I've never been asked to do a portrait and I was excited to try. No one was expecting this to be a "session," so I had about five minutes of good humor for the attempt which didn't leave me with a lot of time to experiment.
The backdrop was the curtains in my uncle's bedroom. The camera was a Canon Rebel XSi with a 17-85mm IS lens. I had my 7D there with my 50mm f/1.4, but I stayed with my cousin's lens because I was too close to get the shot without a wide focal length.
I mounted my flash to the Rebel I pointed it at the white ceiling, then dialed the camera to Manual mode with an Aperture of 5.6 and a shutter speed of 1/60th. I set the ISO to 800, which is what I typically set my 7D to when shooting indoors, but I'm not sure how well the XSi controls noise at that ISO since you can't really see it on the camera's screen.
The first shot I took was in a landscape orientation, but I realized that was a mistake as soon as I looked at it. The grandparents were sitting with everyone else standing tightly behind them, so a portrait orientation was more natural.
In my second series of shots I laid on the bed in an attempt to look silly to the two year old I was trying to get to smile, but this lower perspective made the grandparents looked bloated.
Finally I stood up tall and shot slightly down on everyone (I can do this as I am 6' 3") and I got a decent shot in the series where everyone was smiling with eyes open. The only issue is that there was a curtain rod above the subjects' heads that looked crooked, but if you printed the photo as an 8x10 it would get cropped out.
Considering my limited experience and set up time I think I did OK, but I don't know for sure because the camera didn't go home with me. Hopefully I'll get another chance before too long with better results.
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