Shooting Portraits with a longer lens

A while back I did this magazine portrait of Italo from Canadian Sportfishing.

Certainly one of the nicest guys you would want to spend a day with, and we hope to go fishing in the new year.

At the shoot I did a number of variations and shot with three different cameras. I did a few shots with the digital camera and a 70-200 F2.8. Then black and white film on a Rollei GX and a few frames with the 8x10, again in black and white.

I like to shoot some black and white when I do a magazine shoot, just to get something a little different. The magazines don't use them that often but I still like to do it.

The lens on the 8x10 is a 450mm Fuji C, which is slightly longer than normal on that format. On the Rollei GX it's a 80mm which is normal for 120 film. On the digital I used the zoom lens at 200mm on a camera with a cropped sensor, so really it was a telephoto portrait with a narrow field of view, a shallow depth of field and only the subject sharp.

Although the three formats each produced a nice photo I think the angle of view was best on the telephoto portrait. It cut out the sky and replaced it with out of focus swamp background which worked better.

In this case using a long lens produced the best result. If that day had been overcast with stormy skies and the subject wasn't so backlit, the other photos would have been stronger with the sky in.

Italo even used the photo on his website....

www.canadian-sportfishing.com

Rob Skeoch
www.thepicturedesk.ca