GMB
Active member
I would like to shoot portraits of owners of small shops and business in my area for an exhibition. Ideally, I would like to use the Leica S (006) with a 35 mm lens.
The shots will be inside their business. The subjects will be either sitting or standing. These will be full body shots and the shots will also show the space where they work. I do want to shoot with natural light. The reasons for that are that I do not own strobes etc. and do not know how to use them (admittedly, both points could be overcome) and that I think for the subjects strobes would be too intimidating. Thus, in order to achieve a sufficient depth of field, I would need relatively long shutter speeds. So camera on tripod and sitters asked to be still. To some extent, I am inspired by Thomas Struth's series of family portraits, which he shot with a large format film camera.
I did some test at home with my wife as the subject (or myself with self timer). I figured that if I go above ISO 400, quality degrades (800 may still be ok but 1600 is not really usable). I also noted that shutter speeds up to 1 second are normally ok but above that you likely see motion blur because it is difficult to keep the head still. In some situations, 400 ISO and max 1 second exposure may give me enough depth of filed but in some that may not be the case. I therefore wonder whether I would be better of with the M10 and the equivalent 28mm lens, as there I can crank up the ISO. But frankly, I would prefer the S.
Any thoughts on how to shoot this project with medium format?
Thanks.
Georg
The shots will be inside their business. The subjects will be either sitting or standing. These will be full body shots and the shots will also show the space where they work. I do want to shoot with natural light. The reasons for that are that I do not own strobes etc. and do not know how to use them (admittedly, both points could be overcome) and that I think for the subjects strobes would be too intimidating. Thus, in order to achieve a sufficient depth of field, I would need relatively long shutter speeds. So camera on tripod and sitters asked to be still. To some extent, I am inspired by Thomas Struth's series of family portraits, which he shot with a large format film camera.
I did some test at home with my wife as the subject (or myself with self timer). I figured that if I go above ISO 400, quality degrades (800 may still be ok but 1600 is not really usable). I also noted that shutter speeds up to 1 second are normally ok but above that you likely see motion blur because it is difficult to keep the head still. In some situations, 400 ISO and max 1 second exposure may give me enough depth of filed but in some that may not be the case. I therefore wonder whether I would be better of with the M10 and the equivalent 28mm lens, as there I can crank up the ISO. But frankly, I would prefer the S.
Any thoughts on how to shoot this project with medium format?
Thanks.
Georg