Group Photographs And Digital Lenses

 Group Photographs And Digital Lenses

by William Lulow

Most of the time, when you are photographing a single individual either in the studio or outdoors, you want to use a slight telephoto lens in the range anywhere from 85mm to 135mm on a typical 35mm camera either digital or film based. These types of lenses do a couple of things well. One, it renders the human head in proportion (which I will speak of in a bit), and two, the longer focal length allows us to focus literally on the face while throwing the background out of focus. This usually produces a pleasing effect, (sometimes referred to as “bokeh”) because it forces the viewer’s eyes to the main subjects, the people.

Photographing larger groups presents additional problems because in order to make sure everyone is in the frame, we often have to use wider-angle lenses, which, in their very nature create more depth-of-field. So, how do you create that nice soft feeling with your wide-angle lenses?

One way is to cut down on the amount of light that’s coming into the camera to begin with. The best way to do this is by using a two-or-three-stop neutral density filter over your lens. Cutting down the light will force you to do one or more of the following:

1. Open up the lens aperture
2. Speed up the shutter speed
3. Reduce the ISO setting

These days, many cameras won’t let you set an ISO of less than 100. Some allow and ISO of 50, but 100 is usually the least amount of light that setting will allow. Now when you are shooting groups, you have to make sure that everyone is in focus. So this entails using a small enough aperture to allow for enough depth-of-field. The more the people who are close to or on the same plane, the better chance they will all be in focus. And, using a fast shutter speed is the only alternative to balance the exposure. So, the photographer needs to be able to decide how best to use all the available settings. I try to use the widest opening I think I can get away with, that is not wide open. On my f/2.8 prime lenses this means usually around f/4 or so. My camera is almost always on a tripod, even in the studio, so I can really shoot at almost any speed. Plus, I’m usually using a flash for fill-in.  So, I usually have the shutter speed set on 1/125th of a second, sometimes 1/60th. If I’m outdoors shooting a group, I might even use a 1/500th of a second to allow a wide aperture with the ISO being the same. I might also have to use that neutral density filter to cut down on the light even more. Sometimes, with larger groups, it’s just not possible to render the background out of focus. You can do it with some post-processing however.  Here is one example:

Now the other alternative is to shoot with a slightly longer lens. So I sometimes use my 60mm f/2.8 or my 85mm f/1.8 (if I can back up far enough to include everyone. Then, the backgrounds will be soft enough to ensure separation from the subjects. All of this has to be taken into account when you are setting up the shot.

This image was actually shot with my view camera and since the distance between the subjects and the background was so great, it almost didn’t matter what aperture I used because the background was going to be insignificant anyway.

Sometimes, given the space you have to work with, it may be impossible to create enough separation between a family and the background. In this case, I try to use a nondescript background made up of just patterns. That does the trick as well.

I have mentioned in another article that digital lenses are really sharpest when not used at their largest apertures. From experience, it is usually best to stop the lens down one or two stops in order to utilize more of the center part of the lens.

Here is another group shot made in a large studio. Because the background was a solid white, it didn’t matter what the aperture was. It was actually necessary to have a lot of light in order to be able to shoot at f/11 or f/16. In this case, I used all my flash packs and heads, (six heads in all for this shot, two on each side of the background and a large light camera left as well as a fill-in softbox camera right and another light at the camera position aimed at the floor in order to carry the white tone:

There are approximately 30 people in this shot and just about every one of them is in focus. The big Klieg lights in the background were just set decoration. Since this was a studio shot, there were several points that had to be covered:

1. There had to be enough depth-of-field to make sure everyone was sharp
2. That meant a small enough aperture (in this case I believe it was f/11)
3. That meant having enough power to the studio flashes (in this case, 1000 watt/seconds on the background and 3200 watt/seconds on the floor and group) This represents a fair amount of power.
4. A fast enough shutter speed to catch any movement (for this shot the shutter speed was 1/125th of a second on the camera, but flash usually provide a built-in speed of at least 1/400th of a second.)

So, everything needs to be considered when doing group portraits either indoors or out.

The reason for using slightly longer lenses for portraits is that the telephoto effect tends to reduce distances and makes proportions a bit more pleasing. Wide angle lenses tend to distort the human head a bit, especially if you want to fill the frame with it. And really long telephotos increase the working distance too much. Here is a neat little chart to determine whether or not the human head in a photograph is in proportion. Try to stick to it:

The medium telephoto lenses do this best.