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Help with shooting hand held with H6D100c

ndwgolf

ndwgolf

Active member
Guys
Yesterday I did a photo shoot with a friend of mine at the Thean Hoi Temple in Kuala Lumpur. I took a total of ~200 pictures in many locations in and around the temple and 90% of those were hand held. I was using a Profoto B1 head with a Octibox as and when I thought I needed it and I think that is where I screwed up.
Out of the 200 plus pictures that I took 80% of them are not tak sharp that I think maybe comes from camera shake or using the lenses wide open.
So my thinking was shoot wide open to get nice bouquet and maximise the shutter speed, as you can see with the attached picture the bouquet is nice, colors are amazing but its not sharp, this was shot at ISO64 1/400 at f3.2 using my HC150n lens.
Ive shot many models using my Leica S007 hand held and the hit rate was about 80%, here I am seeing a 20% hit rate and most of those that were sharp were with the B1 head.

What are your thoughts on this, should I be using a tripod to help eliminate camera shake, and should I be bumping up the f stop to around 4 or 5.6 something
Any feedback would be much appreciated

Neil

And yes we are planning another shoot after CNY as her dress was not ironed prior to the shoot :( :( :(
 

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dave.gt

dave.gt

Well-known member
ndwgolf said:
Guys
Yesterday I did a photo shoot with a friend of mine at the Thean Hoi Temple in Kuala Lumpur. I took a total of ~200 pictures in many locations in and around the temple and 90% of those were hand held. I was using a Profoto B1 head with a Octibox as and when I thought I needed it and I think that is where I screwed up.
Out of the 200 plus pictures that I took 80% of them are not tak sharp that I think maybe comes from camera shake or using the lenses wide open.
So my thinking was shoot wide open to get nice bouquet and maximise the shutter speed, as you can see with the attached picture the bouquet is nice, colors are amazing but its not sharp, this was shot at ISO64 1/400 at f3.2 using my HC150n lens.
Ive shot many models using my Leica S007 hand held and the hit rate was about 80%, here I am seeing a 20% hit rate and most of those that were sharp were with the B1 head.

What are your thoughts on this, should I be using a tripod to help eliminate camera shake, and should I be bumping up the f stop to around 4 or 5.6 something
Any feedback would be much appreciated

Neil

And yes we are planning another shoot after CNY as her dress was not ironed prior to the shoot :( :( :(
Click to expand...
Neil,

What is your native ISO? I think it is 64... which is fine, but you can pick up a stop at 100. That may be enough. It works to stop shake with the H5D-50c, but the extra resolution of your camera may require extra steps for handheld stability.... higher ISO, a change in lighting, technique (which was my problem), to maintain a wider aperture. Your bokeh looks fine... I would not change that!:)
 
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T

tcdeveau

Well-known member
Were you using true focus or just normal AF?

Maybe try getting your shutter speed up?. Sometimes I find with my hands I need faster than 1/(3-4 times shutter speed) even on the smaller 50mp sensors for tack-sharp.

The H6D-100c is quite a diff beast than the 007 in many ways - bigger mirror, bigger sensor, etc. 3.2 I think is also going to be shallower on the H6D-100c than the 007. I’d just get out more and practice, figure out what techniques work for you.
 
stngoldberg

stngoldberg

Well-known member
Wide open really adds a dimension to this shot IMHO; so I think your strategy was well thought out.
I'm afraid I am going to suggest what you already realize...tripod...cable release...mirror up
Stanley
 
ndwgolf

ndwgolf

Active member
tcdeveau said:
Were you using true focus or just normal AF?

Maybe try getting your shutter speed up?. Sometimes I find with my hands I need faster than 1/(3-4 times shutter speed) even on the smaller 50mp sensors for tack-sharp.

The H6D-100c is quite a diff beast than the 007 in many ways - bigger mirror, bigger sensor, etc. 3.2 I think is also going to be shallower on the H6D-100c than the 007. I’d just get out more and practice, figure out what techniques work for you.
Click to expand...
Yes I was using true focus but on a few ovations it wouldn’t lock on so I just took the shot anyway.
Neil

For the next shoot we will do it later in the morning to get more light
Neil
 
ndwgolf

ndwgolf

Active member
stngoldberg said:
Wide open really adds a dimension to this shot IMHO; so I think your strategy was well thought out.
I'm afraid I am going to suggest what you already realize...tripod...cable release...mirror up
Stanley
Click to expand...
Yea I know but I was hoping to be able to do this hand held to make it a more intimate engagement with the model. Also I was lying on the floor for this shot so tripod would have been difficult.
I think I will try bumping up the ISO to 100 and try and keep the shutter up at 1/600 plus
 
T

tcdeveau

Well-known member
ndwgolf said:
Yea I know but I was hoping to be able to do this hand held to make it a more intimate engagement with the model. Also I was lying on the floor for this shot so tripod would have been difficult.
I think I will try bumping up the ISO to 100 and try and keep the shutter up at 1/600 plus
Click to expand...
Lying on the floor? Your positioning may have been problematic. I’m not sure I’d be able to get sharp anything with an H6D in that position without a really fast shutter. I’d probably take Stanley’s suggestion from that vantage point.
 
