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iPhone X Portrait Lighting

Lesson 2 from: iPhone X: The Quick Guide to Great Photos + Video

Chase Jarvis

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Lesson Info

2. iPhone X Portrait Lighting

Learn about iPhone X portrait lighting, including the best modes to use for portraits as well as the key tools to help you manage different lighting conditions including low-light.

Lesson Info

iPhone X Portrait Lighting

super excited about this particular segment where we're gonna be talking about Portrait's with the IPhone 10. Now, a lot of you know that the best camera is the one that's with you, so you can be taking portrait's all over the place when you're outside. But today we're going to this in the studio where I'm gonna demonstrate that the IPhone 10 is also a great camera for Portrait's inside. About 10 years ago, I started shooting a book called The Seattle 100. This is a book where I documented, Ah, hundreds of people who were driving culture in Seattle, and it took me about 2.5 years with about $150,000 with the equipment. Now, 10 years later, I'm recreating the shots from this book here in the studio, and I'm gonna be doing that with the IPhone tent in order to get into the portrait section. I want to talk about two particular modes that I use when I'm shooting Portrait. There is the traditional photo mode that you can see here, and that will give me access to both the one X and the two x...

camera. Those the two different lenses that you have there again back and forth there. But there's this other mode, which is a really cool mode that is unique to this particular IOS, which is the portrait mode and what the portrait mode allows you to do that's different than the regular photo mode is that it has the ability to blur the background or get that short depth of field. Look that out of focus backdrop. And there's also a handful of preset filters that you can put on as well. When you shoot in the portrait modes, I'm gonna welcome a couple folks from this book onto the set, and I'm in a photograph and in particular today we're gonna start with Ryan, who was a member of the Common Market hip hop group that I documented then and he's a solo hip hop artist. Now we're gonna have to stage Ryan gonna see again, but I have been all right in a couple of years. Also, Casey Yeah, Casey's photo assisting Thanks, Casey, for being all the set up is pretty simple. Just a white seamless again, we're evoking the same look I had in the Seattle 100 not required. Uh, we've got some very simple light coming. These air north facing windows were not getting direct lie just a soft light. And that allows us to basically take away all the light equipment that usedto have here and and not have that be a part of the shoot. It's just me and Ryan thes north facing Windows and Casey with a big B flat or what effect effectively acts is just a big bounce card. None of this is required for your pictures. They're all going to help me get the look that I had in that previous project. So we're gonna cover those two modes one, the photo mode here with just a straight up photo lens. And again you can see here. I'm you know, I got one. And to accept to start off with one X, which is that simple wide look. And I'm just going to start off. But we're just gonna shoot some photos, right? You've done this lots time before. Go ahead and yeah, just do your thing a little bit. Yeah, I like the scarf. Let's go ahead and start playing with that scarf a little bit. And there you go. get in again. This is a really important thing to notice. Let's go turn your shoulders all the way to me yet, Actually. Keep going. There you go. Keep sorry. Keep going. That same direction you were, Bring your chin around to me. Here. Yep. Now, again, I'm capturing a little a little wider than I normally would. That's just the look that I had with the Seattle 100 not required for your photos, but I think creates an interesting aesthetic. I'm gonna go in there. Let's go ahead and undo your scarf. Now, I'm gonna shoot this whole process. There you go. And some of those photos are just gonna be pure gold case. Let's go ahead and bring that that, uh, v Flight in a little bit. All I'm doing now is filling this light in here again. Not required for your photos. But I'm going for a particular look. All right? I think one of the things that's Oh, yeah, that's a nice look right there. Go ahead. Touch your glasses again. Chin up a little bit when you do it. There you go. I think it's a n'importe thing that notices, and we'll just for second right is when I've got the phone here. And this is true. Whether it's the IPhone 10 or anything else. What am I doing? I'm moving my feet a lot. So you've got to fix Syria second, zoom like this. Yeah, but that's with digital Zoom these here two different fixed lenses. I encourage you to try and keep those lenses fixed on either the one or the two. You see, if I zoom in here, I'm at 1.8. Now that's fine. But that's a digital zoom of the fixed lens, and I prefer just to keep that at its focal length, that one x or two X and instead, this is the world's best zoom Right here is your feet. So you see, I'm moving around quite a bit, and as I move in, I get to keep the lens of same. It's the same ones that haven't changed anything. But now I get to move right in here and I can't get in real close. Now let's talk about focusing. I'm just touching where I want the focus to be, and you'll see there's a little sun that's also there on the camera. Here's how you change exposure if I want to get. There's a little bit of shadowing is right, either. If I want to increase the exposure here, I just touch the phone and slide that up. You can see the exposure changing my finger up and down. Okay, Generally speaking, I find that the phone has a great sensor, especially if you touch on something that's a medium grey like his suit right here. Just tap on that that'll get a great exposure tap on his face. Another really