Technique Assessment

emma helped Photoplus apprentice Barry set his Canon up for studio portraits

Go MANUAL For Lights

“EXPERIENCED amateur Barry was already comfortable using Manual mode so he could control his aperture. For studio lighting photos you need to be able to set both the aperture and shutter speed independently,” says Emma, “So, I ensured he’d switched to M for Manual on his mode dial, to give him complete control over his exposures.”

RAW For Best QUALITY

Professional photographers shoot in Raw, as it’s the highest quality image setting, and gives you more control when processing your portraits, as they retain the maximum amount of picture data. When you make adjustments to Raw images, the original data is preserved, whereas the adjustments are stored for each image as metadata embedded in a ‘sidecar’ XMP file. “In Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom, you can edit your Raw photographs to recover under or overexposed detail, and White Balance can be altered to cool down or warm up your portraits,” says Emma.