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Well, I finally picked up the Canon XTi, Great camera!

As expected the 'KIT' lens is rather cheap, but functional. A 'FAIR' starter lens for basic point and shoot.

The Quantaray 70 - 300 zoom telephoto works flawlessly with the XTi.

Posted some shots on the gallery page mostly taken with the Quantaray,  posted here  February on the Delaware (NEW)

Photoshop CS2 enhanced Photo's.....

***See my Links page for some good Photoshop sites....

All photo's taken with the Canon EOS Digital Rebel   (6 megapixel)

And the Canon Rebel XTi   (10.1 megapixel)           .... see below....

You don't need to have a bunch of fancy equipment to get decent portraits. All you really need is a basic understanding of how lighting works, and a couple of proven lighting setups to get good pictures.

The equipment
Multiple lights, fancy reflectors, and expensive equipment aren't required to get decent portraits, but they sure help.

Seriously, though... You can shoot portraits with just a single flash unit. You need to be willing to accept a lower level of quality though.

You just can't get studio-quality portraits with only one light, unless you're going for an artistic approach. Artistic photography really isn't the focus of this article, but rather the more traditional studio portrait.

I've seen lighting setups ranging from one to five lights, but two lights is the most common, by far. In this article, I'll cover both single-light and double-light setups, showing the benefits and pitfalls of each.

When using more than one flash, a requirement is a slave flash unit. A slave is a photo receptor cell that will trigger a flash to fire when it senses a burst of light. Because light travels faster than any shutter can operate, the microsecond delay between the firing of the first flash and any subsequent ones won't matter.

Some flash units come with built-in slaves, but most don't. For units that don't have a built-in slave, you can buy external ones that you plug the synch cord into. The one I use has a suction cup to attach itself to the flash, and it seems to me that I paid about $15 for it.

Reflectors, umbrellas and softboxes aren't a requirement for portraiture, but they definitely help. By softening the light, these items make your photos less harsh and reduce shadows, giving you better results. There are also some budget methods of reproducing these that I'll cover.

One light
Many cameras now come with an on-camera flash. While this is fine for snapshots, it's really not the best thing for portraiture. Figure A shows a portrait that was taken with a single, on-camera flash.

FIGURE A

A single on-camera flash is not ideal for portrait work. Click picture for a larger image.

Note the deep shadows on either side of the subject. This really isn't what you're looking for in a portrait. You also risk the dreaded red-eye when using an on-camera flash, as the light is directly in front of the subject's eyes.

The photo in Figure A is a good example of the downside to using a single light. You're going to have shadows. There's almost no way to avoid them.

In some instances, such as in artistic photography, or portrait for effect, you'll want these kinds of shadows. For standard portrait photography though, you'll want to eliminate shadows.

Figure B shows an example of shadow for effect. This is known as the "Rembrandt effect," although a rather mild version of it, with one side of the subject illuminated, and the other in shadow. In this particular instance, it was a mistake though. One of my flashes failed to fire.

FIGURE B

A flash that failed to fire resulted in a Rembrandt effect. Click picture for a larger image.

For portrait lighting with a single light, you'll need an off-camera flash. If your camera has a PC or hot shoe connector, then you can use an external flash and cable to move the flash away from the camera. By positioning the flash at an oblique angle from the camera and subject, you'll be able to make the shadows more manageable.

Figure C shows how you can position a single, off-camera flash in order to reduce shadow. You'll still have some shadow, particularly under the nose, chin and behind the subject. By getting the camera and light in just the right positions, you can reduce or hide the shadows pretty well.

FIGURE C

Single flash portraits are possible with the correct setup. Click picture for a larger image.

A reflector positioned below and in front of the subject will help reflect light under the chin and nose, reducing or eliminating those shadows. You can also tape a piece of tissue or tracing paper over the light. This acts as a diffuser, similar to a softbox, and will soften the light, reducing harshness.

Two lights
Using two lights will provide the best results for portrait work. By positioning the lights appropriately, you can eliminate or cancel out any viewable shadows. Again, the use of umbrellas, reflectors, or softboxes can soften and smooth the light.

Figure D shows one lighting setup that I use quite frequently.

FIGURE D

This setup can be used to enhance one aspect of a subject. Click picture for a larger image.

The key, or main light is positioned at a 450 angle from the subject. The secondary, or fill light is then placed next to the camera. You want to place the lights at the level of the subject, or just slightly above. You can see from the illustration how the lights will cancel out the shadows from one another, with the only shadow being directly behind the subject and not visible.

Figure E shows another two-light setup.

FIGURE E

This is great general use lighting configuration. Click picture for a larger image.

In this case, the lights are placed an equal distance from the subject, both at a 450 angle. Provided you're using lights of equal strength, it won't matter which one is the key light and which the fill light. If one is stronger than the other though, you'll want to make that the key light. Keep in mind that this setup has the potential to take up a lot of space, which is why I frequently use the configuration from Figure C.

