Tutorial challenge: shooting bondage photos with a smart phone (part three) - the stills

Tutorial

Photoset (126 photos) starring Ariel Anderssen

Added 02-07-2019

Tags: barefoot, satin, blonde, nightwear, frogtie, rope bondage

This is the set of photos we shot with my iPhone SE for our tutorial challenge of how to shoot better bondage photos on a smart phone.

It includes the earlier test shots (the images starting "res_03042019_IMG") and the full set (the images starting "res_03042019_res_"). There's also a screengrab of one of the images from the set in Lightroom, along with my develop settings so you can see how I tried to tame the contrast and bring the image to a nicely-balanced result. These settings are quite extreme by comparison with what I'd use for Hasselblad or Sony shots, but that's not surprising- we're really trying to wring every last gasp of performance out of the small pixels in the camera's sensor.

What new lessons did I learn by the time I'd processed the set?

Well, a few:

I should have tried controlling the exposure manually and gone for a faster shutter speed, because:
The main flaw is blurred images from subject movement and/or camera shake. 1/100th of a second is not ideal without flash to freeze the action; 1/200th would probably have given me a much higher ratio of keepers.
The images look fine at standard web-size. A few of them could pass for regular RE shots.
But looking at the full-sized shots zoomed in to 1:1 amply demonstrates the limitations. There's a lot of noise in the shadows, and even some on Ariel's skin tones, despite the shots being taken at ISO 25.
You're always on a knife-edge with the dynamic range. You're just a small step away from blown highlights on skin tones, which looks horrible.
The biggest bugbear of all though was just the motion blur. This was a surprise. I should improve my technique, make sure I stand still, breathe out, relax, hold the phone in both hands, and gently touch the shutter release with my thumb.

The net result is some really nice shots, but my hit rate is at best 50%. Unlike a regular RE set, I've left everything in, horrors and all, so you can see how badly I'm doing with the motion blur and what other things are screwing me up. The focus is fine though- there's only a single shot which is blurred because of mixed focus. That's as you'd expect from a small sensor with a 4mm lens - huge depth of field. So unlike shooting full-frame with an 85mm f/1.4 lens, where the hardest part is nailing focus.

I think the most interesting contrast is between the first shot of the test shot sequence, res_03042019_IMG_1828.jpg and shots like res_03042019_res_20190403_IMG_1929.jpg. Same girl, same place, same light, same day, same iPhone. Just the difference between in harsh direct light and out of it, and shooting in-camera JPEGs with Apple's camera app and shooting RAW/DNG with ProCamera and processing in Lightroom.

My conclusion though is that while you CAN shoot better bondage photos on your smart phone, it's really making life difficult for yourself, especially if you're not going to contemplate supplementary lighting.

This would have been a LOT easier to shoot if I'd been allowed a big 2' x 3' daylight balanced LED light panel. That would have let me tame the contrast a bit and made the most of the iPhone's limited dynamic range. But such a light costs more than a camera, a decent couple of lenses, and a small studio flash set up with a flash head and umbrella.

So while you CAN improve matters whilst still shooting on your smart phone, if you are at all serious about photography I still recommend a cheap second-hand dSLR, a 24-70mm f/2.8 zoom or a couple of cheap primes, and a little bit of flash lighting to act as fill for scenes like this.

Conversely, if a smart phone is all you've got, our top tips are:

Go for the ring-flash look. Put the phone directly in front of a big light source like a window and have the model face into it. (You'll have to contort yourself to avoid casting a shadow on her, or use a selfie stick or remote trigger or something).
Get a camera app that gives you a bit more manual control and can shoot RAW/DNG.
Process in Lightroom/CaptureOne/whatever. Even Apple Photos does a significantly better job with the DNGs than the in-camera JPEGs
Watch for camera shake and subject motion. It was the biggest source of bad shots in our experiment. Practice technique, and get your model to hold still.
The shutter noise is important for the model to get and hold poses and get the rhythm. We noticeably worked more smoothly once we'd turned that on.
Side light is appalling. Don't do it. You might be able to rescue it with a regular camera. With a smart phone, no chance.
Back light is tricky. It can look good but you will get stuff burning out so you'll need to use some combo of exposure compensation and pulling up shadows in post.

Our conclusion: If you're aiming for social media photos, you can get really good results. They don't hold up at full size, but they are great for Twitter or Instagram. You're going to have to MORE careful than you would with a regular camera to squeeze the best results out of a smartphone sensor. You'll need good physical photo-taking technique to combat shake and your model will have ot be careful to freeze to reduce subject movement. And you'll need to be very vigilant of your limited dynamic range; if you see everything burning out or turning black, your best solution may well be to move to a less contrasty part of the room. And there's a reason why ring-lights are popular for models who shoot phone selfies a lot: that lighting pattern works really well with smart phones.

Free bondage photo Ariel Anderssen barefoot, satin, blonde, nightwear, frogtie, rope bondage

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