M

masud

Member
Neil,
In addition to the fast enough shutter speed and a steady hand suggested in this thread, were you using a mirror delay? For handheld portraits, I usually use an extra mirror delay of 100 or 200 milliseconds—so that the mirror slap vibration dies down before the shutter triggers. Makes a huge difference in sharpness for my shots.

MAIN MENU > CAMERA SETTINGS > EXPOSURE > MIRROR SETTINGS

Cheers,
Masud

ndwgolf said:
Yea I know but I was hoping to be able to do this hand held to make it a more intimate engagement with the model. Also I was lying on the floor for this shot so tripod would have been difficult.
I think I will try bumping up the ISO to 100 and try and keep the shutter up at 1/600 plus
Click to expand...
 
ndwgolf

ndwgolf

Active member
masud said:
Neil,
In addition to the fast enough shutter speed and a steady hand suggested in this thread, were you using a mirror delay? For handheld portraits, I usually use an extra mirror delay of 100 or 200 milliseconds—so that the mirror slap vibration dies down before the shutter triggers. Makes a huge difference in sharpness for my shots.

MAIN MENU > CAMERA SETTINGS > EXPOSURE > MIRROR SETTINGS

Cheers,
Masud
Click to expand...
Masud
Thanks for the info sir. Mine was set at 50 so I have increased that to 100 and I will give you feed back if this helped me....... it sure sounds like it will
Neil
 
J

John_McMaster

Active member
You are using a camera with a lot of MP, so is fussier and everything has to be more precise. Are Hasselblad lenses as sharp wide open as Leica S lenses? Leaf shutter needs a faster speed to freeze movement than a focal plane one. The S is excellent for handholding ;-)

john
 
ndwgolf

ndwgolf

Active member
John_McMaster said:
You are using a camera with a lot of MP, so is fussier and everything has to be more precise. Are Hasselblad lenses as sharp wide open as Leica S lenses? Leaf shutter needs a faster speed to freeze movement than a focal plane one. The S is excellent for handholding ;-)

john
Click to expand...
Yes you are correct. The leica S007 is a great hand holding Camera along with the great S lenses.......... I have them.

The Hasselblad H6D 100c is also a fantastic camera hand held in the right hands and with the correct setting......... I’m currently teaching my hands how to handle this camera and seeking advice on the best Camera setting to achieve this.
I will learn how to do and and as always
Pictures to follow
Thanks again for your help

Neil
 
J

jvpictures

Member
Sometimes especially in less than bright available light True Focus will not lock in so easily; I have also made the same experiences. In such cases one must have more patience and just continuously depress the TF button,which is for that kind of shoot a bit of awkward though to let the model wait a couple of seconds...

Also I noticed (but be not fully sure about) that after some shots -when camera gets hot- TF sometimes has problems to find the lock-in. Then it may help to turn the camera off and take away the battery, afterwards restart and it improves again....

And mirror delay to 100msec (default is 50) is a must; 200ms is too long in response time though.
And check the correct handling of TF in the manual i.e. how to angle the camera around the axis, otherwise TF algorithm will yield wrong results.

Also be aware that with that lens and camera fully open at a distance to subject of e.g. 3 meters DOF is only about 11 cm...that's why I recently have stopped shooting fully open most of the time, also due to the fact that the lens will be natively sharper at 5.6.
 
J

jvpictures

Member
I also use sometimes for such a monopod with an Arca Swiss Z1 ball head and I think this is more flexible than using a tripod but more stable than purely hand-held. This way it is also less tiering since H6D with 150 lens is quite a heavy setup.
 
dave.gt

dave.gt

Well-known member
Yes! Great advice above!

Since I do portraits of people in situations that I need a low or very low position, I have found that a couple of short tripods on location placed on either side of the moonlight are easy to use. I hope to try a waist level finder to make it even easier with the H5! Not sure how that would work (using square format) but it is a thought!:)

Edit: Now I remember!:) it has been a year since we started our long strange and mystical journey with a single camera system in hand and with the help of Steve Hendrix at Capture Integration, I was given the advice to set my mirror delay to 100 and that made a tremendous difference with the 50c, requiring only some technique adjustments, and it has been working fine since then.:):):)
 
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Geoff

Well-known member
Like the others have suggested - try composing with a short use of MLU for a second or so while the model is still in the same general pose. Also try ISO 200. You'll lose some quality (not much) but gain shutter speed, which you need. Monopod will help a lot.
 
yaya

yaya

Active member
As a start I would test the lens on a tripod with a still subject to determine if 3.2 is a sharp enough working aperture, and work from there...
 
ndwgolf

ndwgolf

Active member
Fantastic guys......loads of great advice, just need CNY to pass so that I can go back out and have a go with these new settings and some new techniques
Below are a couple more of the lovely Shirlene all done in Phocus with just the border and signature added in PScc......I wish I could add those in Phocus;

Neil
 

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ndwgolf

ndwgolf

Active member
Looking at the 3 images above the skin tones on the top and bottom look good..........god knows what happened on the middle one??

Neil
 
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