Which are the recommended settings for my Canon 600D -50mm f/1.8 II to shoot portrait?

If you're interested, it's usually called 'available light portrait' or 'natural light portrait', as opposed to using flash or other artificial lighting. Google it, you'll probably get a ton of tips and examples.

In the portrait there was a slightly longer lens used: 85mm f/1.8. This will give you a shallower depth of field at the same distance, and the background will look differently compared to a 50mm lens.

You can use the same aperture as the image below but the 50mm f/1.8 may look a bit soft and dreamy at that aperture. It gets sharper by f/2.2 to f/2.8, but the background blur will be less.

There are a few things that the photographer used to make this image:

• Composition, the image is tilted clockwise. This makes the face fall on 2/3 from left and 1/3 from the top (see rule of thirds). The head is cut off giving a more intimate look to the image.
• Background, there's some color and not too much contrast in the background giving the lens not too much difficulty to render it soft. The background is relatively far away from the model giving a soft, out of focus look.
• Lighting, the shot is done indoors with a bright sun outside. The highlights in the eyes seem to show a slanting bit of sunlight through a doorway or window, so the sharper light comes from below, slightly from the back. There's a softer light from above (the shoulders look blown, but is compensated using some rudimentary post processing). The shadows on the face seem to be retouched as well.
• Post processing, as said above the shoulders and face are retouched, and it seems there's a darkening gradient used on the lower half of the image to make to face pop out more, to lead the viewers eyes towards the face. The color tones seem to be changed like sepia or provia, or even a slight cross processing they used to do on analogue film, with slightly pronounced greens and reds. I think there's some selective sharpening applied on the eyes and eyebrows.

All in all the correct settings is only 1/5 of the way, the other 2/5 is in the above points.

I'd suggest to start by shooting portraits in all lighting conditions, play with composition and settings. Your camera setup is a great starting point and develop your skill along the way

Post your shots regularly here for some constructive critique (C&C).

To get a better idea of the lighting, I've put the image back straight:

Have fun!

hamzadiaz wrote:

I have the Canon 600D with 50mm f/1.8 II, i dont know how to shoot beautiful portrait pictures like:

This was taken with the nikon D90 at f/1.8

I dont know which settings do i have to use to take good pictures like this one, which ISO, Shutter speed, focal, etc... im new on this world. So i would appreciate a detailed explanation.