’re going to help us look at how to light this, how to set up the set and how to work with the toddler when we’re on set.
Special thanks to Saal Digital who is sponsoring this series of lens and camera settings on The Slanted Lens. Thank you Saal Digital.
My Lens choice as we chase this little toddler around is going to be a 100 millimeter. I’m shooting on the 35-150mm from Tamron for Sony. But I’m going to choose 100 millimeters. There’s several reasons. Number one – it’s a narrower angle of view. Which means I can push my background back further and it’s going to fall out of focus. Because I don’t need as large a background it allows me to push it further and further back. Which means it’s going to fall more and more out of focus. It’s not a 35mm, it’s not a 50mm, it’s not an 85mm, it’s a 100mm. So it’s going to give me a very narrow angle of view. Which means I can push my background further back and it doesn’t have to be as big and it falls more out of focus. So that 100 millimeter puts me in a nice place to be able to accomplish those things. Most of the manufacturers out there make a 100 millimeter macro, an f/2.8. That is a great lens for both doing macro and for doing portraits because it gives you that, like you say, that narrower point of view. So it’s a great lens to look at and to consider. A 100 millimeter makes a great portrait lens and allows me to go get my toddler with a shallow depth of field in the background. So let’s get on to camera settings.
First off, I’m going to set my ISO at 100. Every time I’m in the studio I’m going to be at 100 ISO. It’s a low ISO. It’s clean, there’s no noise on the sensor. It’s just the perfect place to be. There’s no reason for me to push the ISO any higher. I’ve got strobes that are plenty powerful enough to be able to give me the exposure I need at 100 ISO. So the iso starts and stays at 100.
So for my aperture I’m not going to go to f/2.8 because f/2.8 is just a little bit too shallow. Here’s an example. There’s a shot of the bear at f/2.8 and here’s at f/4. Now let’s take a look at f/5.6. I think f/4 gives me enough focus on that full frame sensor to keep him in focus, enough of him so that we see not just his eyes but a little bit of his body in focus as well. But we don’t have to go to f/5.6 which is a little deeper than I think I want. And I’m looking at the background as I say that. At f/2.8 the background is my favorite. But I think f/4 is a nice compromise. The background is still out of focus. It looks really good. At f/5.6 the background starts to be a little too in focus. And it’s just the transition from foreground to background I think I like better at f/4. So I’m going to shoot it f/4 and that’s going to be my aperture for this shot.
And also, for my autofocus I’m going to set it on a single point autofocus right on his face. I’ll move that around. I want to focus just on his face. No chances of it jumping somewhere else. I like that single point autofocus. That’s going to keep him in focus as we shoot.
So after we look at the shutter settings we’re going to give you some tips on how to work with toddlers on set. So stay tuned for that.
My shutter, I’m going to set at 1/200th of a second. There’s just no reason for me to ever move it from 1/200th of a second. It makes sure I’m not getting any of the ambient in the room and it’s going to sync with my strobe just fine. So 1/200th of a second for everything we do today.
We’re going to order a photo canvas print with wrapped edges from Saal Digital. We’ll deliver that to the family in the future, so look for that. The reason we chose that natural canvas print is because it feels organic. And it feels very artistic like the scene that we’ve done here has that sense of the outdoors, has a sense of a little nostalgia. So that canvas wrap just gives you a beautiful looking fine art type print. So this is a natural color fine fabric print. It’s 300 DPI which gives you maximum clarity, gives you beautiful color brilliance and natural clarity. Great wood frame around it that makes it very durable. It’s a blended fabric with 35% cotton and about 65% polyester. You can get it in two different thicknesses a 0.8” or 1.58”. So that thickness is really a client’s decision. We’re probably going to go with a thinner 0.8” on this. This is a thicker. Just a beautiful print. A nostalgic kind of print with that canvas. I think it’s a wonderful look. Can’t wait to see this image on it.
Next we’re going to show you some tips on working with toddlers. Then we’re going to show you how we built our little set and our three light setup that made it work.