good exposure. It's a nice, neutral tone there, and we can adjust that that if we need to. But in this case, we don't. I'm really comfortable with the range that we're in here. Now let's talk about working on the other zooms. Say, for example, the two X Now you saw what happened. It basically zoomed in when I was touched, the two X Now I didn't have to move, but what this allows me to do is get a lot closer to him without actually physically being there. So that's the zoom again. That's what the lens number one looks like. That's what the two X looks like. I like that look off in the space into space a little bit. That's good, right? With this allows you to do is to get really close and without putting your phone right in his face. Because that actually is gonna you know, I don't want to go too far in opposing here, but that's gonna make Ryan have a slightly different reaction of my phone's this close to him. So I really liked to Exume to get up in there a little bit more intimately, which is what I'm gonna do right now. What? You bring your chin up just a little bit, Ryan, and slide it forward a little bit. And there you go. That's great. Beautiful there. And turn your chin all the way to the windows all the way. There you go. Okay. Now, again, I'm doing the same thing. I still have that zoom on, but I'm just moving my feet. What I like about that is again, I'm just framing him up. And I said, I'm just gonna go wide again for juxtaposition. I think that's a really good way of keeping Ryan in the set. Now, if you're familiar with the Seattle 100 project a lot of it was You could see the backdrop and the context of the photo shoot was kind of interesting and important. Okay, let's go out and play with that. Um, I'm gonna go in with the two Exuma, and let's go ahead. And, like, Rocky, that thing pretend it's a towel. There you go. And turn your shoulders and hips everything towards the light toward the window. There. There you go. That's good. All right, Now there is a photograph. I want a mimic. I don't remember that one that was in the book. So you're gonna be totally sideways to me and just face the light. There you go. And it's a profile shot. And again, one of the reasons that I love this particular this particular lens right now is I'm gonna juxtapose it. So I'm on the one X Look how close I have to get in order. And look what it does to his head. It's sort of stretches his head out a little bit because of such a wide angle. Vs I get back here. I two x I get the same thing in the right proportion, all right? And we should switch over to portrait mode Now again, I promised earlier I'd identify the difference between regular and portrait. What portrait did it basically sort of zoomed in and what you can't see because will demonstrate this against a different backdrop, but it basically has the soft out of focus behind him. You can't tell because it's all white right now, but that's what it's doing. And you can also see that pulled up these filters. Now the cool thing about the portrait mode. What you can do is you can take a photograph and then change it. If you captured it in portrait mode, you can change the photograph after the fact. It's the equivalent of sort of, ah ah, a raw experience. If you've ever photographed using the raw file type, it's not dissimilar and that you can capture it neutrally or naturally, and then you can change it later. That's one of the things that I love about this mode, and specifically this project is shot in black and white, but you'll notice that I'm capturing these images in color. That's because I want to go through and and hold these photos to get a very particular at black and white aesthetic, and I'm gonna have more power to do that afterwards. Now I'm gonna shoot a couple shots of Ryan that will go through, and we'll see what each of these different filters that are built into the portrait mode What they actually look like. All right. Is there a man? Let's turn your shoulders to me again. Bring your chin around. There you go. It's great. Love it. They're breaking that up. Just a tad. Eyes to the camera. Are you serious, guy? There's that smirk right there. I'm gonna give one wide one, and then we're gonna go in there. Now you may get this particular that says place Subject within eight feet. That's in order to get best results. I'm gonna grab one back here, but we'll ignore that for now. That's another difference between the two shooting modes, the regular photo mode and the portrait mode. It wants you to be close here, so we're gonna stay close. Let's go ahead and actually turn your shoulders away this time. Bring your chin around to me, Ryan. A little bit for further. A little bit further. There you go. Hands on the scarf. It's great. All right. Perfect. Now you can relax just for a second. Take a couple minutes. Here. We're on an image in the photo section of Ryan. I'm gonna go in and hit at it. I captured it in color, but here's a cool thing. There's what natural captured photo looks like, their studio lighting. What that does that brightens it up just a little bit. Another setting here is Contour that it feels in the photograph, where there are changes in contour and add some shadow, which is sort of like emphasized hotline, every school around a little bit further stage light. It basically clips out the background and makes it feel like Ryan is just lit up, standing on a stage. And then they also have the ability to do that with black and white. I like that particular version in black and white more than the color, but again, these are just personal preferences you can explore on your own. Now I would like to do is let's move over to a background that's not white. So we can really see when portrait Motors on that depth of field that out of focus, look, so we're gonna we're gonna put him against something that had a little bit of texture, so we can reveal it. Let's do that right now. Here is a portrait mode. Ryan's looking really good, but you can see all the texture in the