Konrad Dwojak - Product Photographer Luxembourg - Benelux

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You don't need a big camera, you need big lights

Photographer's Self-Portrait

So what happens when a photographer finishes his work early and has nothing and nobody to photograph? He shoots self-portraits - at least that's what I did. I had some spare time in the photo studio after finishing my work, so I decided to shoot a self-portrait. To give myself a challenge, I decided to use my point-and-shoot Nikon P7800 to take these pictures. Why was it a challenge? Because my point-and-shoot is not compatible with the flash transceivers used in the studio. I had to shoot using only the ambient light from the modeling lights. 

Photographer's Self-Portrait

So how did I shoot my self-portrait? First and foremost, I put my point-and-shoot on a tripod. The modeling lights were very weak so I had to decide how to set the shutter speed, ISO and aperture. Because Nikon P7800 gives quite a lot of noise at higher ISO, I decided to keep it as low as possible. After playing around with exposure in the manual mode, I decided to use a shallow depth of field (low f-value). With ISO 80 and f/2.2 I got the shutter speed of 1/50 second. With the camera on a tripod and remembering that I shouldn't move, I set my camera on delayed exposure.