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How to shoot candlelit portraits
Techniques
24 October 2007 12:22
Soft and atmospheric, candlelight is great for capturing moody, low-key portraits.
Positioning the candles and deciding how many you want to use is key to this type of shot. If the candles are close together you’ll get stronger shadows on the model’s face, while spreading them around the model will give much more even lighting with lighter shadows. We used plenty of candles to give as much light as possible and positioned them so they lit the model’s face mainly from one side. We then placed a few in front of her to lighten the shadows on the right of the image.
It’s worth keeping more candles to hand, to give you extra light to take your shots. Remember to use proper votives to sit them in and make sure that the flames won’t come into contact with anything flammable. It’s a good idea to keep a fire-extinguisher handy!
Props such as this wine glass help set the scene and add extra interest to the shot. We wanted to keep a clear, uncluttered background to focus all of the attention on the model. If you don’t have a plain wall to use, hang a piece of cloth against the wall or use long curtains instead.
We used two different lenses – the standard 18-70mm and a 50mm prime lens. The 18-70mm offers more versatile framing, but the maximum aperture of f/3.5-4.5 meant that we had to use ISO 400 for most of the shots taken with it. The 50mm lens is a relatively affordable lens with a wide maximum aperture of f/1.8 which allowed us to use lower ISO settings. It also gave a much brighter viewfinder image. The aperture was usually set to the maximum available.
For most of the shots we used ISO settings between 100 and 400. When you’re working with such low light levels it’s tempting to push the ISO up to the maximum to allow you to get a fast shutter speed. But there’s a huge trade-off in quality with most cameras above ISO 400. To get around this, use as many candles as you can (out of view if need be), as this will boost light levels and help you achieve a faster shutter speed.
We set white balance to indoor levels – normally employed when shooting under household light bulbs. Don’t be tempted to try to get a neutral result otherwise you’ll destroy much of the mood produced by the warm-coloured lighting.
Even with shutter speeds that you may feel confident of handholding, it’s best to use a tripod to ensure you don’t get camera shake. As many of our shots were taken around 1/15sec we needed a tripod to make sure the camera remained steady as a rock.
Although candlelight can be tricky, modern metering systems give surprisingly accurate results. If you’re including the candles in the shot, the camera will tend to underexpose the main subject because they are so much brighter than the rest of the scene. As such, you’ll need to increase the exposure by +1 stop exposure compensation to prevent the model becoming too dark – though slight underexposure will help to give the image a moody, low-key feel. The flames won’t have much detail