background. It's it's quite detailed, in fact, that has almost the same level of detail as he has in his suit right there. That is reminiscent of what happens in Partick in photo mode, and that doesn't matter if I'm in the one exit or the two X you can see the background really clearly. What I'm gonna do now is pop over into portrait mode, and then you see something really nice happen, which is all. That noise just became soft behind Ryan's head, and you normally get that on on SLR with a really short depth of field and this camera. The IPhone 10 is a really good job of creating that where other cameras that only had one lens or didn't have this feature built into it, they struggle. So I just love the fact that we got this nice separation here. I'm gonna take pop a couple of shots off Here we go in here exposures goods every chin up just a little bit. Let's actually have chin down a little bit. So I am just looking. There you go. That's great. Right there. Tabin on there to focus right on his face. That's going to turn your shoulders sideways. Let's go and bring in a little bit of a filling here, please. Casey. Right. Chin to me. A little bit further to me. Keep going. There you go. And bring it Eyes into me, though. Drop your chin. There you go. Even a little bit more nice. Let's go ahead and bring your hands up to your scarf. There you go. Right there. I went back just a little bit. Chin down. Just a little bit more chin away. There you go. And then a little bit down. Keep that. Keep those eyes right to me. Yep. Little smirk would be good. Perfect. All right, that look, that portrait allows you to capture. To me, it makes all the difference in the world. It's one of the things that really sets this particular phone apart from so many. Now you have this feature in other phones, with the exception of thing that I'm gonna show you right now, which God knows, we've got enough selfies in the world. Um, but this particular camera, the IPhone 10 camera allows you to do that. Same Look, that same book effect for selfies. So I'm gonna switch around and do the front facing camera right now and just highlight my guy right here. You see that? Nice softness behind their little good. Can you do anything to soften the noise inside of my head instead of just behind my you and me both. But doing now in order to make this mode successful, it's really important that our faces are in line. If I do this, my face is gonna be good, and Ryan's is gonna be soft. So it's important. Yeah, look at that. And that's probably better when his face is crisp and mind soft. But if our heads are in line, we're gonna get a great look. Nice. All right. So, again, that is a feature that is unique to the IPhone 10 again, part of this whole new front facing camera set up that they've got to me, it takes a selfie to a whole new world a to just much cleaner allows, which is good because there's a lot of bad cell phones out there, right? So try that at home. I think you're gonna like the results, All right, We just covered a lot of ground there. Hope that made good sense to you. As we wrap up this section on Portrait's, I want to recap three things. One. You saw how fast and easy that was. I was able to make so many good pictures in a really short amount of time with a small amount of gear. It's just me and this phone and a backdrop with some natural light. If you remember back to my Seattle 100 point that I made opening this section, it used to take me like 90 minutes to set up all my cameras and lights and 45 minutes to break it down. And I would shoot for a couple of hours here with just this phone in the back drops of natural light and Ryan. I was able to do it in a handful of minutes, able to take the pictures and then quickly post process to see if the stuff that I capture is going good in my final output. So super fast and easy. You know, the second thing again cost the amount of money that I used to put into capturing this with it. Probably had a $50,000 camera, the $20, lens and $50,000 with the lights. I mean, you're north of 100 grand here again. You can get into it with the thing that's in your pocket every day. The best camera is the one that's with you. Eso were getting, you know, Bill save a lot on costs to get great portrait. And then lastly, they're a handful of other modes in here. For example, we didn't cover flash, but that's super easy. You just turned that little flash button on your phone and go out there. Um, and experiment. Have some fun. You'll be able to get great portrait with Thistle device right here.

Ratings and Reviews

JB Minton
 

This is a fantastic kick start to giving you the fundamentals and inspiration to pick up your phone and start documenting the beauty around you, every day. Taking photos has become my favorite social expression now, given that I can do it without getting into politics or descending into the negative energy that infest social media. Taking photos can be 100% inspirational and positive and this course is a great beginning to makin that happen. Chase is a great instructor and you will walk away with more knowledge than you came in with. Perfect length of course also! Loved it!

Nicole Abate Ducarroz
 

WOW! Just Wow! This class was not only very informative but also entertaining and kept moving right along. I loved how Chase teaches and would take a class from him any day. It was organized, yet very casual and natural. It was relevant and applied to not only iPhone X users but all iPhones too. I LOVED this class! Thank you!

Hannes Schiebel
 

Yes, you can find many if not all of the that stuff shown here somewhere else - probably for free. But in my opinion, this is a great class. Chase Jarvis does a really great job of sending the most important message of photography: The best camera is the one you have with you - and he shows me that the iPhone X camera is a very good camera. Take this class, be inspired - I think I will take better photos now :)

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