Tag Archives: sunny

how to take a family portrait on a bright sunny day…

It’s a bright sunny morning, 10:00am with the lovely bright summer sun. So, how do you take a photograph of a family outdoors without having everything blown out super bright and leaving way too many dark circles under everyone’s eyes? Well, here’s one shot that’s in the sun, not shade and here are my settings. I put my camera on manual and set….

ISO to 125
Aperture at 4.0
Shutter speed at 1/250 second
Using my favorite lens, the 50mm 1.2L

And I also pay attention to where the sun is at. I avoid having the sun hit directly on any of my lovely subjects’ faces, but rather have it a bit behind them, lighting up their hair in a way that almost makes it glow a bit. Pretty, huh? :)

how to take a family portrait on a bright sunny day...

little miss…

My settings:
ISO – 200 (outside on a sunny day but in the shade)
shutter speed – 1/500
aperture – 2.8  (wanting her to be in focus, but not the wall)
lens – 50mm 1.2L

little miss...

beautiful little pair

My settings:
ISO – 200 (outside on a sunny day but in the shade)
shutter speed – 1/320
aperture – 4  (wanted to be sure they’re both sharply in focus)
lens – 50mm 1.2L

beautiful little pair

little man…

My Manual settings:
ISO – 200  (it was a sunny morning)
aperture – 4.0  (I wanted to get some of the fabulous trees in the background)
shutter speed – 1/1000 second (just used that speed to balance out the incoming light so it wasn’t overexposed)
lens – 50mm 1.2L

little man...

little blue eyed man

My manual settings:
ISO – 160 (sunny bright day, was shooting in open shade from a building)
aperture – 2.8 (love 2.8, love the focus and intensity it brings to the subject and the background is beautiful but seems less important, not super sharp)
shutter speed – 1/800 second (just compensating for the amount of light that needed to come into my camera, lower/slower shutter speed would have been okay for movement but wouldn’t been overexposed)
lens – 50mm 1.2L (can you tell this is my favorite?)

little blue eyed man