So Gabriel’s here to help me give you some tips on how to work with toddlers. Number one is, don’t waste any of your toddler’s energy in trying to set things up. We’ve got a teddy bear in there that we’re going to light to, set everything up, frame to and be completely ready when he’s ready. So that we don’t waste any of his energy trying to focus and light him. He likes that teddy bear back there. Number two, pick a time that is good for the toddler. After their nap. First thing in the morning. The mother or father are going to be able to know when is best for their child. So schedule your shoot around what is best for the child you’re going to be photographing. Okay, make sure he’s fed and not hungry. And bring great snacks, favorite snacks for the child you’re photographing. So that you can give them those snacks when you want to encourage them to be on set and to work with you. And also you need someone there to work with you, a parent, an assistant, someone to kind of spot them on set so they won’t fall off. And, you need the parent to stand behind the camera so the parent can get their attention back there. That is a super helpful thing. The other thing is you can put a small a phone with any kind of entertainment. You know, children’s entertainment on the camera so they’re looking at that phone and that gets their attention. Again turn that on when things get desperate. Don’t have it on the whole time. It’s a change of scenery. You got to keep changing the scenery. Use a squeak toy. Kids love it when you use a squeak toy. That gets their attention. They wonder what’s going on. They’ll look where you’re at. Have that at the camera. Make sure that everything on set is secured and not going to fall over which will cause something startling to happen. This is really important both with children and with animals. Give them something to hold. They love anything new like that. Make sure there’s a really comfortable place for them to sit on the set because they just feel comfortable in that situation. And make sure the room is warm enough. You want it to be warm. Not too warm so they fall asleep. But you don’t want it cold so that they feel uncomfortable in the room. So make sure the temperature is correct.Be really animated behind the camera. It helps get them involved. They’ll start to mimic you a little bit. And don’t start to laugh when they do something funny, shoot. You miss so many shots if you’re laughing at the cute things they’re doing. You’ve got to shoot when they do those cute things. Play music if you have to. Any change, change to a video, change to music, change to a squeaker, any change is going to keep them more interested longer and help your shoot go much better. So there are some tips on how to work with a toddler on set.
Next we’re going to talk about how we set up our set and did our lighting.
Let’s talk about our set. This is a pretty simple set. It has three stages. Up front on a blanket we have moss from Michaels. We have a log from outside. A little rock he can sit on. And the two mushrooms that Julene got online from Amazon for $20 or $30 each. Then we have a couple of ferns in the mid ground, foreground mid ground. And those ferns are just from outside.We had some ferns growing outside. We kind of keep plants out there for when we shoot. And then a background we got off from Amazon. All total here we spent under a hundred dollars. If I was doing a set like this I would want to set this up and then I would try to schedule a day on Instagram. Send out a notification saying we’re doing this cute setup and then you try to book people every 30 minutes. So you charge them $200 each and have pictures taken. Give them digital images and you just go through eight or ten people the same day and it makes spending the money on this really worth the money because it’s unique. It’s something different. People are going to respond to it and it’s going to make you really good money. So there’s our set. Very simple, foreground, mid-ground, background. On a table, which is my biggest concern here. Because we got a toddler on the table, we have to have somebody right here to make sure they’re not going to fall off. I can’t put this on the ground because if I put it on the ground I can’t look into that backdrop. I don’t get any mid ground. So that’s concerning. We may put just a little bit of some mats up front so if he tumbles off the front, at least he will only fall a little ways. But anyway, safety is our biggest concern here. But there’s our simple set.
Okay, let’s talk about the lighting. We have a very simple setup here. I’ve got a Beauty Dish from Westcott that’s got the Beauty Dish insert in it. That bounces that light back into that Beauty Dish and gives me a softer light coming out of it. Because it’s bouncing, there’s not a direct flash tube in the middle of it. That flash tube hits the insert, bounces into the Beauty Dish and gives us a softer light coming out. And I want that light around to the side slightly here. So I’m shooting in, I’m photographing into the shadow side of the face. Highlight, shadow, shadow towards the camera. I don’t want to, if I bring my camera around over here, I’m looking into the highlight. I want to be looking in from the shadow side of the face. So that’s our first light.
The second light is on the background. The background dictated this light, told us what we wanted to do with it completely. Because on the background we’ve got a shaft of light coming through, coming right through the trees here. So I took a grid and aimed it at the trees or at this kind of hot spot in the background. And that is the only light that’s on this background. It’s that grid there, it’s going to hit, it’s going to spread out. It’s going to have a little bit of light on the background, but mostly on that hot spot in the middle. We put a yellow gel on it so that yellow gel is going to give us a little bit of sunlight yellow coming through. We tried a green and here’s what that green looked like. We then tried the CTO very orange and that was too much orange. The green was a little too green. We like the yellow. It just gives us a yellow sunlight kind of look in the background.
Then of course our third light is a rim from behind. I tried a first one with a grid in it. So it was just giving us a rim around him or on him or the stuff in the foreground. But that was just, it was too focused in the foreground. It didn’t give us any kind of rim on everything else in the shot like these plants. So I took the grid out and went to just an open reflector, seven inch reflector. Now I’m getting a great rim light on everything, the plants in the background in the middle ground and all the scene up front. And it just turns out to be a nice kind of separation. It gives us kind of depth, that backlight.
So there’s our three light setup. One in the front, another person rim light from behind and a spot on the background. I’m going to just, I’m going to just feather this slightly up to take a little bit of light off the foreground here to soften that transition in and maybe it might open up the shadows a little bit as it bounces off the ceiling. But I think it’s going to look a little nicer up front.
So I hope we learned a few things today. I did, I learned the toddlers aren’t really that scary if you’re prepared for them. If you do the right things you can set things up so it becomes a very smooth and an enjoyable experience. So that’s our look at lens choice and camera settings for a toddler portrait in the studio. I hope you enjoyed this. If you like other lessons along these lines check these out. If you have something you’d like to see let us know. We’d love to hear what you’d be interested in. So keep those cameras rollin’ and keep those toddlers a clickin’!
