Usings the Kit Lens That Came With My Alpha 200

Having my chosen area of interest being Portraiture and having done a little research I was a little worried that my lack of a dedicated portraiture lens, with a very open aperture, would lessen my results. I was really pleased that in my february issue of Digital Photo there was an article on using your kit lens for different photographic genres. I have tried to summarise the advice from that article below.

Portraits taken with a kit lens

The key to a successful portrait is isolating your subject from the background, so it doesn't become a distraction. This is normally done with a 'fast' lenses with large maximum apertures, allowing lots of light through the lens and ensures that the plane of sharp focus drops off very quickly. This makes it possible to keep the subjects sharp whilst blurring the background.

Shoot at 55mm

Kit lenses do not have large apertures but that doesn't mean it isn't possble to isolate your subject - you just have to approach it differently. Getting your model to stand as far away from the background as possible and then shooting at the long end of the focal range - 70mm for my kit lens - the background will be far enough away so not to appear sharp in the shot. The further away from the background the subject stands the more defocused the background will become.

Shooting at 70mm also has the effect of compressing perspective in the shot a little and that will further help to blow the background out of focus. The longer focal length also ensures your subject's featues are kept in proportion, too, so you won't get the distortion that occurs when shooting portraits using lenses at wider focal lengths like 18mm.

Step by Step Guide

1. Zoom in to the longest focal length setting - 70mm in my case - to compress the perspective and help blur the background. Now in Aperture Priority Mode, set the lens aperture to its maximum setting - f/5.6 in my case

2. Get your subject to stand as far away as possible from the chosen background, but make sure you leave enough room to actually include the background in the shot! The greater the distance between subject and background, the more blur you'll get, but aim for around three metres as a minimum.

3. Now compose your portrait and shoot. If you've not been able to position the subject very far from the background then a good trick is to try a tighter composition with the model close to the lens. This will crop out some of the background and the closer you can focus, the softer it will appear.

After all this advice all I need to do is to give it a go. (results to follow)