# Using A ND Filter In Studio Portraits?



## smoke665 (Jan 11, 2020)

Am I missing something????? Just perusing an online course in lighting from The School of Photography. Thought it might be something I could benefit from but at about 2.50 into the preview the guy talks about the need to add a 3 stop ND filter?????? I can't see the reasoning for not just adjusting the lighting power??? What am I missing????


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## Braineack (Jan 11, 2020)

He said he was shooting at 2.8, it's possible he couldn't bring his lights down low enough to do what he wanted.


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## Derrel (Jan 11, 2020)

GOTTA' get that shallow depth of field... there is something appealing to having one eye in focus and the other eye out of focus... and who wants the nose in focus?


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## zulu42 (Jan 11, 2020)

Everyone knows that's the only way to do the bokeh


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## Braineack (Jan 11, 2020)

Derrel said:


> GOTTA' get that shallow depth of field... there is something appealing to having one eye in focus and the other eye out of focus... and who wants the nose in focus?



you can do it!




DSC_7727 by Braineack, on Flickr


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## smoke665 (Jan 11, 2020)

Okay so you lose image quality with a piece of glass, so you can shoot wide open under lights.  Yeah that makes sense now.....not.


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## vintagesnaps (Jan 11, 2020)

What are you missing?? Look at his portfolio, at a glance it seems mediocre at best. The so-called 'school' (which is NOT any sort of actual school as far as I can tell) seems to offer what is in the UK 'A' level, but apparently that's equivalent to high school, possibly college prep.

These to me seem to be be basic, so-so high school level courses. It could be it's comparable to adult continuing ed. courses here which are only for personal learning and enrichment.

I'd find something better than this guy, who like many others has figured out to promote himself all over the internet (AKA 'internationally'). edit - And I was done a minute and a half in after seeing the example of the blonde model with a bland expression and no hair styling; if those are examples of his best work, why bother?


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## zulu42 (Jan 11, 2020)

You turn your aperture in, you turn your focus out, you do the hokeh bokeh and you blur yourself about


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## smoke665 (Jan 11, 2020)

@vintagesnaps and @zulu42 but if you do it with a British accent doesn't that make it legit?


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## Derrel (Jan 11, 2020)

"A" is the first letter in the alphabet, so A-level instruction would be first level, right?


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## Derrel (Jan 11, 2020)

A three-stop neutral density filter makes it so much easier to see through the camera. It takes those 150-watt modeling lights down to hallway night light levels!


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## smoke665 (Jan 11, 2020)

Derrel said:


> A three-stop neutral density filter makes it so much easier to see through the camera. It takes those 150-watt modeling lights down to hallway night light levels!



Well that's so you can also use your nifty night vision goggles!


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## petrochemist (Jan 11, 2020)

I guess he must have very poor quality lights and no space to move them back 
My first studio flash only had two power settings full & half power, but even with that I've never had any need for ND filters indoors.

FWIW A-level stands for Advanced-level following on from the Ordinary levels, but if it's anything like the BTEC course in photography my daughters just finished it will have very little photography in it. 
My daughters course was more about how you can play with prints cutting them & weaving the strips, or layering them with little spacers for a 3D finish!


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## malling (Jan 12, 2020)

Why would anyone use ND for indoor portraits? 

Just like why would you use f 2.8, for portraits? do you like half of the face out of focus? 

I have never truly grasped the concept of tight dof with location portraits, then you can just as well shoot indoor. It’s actually a good thing that you can see the background as it benefits to the story of the picture, why on earth would you want it to blurry out.


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## petrochemist (Jan 12, 2020)

malling said:


> Why would anyone use ND for indoor portraits?
> 
> Just like why would you use f 2.8, for portraits? do you like half of the face out of focus?
> 
> I have never truly grasped the concept of tight dof with location portraits, then you can just as well shoot indoor. It’s actually a good thing that you can see the background as it benefits to the story of the picture, why on earth would you want it to blurry out.


Many people don't have a convenient studio, and even if they do the interesting person they want to photograph probably wouldn't want to relocate... 'Just as well shoot indoor' is frequently not an option!

If the background adds to the image  it doesn't make much sense to 'blurry it out' but often it's a distraction and often when it does add it becomes distracting if fully sharp, a slightly blurred background can hint at the location enough to provide the story. Like so much of photography a balance is required!


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## malling (Jan 12, 2020)

petrochemist said:


> malling said:
> 
> 
> > Why would anyone use ND for indoor portraits?
> ...



I did not write that it should be sharp or in focus, I where referring to the portraits where you can’t see what the background is.  One of the points of shooting on location is that it adds to the story, if you remove that it’s as good as shooting in a studio without the benefit of being in one. 

I have yet to experience where I’m not able to find a decent spot even if the subject where reluctant to travel. 

Who say you need a studio! there are very skilled photographers who never use one, as they only do location. For me it’s a bit of a lazy trick, that doesn’t do any subject right. A background dos not need to be perfect, small imperfections can be photoshopped or managed with different angles/perspectives.


