Mirrorless Glamour Photography

You may be interested in trying glamour photography but think it’s too difficult and requires lots of expensive equipment but all you really need is a camera and a subject. I’ve experimented with using Micro Four-thirds cameras for studio portraiture and Mark Toal wrote about a “Mirrorless Model Shoot” but recently I decided to try it for a glamour session with a new model.

Lighting for the photograph was provided by a pair of Bowens Mosaic LED light panels. The Mosaic system consists of three models: A Daylight version containing 576 LEDs and producing up to 4200 lux of output at 5600K. The Bicolor model uses white and yellow LEDs producing output that can be adjusted from 2800 to 5600K to balance existing light or create a lighting effect.

During my session with Danielle Nichole the real advantage of using a mirrorless camera with electronic viewfinder for this kind of portraiture became immediately apparent. When you click the shutter, the image you just made is visible in the viewfinder.

You don’t have to remove the camera from your eye and “chimp” on the back of the camera. You see it right away, which means you can make refinements in the pose, lightning and exposure faster making the shoot go smoother.

For the above image, I placed a Mosaic with a 33-inch white Adorama umbrella at right and another one behind the subject at left. Background was a Savage Infinity Monsoon, two-sided backdrop. I used Panasonic Lumix G5 with 14-42mm lens (at 36mm.) Exposure for the photograph was 1/30 sec at f/5.3 and ISO 800.