First Portrait Shoot

[EmmGee]

I'm preparing for my first portrait shoot in a month or so and was looking for some advice. It's a shoot of some members of my family which my mother has asked me to take while they are all in the same place at the same time. This is all great but no fee means I need to try and keep expenditure to a minimum.

I will be using my trusty Sony A200 with the 18-55mm kit lens - the only other lens I have is a 100-200mm which doesn't seem like the right choice to me but I'm happy to be corrected.

For lighting, all I have is a Sony HVL-F42 wireless flash which I am planning to use off-camera behind a white umbrella diffuser on one side. This will be balanced by natural light through a window on the other side.

I'm looking for any advice people might be able to offer but particularly with regard to the lighting. For example, do I need to adjust my exposure compensation because of shooting the flash through a diffuser?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Just realised that maybe this should be in the Lighting forum - Admins, feel free to move if appropriate!

[cphoniball]

For the group shots you'll probably want to go with the 18-55, yep. But if you do any single/couple shots the 100-200 will probably be better for you. The main thing with portraits (most of them anyway) is to get the smallest DOF possible, which means a large aperture. So you'll be limited by your lenses here.

I don't know sony flashes at all, and I have had minimal success with off camera lighting, but you should need to adjust your compensation for the diffuser too much. If you do need to, moving it closer or farther away is also an option. If your flash isn't daylight balanced you might want to gel it.

Read the strobist (a blog). It'll tell you more about lighting than you'll ever want to know.

P.S. - Nice HDR's in your photostream.

[EmmGee]

cphoniball - thanks for the advice and comments. I have read Strobists's "Lighting 101" series but will have to spend more time really getting to grips with it and hopefully I'll have a bit of time ahead of the actual shoot to do some trials.

Regarding the white balance of the flash, if it's not "daylight balanced", might that cause a problem when I'm using a mix of flash and natural light?

[cphoniball]

Yup. I think if anything a CTO is what you'd want. 1/4th or a 1/2... I've never gelled a flash personally though, that's just what I read over at strobist.

[Trader]

If it is at all possible, a good first time setup would be to have the natural light coming from the window and striking your subject on one side, setup your flash to be about 45 degrees above the subject and 45 degrees off the camera. Camera set eye level with the subject. I'm not familiar with sony flash. I use a Nikon SB-900 set to TTL and get great results with little tweaking. Hope that helps you.

[EmmGee]

Thanks, Trader - that was pretty much the setup I had in mind anyway. Once I get myself and all my gear together I'm going to do a trial shoot - assuming I can get someone to model for me.....