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## smoke665 (Jan 12, 2020)

@petrochemist I just don't see any upside with it. One thing I noticed is he was using wired Master and slave, switching from a black background to a white, I wondered if maybe he was using the ND rather then adjusting the lights. Adjusting individual lights can be a PITA, that's why I like my controller that can adjust individual or as a group wireless. In the time he took to add the ND, I could have adjusted the lights and fired off two or three shots.


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## petrochemist (Jan 13, 2020)

smoke665 said:


> @petrochemist I just don't see any upside with it. One thing I noticed is he was using wired Master and slave, switching from a black background to a white, I wondered if maybe he was using the ND rather then adjusting the lights. Adjusting individual lights can be a PITA, that's why I like my controller that can adjust individual or as a group wireless. In the time he took to add the ND, I could have adjusted the lights and fired off two or three shots.


I couldn't imagine doing it either, an ND gel to lights perhaps (v. unlikely) but I think the only way I'd shoot studio lights with a ND is if I got a cheap lens that had a ND  seized on...


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## Braineack (Jan 13, 2020)

smoke665 said:


> @petrochemist I just don't see any upside with it. One thing I noticed is he was using wired Master and slave, switching from a black background to a white, I wondered if maybe he was using the ND rather then adjusting the lights. Adjusting individual lights can be a PITA, that's why I like my controller that can adjust individual or as a group wireless. In the time he took to add the ND, I could have adjusted the lights and fired off two or three shots.



You're watching a highlight reel.  You have absolutely zero context in why he went with an ND filter other than he was trying to shoot at 2.8 with studio lights.   This is the same "trick" used when doing the same thing in daylight.

I do agree his body of work is nothing to write home about...so we should just ignore him completely.


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## TWX (Jan 13, 2020)

malling said:


> Why would anyone use ND for indoor portraits?
> 
> Just like why would you use f 2.8, for portraits? do you like half of the face out of focus?
> 
> I have never truly grasped the concept of tight dof with location portraits, then you can just as well shoot indoor. It’s actually a good thing that you can see the background as it benefits to the story of the picture, why on earth would you want it to blurry out.



To play devil's advocate, on a Canon APS-C camera, a 50mm focal length at f/2.8 with a 20' distance to the subject is a depth of field of around five feet.  At 10' distance, that depth of field is reduced to a little over a foot.  For a full-frame camera you're looking at around 8' and 2' respectively with that lens and aperture.  We're not talking one eye focused, the other eye blurry territory here.

Years ago _really_ before I knew what I was doing with a DSLR, a local club I was a member of set up our home-made _Star Trek_ transporter console at a local convention, with a Transporter Room shower curtain hanging on the wall behind it.  We offered to take pictures with my Rebel XS and send them via e-mail to anyone that wanted, basically as a means of targeted marketing of our club.

The shower curtain transporter pad made an acceptable backdrop but it was by no means perfect, so there was not a lot of reason to specifically have it in focus.  It needed to be focused well enough to supply context, but the people we were taking pictures of and the transporter console itself were the subjects of the photo.  Given that the shower curtain wasn't a dead-perfect representation of the prop/scene from the show anyway, too much detail would have detracted, rather than added to the photos.  The area we were set up in wasn't especially bright and since I had the camera on automatic I expect that most of the pictures were taken at the widest aperture the lens could produce at the particular zoom.

In hindsight I probably should have played with more manual settings, I probably could have gotten much better results.  Apple's auto-brightening software was rather heavily used to quickly go through the pictures to improve them before sending them out.


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## mrca (Jan 29, 2020)

His premise is using inexpensive gear.  Many nexpensive lights can't be adjusted to a really low power so probably needed to add a nd to get wider aperture.  My einsteins go to down to 2.8 ws from 640 ws full power and when through a feathered softbox, I can get down to 1.8 or 1.4 without clamping  another  diffuser panel to the front of the soft box which is still in tight.


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## petrochemist (Jan 30, 2020)

mrca said:


> His premise is using inexpensive gear.  Many nexpensive lights can't be adjusted to a really low power so probably needed to add a nd to get wider aperture.  My einsteins go to down to 2.8 ws from 640 ws full power and when through a feathered softbox, I can get down to 1.8 or 1.4 without clamping  another  diffuser panel to the front of the soft box which is still in tight.


One of my studio lights only has two settings, but if I need a dimmer light there are plenty of constant lights that will do the job for a tiny fraction of a reasonable ND filter. In fact my better studio light cost less than many ND filters I've seen advertised.
In the studio a ND gel for the lights is a better option than a filter on the camera if your lights won't turn down enough & adding extra diffusion softens the light too much.


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## mrca (Feb 6, 2020)

A vari nd is a multi tasker outside the studio for knocking down brightness of backgrounds.   It's not a one trick studio pony.


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