Well I want to learn more about portrait photography as well and I have heard it's actually very hard due to the complex nature of people lol I mean some people just can't act natural when you are trying to take photos of them. I know I can't sometimes lol. hmm I know your camera doesn't have high ISO noise reduction but I think you could try to get a proper exposure while taking pictures at higher ISO speeds. I have read that it doesn't really matter what camera you use if you underexpose there would always be noise at ISO 800 or higher. The only way to avoid using high ISO speeds while taking portraits is having a lens with very wide aperture... MAYBE you want to look at some of those f/2.8 zoom lenses as a complement to your nifty fifty.

This post was edited by Futurama on May 26 2009 08:57pm

Yeah but then again, having a wide aperture creates shitty DOF ...

well... it's probably hard when taking group pictures otherwise you could use a longer focal length to compensate OR pick a background that is further away from those people you were trying to take picture of. Maybe you should ask those people in thephotoforum about how to take good portraits of a group of people course there seems to be quite a lot of wedding photographers on that site.

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST SHE'S UGLY

Didn't I just say have some respect, and don't even post here if you have nothing nice to say. You need to grow up.

good shots

Do you dare to post a picture of yourself and let us see how "beautiful" you are?

Yeah, you just got double-quoted x3. Anyways, when I take people shots what I always do is try to snap them off when they aren't aware of it - this way they look most natural. The only downside to doing it that way is that it's very much the same as taking pictures of any other wild animal in the sense that you kinda gotta get lucky or be patient for them to get in a suitable position (lighting & comp). When it comes to ISO (I'm sure I've told people this already xD) I very, VERY rarely switch it from 200. All my outdoor shots are 200 and all my studio (aka random counter-top) are 100. The only reason I ever use it at a higher iso is if I want to either document a moment (something I wouldn't necessarily get pedantic over :p) or a reference for another day. It's probably not the most efficient thing to do however considering my handle handles iso =<800 totally fine but it's one of my pet peeves of photography (I'm sure you guys all have some other kind of random habit :p). Oh... and just because you mentioned wedding photography, I actually have a relative that solely does wedding photography Imho her pictures aren't very nice... but than again I personally hate all kinds of portrait shots - they're so fake. Eh, point being thanks for mentioning that cause I've been meaning to ask her about portrait shots as I'm also having my troubles with getting several subjects in focus


edit*
Oh, and ofcourse x'D

@Chantal Naww Newborns are always as breathtaking I kind of miss the Canon G9 (p&s) that I used to shoot on as it had two very convenient programmable manual settings. I used to have one set up for landscapes&portraits and the other for macros and it worked great I could just switch back and forth if I needed a quick shot so they worked great when I knew I wouldn't have the time to sit and fiddle. I've know idea why my current D80 doesn't have something similar, but I sure wish it did (or maybe it does, but I can't find it x'D).


This post was edited by Nevereon on May 27 2009 09:31am

Personally, I'm with you on the people pictures. They are normally quite boring to look at, and just way too annoying to take photos of. I know What you mean about the "natural" picture though... Here's one I got of my brother when he was not looking. He was listening to what his girlfriend was saying to him; the look on his face is rare to catch, cause it happens so quick.

Since all of these are posed shots, you need to do a bit better job of positioning the people so that they work for you. If it was a "natural" shot, you would need to adjust your settings to try and capture that moment.
If you are posing the people and things are out of focus..but you want to blur the background without photoshop, you'll need to position them in a way so their bodies are in different locations, but the faces all end up at the same invisible DOF wall.

Another thing is using a flash. The on camera flash will probably be too harsh since it is very concentrated, but if you have an external flash (especially off camera) this will help to remove the shadows on the faces. You can use a yellow/orange flash gel to reduce the "flash" look of your pictures. A flash in daylight shots is something that a lot of people miss.

I didn't check out all of the pictures, but for posed people shots, try not to use an Auto White Balance. If you have the time to actually set the proper white balance, this will save you tons of time in PS editing.

Aside from that, I think the shots turned out fairly well. I like the use of the tree in #3 and #4 to create a bit of framing to the picture.

P.S. That guy has a sweet belt buckle.