[Intro music] Female announcer: Adorama TV presents Digital
Photography One on One, where we answer your questions. Here's your host, Mark Wallace. Mark Wallace: Hey, everybody. Welcome to this
week's episode of Digital Photography One on One.
I'm Mark Wallace. Well, this week we have a great question from
DH about shooting a self-portrait when you don't have an assistant. [Music begins] Mark: DH asks, "First, are there some tips
I can frame myself easily? And secondly, how can you make sure that the camera will focus
at the right place?" [Music comes to an end] Mark: Well, DH, those are great questions,
and I have some techniques that I can show you to help you take a self-portrait. And
you can also use these techniques when you need to shoot something like kids, where you
need to be away from the camera so that you can entertain them so they're all happy and
stuff, and release the trigger, and make sure that the focus is tack-sharp.
It's a little
bit of a trick that I learned from Jack Reznicki, and I'm happy to pass it along to you. So let's go into the studio and look at how
to do this. [Transition sound effect] Mark: Well, we're here in the studio, and
DH was actually pretty specific about the setup that we had, so I've tried to mimic
that as closely as possible. I've got a 7D.
With a few Speedlites set up, and so my 550
is controlling a 580EX II and another 550 on remote stands. The other thing that DH
had that I don't have was a remote control to fire the camera, so I'm going to show you
how to do it without that to start with. Now, what I've done is: I have a little focus
target, and this focus target is just basically something you can download. You can Google
"focus target" and you can get a JPEG image or something like that and print it out.
I've
just printed this one out on an eight and a half by 11 piece of paper, and I've taped
it to a stand that I have. This is a reflector stand. Now, the important thing is: I've tried to
make sure that this is about as high as I. Am, about the same height.
And the most important
thing is that this is right where my face is, so I just stand right in front of this
and adjust it, so it's right in front of my face. And then the other thing is: I've measured
...Put a piece of tape right here. And so what I did was I stood in front and said,
OK, I want this to cut off about right there. Just put a little piece of tape on there.
And so now, I know where to frame my picture.
So if I'm shooting blind, this will help me out. Now, the second thing I've done is I've
put a piece of tape right on the floor so I know exactly where to stand, so I have my
stand right above that mark, and when I move this, I'll stand right on there when I'm taking
my picture. So now let me show you what I've done with
the camera. Now, this camera I have set up, it is in manual focus mode.
Now, manual focus
is going to allow me to do two things. First of all, I can frame up my shot by using the
little guides I have. And then I'll manually focus on my focus target to make sure it's
nice and locked in. Now, that means that I.
Can now go back and stand where I was, move
that stand and stand right on that dot and make sure that I'm still in focus. Now, I'm shooting in manual mode. I'm at ISO
100, and then I also have my shutter at 100, and my aperture, which is the most important
thing. I'm shooting at f/10 because I want a little leeway in my depth of field so if
I'm off just by a little bit, I won't fall out of focus.
Now, the other thing I've done, I've set my
drive mode to a 10-second delay so I can make it over, move my stand, stand in position,
and shoot. Now, this is the simplest way to do it. I'm going to show you a better way
to do it here in a second. So let's go ahead and try it.
[Camera starts beeping] Mark: So, my timer is going. I'm going to
move this out of the way. I've got a few seconds. I'll stand right here, compose myself.
[Flash fires] Mark: Bammo. I have a nice shot. Now, that
is the simplest way to do this. There is a much better way to do this, though, because
that one is sort of: set up, hope that you're in the good position.
Now, a better way to do this, if you really
want to see how things are working, is you can use just an inexpensive television. And
this is something I picked up for a couple hundred bucks, maybe, and I've hooked it up
to the Video Out on my camera. Now, most modern DSLRs have a Video Out that allow you to put
this on. And the nice thing is, the 7D has Live View, so I can turn that on.
Now, I'm keeping my focus; I haven't changed
my focus. It's still on manual focus to where I was, and so now, if I had a remote control,
I could come back over here, and I can look ... Actually, I have to turn the TV on. Once
I turn this on, I can actually look in the television and see if I'm in the frame or
not.
So this is going to pop up here in a second. I've got my Live View set up, and
so now I can actually see what's going on. Now, I have to push this shutter release halfway
so that it ... There it goes.
And now I can actually position myself, and if I had a remote
control, I could click that and fire it and I am all good. Or I could still do the delay
and make sure I'm positioned correctly, taking a look at myself. OK, now, that's a little bit better way to
do it. Now, there is a way that's even better than that that we're going to do next.
Now,
this involves using some PocketWizards, so what I'm doing is I'm hooking up a PocketWizard
PLUS II Transceiver, and I'm just going to hang this off my tripod like that. And then
this cable is a pre-release cable, and so what that means is I can put this on here,
and if I don't have the television, so I'm going to unhook the television. And the reason I'm unhooking the television
is I don't want Live View on, and there's a very specific reason for that. I want my
focus mode; and I'm going to change my drive mode here really fast.
OK. I want my focus
mode to be on continuous focus, or with the Canon it's called AI Servo mode. And what I can do then is this pre-trigger
cable has a little switch on it, and when I turn that switch on, what its doing is it's
mimicking me holding down the shutter release halfway. And because my focus is on continuous
focus, it's always focusing.
And so then what I can do is turn on a second
PocketWizard, and then zip over here, and then... I don't actually have to be exactly
on the line. I can move a little bit forward. [Flash fires] Mark: I can move a little bit back.
[Flash fires] Mark: I can move around and do all kinds of
things. And the thing is, this is constantly going to be focusing on me, and so I'm sure
that my focus is absolutely stellar. What I don't know, though, is if I'm in the frame. So I could turn back on Live View, put it
on manual focus, and then trigger with my PocketWizard here.
But the nice thing about
this, and using auto-focus this way, is let's say you had some children or dogs or something
that were sort of hard to wrangle, and you couldn't be next to your camera. Well, doing this, having a PocketWizard with
a pre-release cable, with your camera on continuous focus, you could have a small child over here,
and be entertaining them, have a little rattle or something so they smile, and when they
do... [Flash fires] Mark: Boom. You can click, and make sure you
capture that moment.
You could be, maybe, beside your camera over here, going, "Hey,
look at over here, blah blah blah." [Flash fires] Mark: Click. And so you don't have to be exactly
at the camera, and you're going to get nice, perfectly-sharp images every single time.
So again, I'm going to stand right here, I'm going to put my thumbs up, and you'll see
that this image is exactly, perfectly in focus. [Flash fires] Mark: Perfect. OK, take a look at that image
and you'll see it looks good.
Everything is clear; everything is in focus. And that's
how you do it. A lot of different options, a lot of different ways you can do it, but
all of them are very simple and affordable. [Transition sound effect] Mark: Well, DH, I hope that helps you out.
Remember, if you're like DH and you have a question about photography, please send it
to me at askmark@adorama.Com.
You can also follow us on Twitter, or leave comments if
you have something to ask. We read all of them. Well, thanks for joining us this week, and
I'll catch you next time. [Outro music begins] Female announcer: This episode is brought
to you by Adorama TV.
Visit the Adorama Learning Center, where you'll find photography tips
and techniques, links to the gear used in this episode, and related videos. For all
the latest photography, video, and computer gear, visit Adorama.Com. And the next time
you're in New York City, visit our store, located on 18th Street between 5th and 6th
Avenue..
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