From the course: Portrait Photography: High School Seniors

Built-in camera effects for portraiture

From the course: Portrait Photography: High School Seniors

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Built-in camera effects for portraiture

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- [Instructor] One of the things about mirrorless cameras is that they tend to be a little more progressive when it comes to what we call in-camera effects. Which are things options that you have inside the camera, you know for capture. In other words we're looking at a screen right now from an Olympus camera that has an art filter for soft focus. So people ask me well are these worth using? And the answer is yes sometimes they are. The real thing about them is that you want to practice with them first so that you really understand what you're creating here. Soft focus in the Olympus cameras is one that I think is pretty good and I do use it sometimes. Sometimes especially when I'm struggling for a feel, you know maybe I want to add a sequence that has a little more of a dreamy look. This can really help me because I see the effects on the LCD screen and then if I like it or if I tweak it to get it to the point where I like it, then I get excited and motivated. And then that part of the shoot can really take off. Now here is the tip when you are using any of these. Let's go to pale and light color, here is another one. Is shoot in raw plus jpeg. Raw plus jpeg and I'll tell you why. If you do that the jpeg files will have this effect right here. Whatever you're using whether soft focus or pale and light color. They'll have that effect, but the raw files will remain untouched and they will be just raw files based on your focus and exposure and color settings. So that's really cool. You have the chance to experiment with some of these different looks and filters. But yet you still have a very big safety net in a raw file. Now speaking of shooting in these different modes, a lot of times we have just straight profiles. So we have portrait, natural, vivid, you know those kinds of things. And going to a portrait profile doesn't really give you an effect but what it does do is set some of the subtle camera settings you know in terms of color and of sometimes depending on what camera it is, it could even affect aperture or whatever. That is more ideal for portrait work. So those are also helpful. Let's take a look at something else here. This is the back of a Fuji camera right here. And this an X20 which is a fun camera. I've had it for quite a while and I just totally dig it. But they have what they call these advance modes and one of them is called pro focus. And we're looking at that right here. And this is very interesting mode for portraits because what happens is when you go in pro focus mode, the camera will take three shots, boom boom boom. And but it plays shots are different and it melds them together. And what it creates is that your main subject is very sharp, but the background gets very soft even though it is a compact camera with a smaller sensor. And I have played with this mode a lot and I have to tell you I love it. I love it. And again this is the situation where if you shoot a raw plus jpeg the jpeg will have this pro focus effect which can be quite lovely and then the raw file will just be the raw file just be left alone. There's also other filters that you can find inside these cameras. Again here's a soft focus. Almost all of them have some sort of a soft focus, portrait mode. And again mirrorless cameras seem to have more of these options than our traditional DSLRs. If you haven't dug around in the menu system, if you haven't explored your owner's manual to see what's available to you, I recommend it because if you play with some these, not during an important shoot, but during a practice shoot, you can have a few tricks up your sleeve. And I'll tell you every now and then on a high school senior portrait you just kinda hit a wall. Things aren't really creatively going the way that you want. You feel a little frustrated. You can try one of these modes in raw plus jpeg. Kinda get things going get a little momentum. And next thing you know you end up with a good shoot.

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