Portraits Under The Trees
July 15, 20216 Stop ND Filter with the EM5 II
I hurried over to a park near my house in Highland Village, TX, so that I could
make some outdoor portraits of my daughter and granddaughters. It was a
bright sunny day so I made sure to bring along my 6 stop ND filter. I could’ve
photographed without it, but I didn’t want to be forced to shoot at F 16
because I wanted more of a blurred background. I knew this park had a small
section of trees that I could shoot under, and I planned on using this as my
shooting area.
I could’ve shot out in the open since the ND filter would enable me to maintain
the wider aperture that I desired, but I was trying to make it easier on the
girls. The bright sun would make it difficult for them to pose without
squinting. If the sun were lower on the horizon, I could make it work by
keeping the sun at their backs while photographing, but the sun was going to be
almost directly overhead.
Once under the trees I realized that the overhead canopy was pretty thick and the
available light would require me to shoot higher than my base ISO which is 200
on the EM5 II. If I left the ISO at 1/200 the resulting shutter speed was 1/25
even at F 1.8. The EM5 II has image stabilization that works great, but the
wind was blowing pretty good and the hair movement would blur too much at 1/25.
So, I bumped the ISO to 1/400 and shot at 1/50. This would be satisfactory, but
in several images the hair movement still blurred to an unacceptable amount.
Fortunately, I got enough keepers to make things work.
Equipment used:
- EM5II
- Lumedyne 400 w/s pack
- Lumedyne Flash head
- Newer Softbox
- Godox S bracket for the flash head.
- 6 Stop ND filter from Breakthrough Photography
I adjusted the flash power and the distance of the flash to the subject to
provide about F 11 light on the subject. This was close to a 6 stop
difference from the ambient light outside of the tree line. The shutter was set
at 1/50 which allowed enough of the ambient light under the trees in, so the
pictures were not too contrasty. Here are a couple of shots from that
session.
The
raw images were processed in DXO4 and then further adjustments were made in
Affinity Photo and Perfectly Clear
