DIY Passport Photos part 3

It was time again for us to renew passports for my daughter and myself (note that children's passports expire after only five years).  As before, I wanted to do it myself so that I could have photos I would at least be satisfied with for ten years (the passport duration for adults).

For the passport photos in this post, I used the following:

• Samsung NX500 (reviewed here)
• Samsung 50-150 2.8 OIS
• Godox e300 monolight (reviewed here)
• Yongnuo YN560III and YN560IV (reviewed here)
• Fotodiox Tri-Fold Reflector
• 4 x 6 feet popup background
• and...  Parrot Teleprompter

To process the photos and prepare them for printing, I used Lightroom 6.  Here's how I took the photos.

Au Naturel

I often use flash.  Sometimes it's because the ambient is too dim, but more often it's to enhance existing light.  However, the ambient light can be perfect as is.

In the shot above, we were shaded by a building but there was sunlight bouncing off a wall on camera left, about 20 feet away:

The reflected light was enough to cast a glow on my wife's face.  If I had used flash, the reflected light would likely have been overpowered.

Bouncing Flash Outdoors in Daylight

It's not easy to get soft directional light outdoors in daylight, and arguably it's even harder for candid shots without setup. One solution is to bounce an on-camera flash into a reflector.

In the shot above, I got soft directional light in daylight by bouncing an on-camera flash (gelled with 1/4 CTO) into a handheld Lastolite 5-in-1 Mini 18" Trigrip reflector (using the white-surfaced reflector). The area was shaded, so it would have been possible to take a shot using just existing light, but not without blowing out the background (i.e. in the shot above, the flash brightened the subject and thus reduced the contrast between the bright background and the subject):

The soft directional light also makes the subject look more three-dimensional than in the image shot purely in existing light. Finally, with the flash, it was possible to use a faster shutter speed and/or lower ISO than with the existing light only.

COMPARED TO HANDHELD UMBRELLA

I think it's much easier to use a handheld umbrella because the reflector solution requires positioning the flash properly (a pain when switching between landscape and portrait shots) and requires more careful aiming of the flash and the reflector. IMHO, the umbrella is also less conspicuous and thus more spouse-friendly. On the other hand, sometimes all you want is a reflector (e.g. when you're shooting a video), which the umbrella can't be used for. The reflector solution also allows you to switch to using the flash on-camera.

CAUTION

A cautionary note when using reflectors: sometimes, a subject can look fatter with a reflector, when the reflector is aimed upward (e.g. to brighten the eyes) but fills in too much of the shadow under the subject's jaw. Not good. Gather a sample pic of this at your own risk!