Showing Julianna how a 50mm lens is good for shallow DoF portraits with natural light during our 2nd photography lesson in St. Petersburg, FloridaI met Julianna this morning for our second of four 1-on-1 DSLR Photography Lessons in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida. Our first lesson last week was a general overview of how to use her Canon 7D with 18-55mm lens in manual mode and which settings needed to be changed when. Today we swapped lenses and used her 50mm f/1.8 lens the whole morning.
I am a big fan of 50mm lenses and how they can "create something out of nothing" because of their great ability to make very shallow DoF shots. When you can make the entire background become bokeh with ease, you can be very selective in how you portray your subject in frame. In the above shot Julianna modeled for a demonstration of using natural light and shallow DoF to make a fun portrait right on a plain city sidewalk.
Julianna also learned to be careful when creating such shallow DoF shots and that framing the shot first and then moving the single focus point on to the subject is safer than the usual set the focus point in the center on your subject, then recompose.