Even if your camera doesn't have a connection for an external flash, you can still use one to reduce, or control shadows. You can use your on-camera flash as the main light to trigger a slaved external flash.

In this instance, your setup would be like that in Figure D, only with the key and fill lights reversed. Make sure that you disable your camera's red-eye reduction; otherwise it will trigger the slave to fire before the shutter is open. If you're not sure how to disable your camera's red-eye reduction, this would be a great excuse to sit down with some good coffee and re-read your manual.

The portrait in Figure F shows the kind of result you're going for. Everything is in focus and well illuminated, with no shadows.

FIGURE F

When correctly lit, your portraits will much more satisfying. Click picture for a larger image.

Reflection and softening
The use of umbrella reflectors will go a long way toward making your pictures -- all of them, not just portraits -- a lot better looking. The umbrella helps to soften and diffuse the light, eliminating harshness. By shooting light through the umbrella, rather than reflecting off of it, the umbrella will act like a softbox, further softening the light.

There are a few budget remedies available if you don't have umbrellas. One is to use white poster board as a reflective surface. I've also used white foam-core before as well. It's a little stiffer than poster board and might be a little easier to position.

About the cheapest alternative though is a white pillowcase. Just about everyone has a white pillowcase. It's one of those items that most people have around the house that a photographer can readily use as a cheap substitute. You can even bounce the light off of a white wall to help soften and diffuse the light.

I've already mentioned several methods of softening the light if you so desire. A softbox is, of course, a nice method, but not everyone has one. To be honest, I don't use a softbox; I just shoot through a white umbrella. Another method is to tape a piece of tracing or tissue paper over the flash to diffuse the light.

Conclusion
It's not really all that difficult to get decent studio-quality portraits. With a couple of proven lighting setups, you can achieve excellent results, time after time. And if you're using a digital camera, it's even easier, as you don't have to wait for film to be developed to see if your pictures came out.

James Booth is the Senior Editor at ZATZ Publishing. In addition to writing for Computing Unplugged and Connected Photographer, he's the author of Do-It-Yourself Wedding Photography. A self-taught photographer, James also dabbles in digital graphics and has learned to be a PC and handheld specialist through personal trial and error. James can be reached at jbooth@zatz.com.

Text from American Photography : A Critical History

In Adams's photographs the West is an abstract notion more appropriately understood in its transformation as photograph than in its actuality. Expression is more important than reality, idea more important than fact, the print more important than its subject. For it is only in the print that such magnificence can be unfailingly orchestrated. "Twelve photographs that matter in a year is a good crop for any photographer," Adams once said. An infinite number of visual confrontations with the landscape produces only twelve epiphanies.

For the early Western photographers the transformation from reality to print happened naturally and without premeditation. The nature of the photographic process determined the print's intrinsic color, range of contrast, and tonalities. When the early printing processes changed from calotype to albumen and then to chloride and chloro-bromide, the surface and tonal qualities of the printed image shifted as well. These changes were made not for aesthetic or idealistic reasons but because of the availability, technical expediency, and relative permanence of each process. While some photographers had one or two technical tricks up their sleeves that helped give their prints a distinctive tonal character, it was not until Stieglitz began to champion photography as a fine art that photographers became conscious of the print as an aesthetic and controllable object. Stieglitz's abiding concern with "print quality" was passed on to Strand and Weston. Walker Evans looked with disdain on their concern with control and finish. "As in typography and printing," he said, "technique shouldn't arrest you." But for Adams, as for Stieglitz, "every print ... is a new experience" requiring a special procedure to bring out its essential meaning.

The sense of the presence of the eternal world in Adams's photographs is achieved not only by his constant choice of sublime moments and viewpoints, but also by his legendary technical brilliance, which transforms an ordinary scene into a luminescent, fully realized, precious object.

To effect the formal purity and the transformations he desired, Adams developed the most careful, rigorously thought-out system of photographic control known to the field photographer: the Zone System. Adams wanted to go beyond conventional photographic recording, which, in his own words, is at best "acceptable though perhaps uninspired" and create a statement "acute and creatively expressive." In the Zone System, he engineered a technique by which the photographer could manipulate the photograph's internal tones without distorting essential photographic description. By means of filtration, development, and print controls, contrast could be heightened or softened and the placement of object values along the tonal scale could be predetermined by the photographer before the shutter was released. Thus a sand dune seen at sunrise could be transformed into an almost abstract composition of hard-edged black-and-white forms, a lone tree branch on the shore of Mono Lake could be made to stand out as if spotlit against a luminescent, floating background, and the north sky beyond Yosemite's Half Dome could be rendered a rich, velvet black. By using the Zone System, the photographer can darken those areas that in actuality provide an overabundance of distracting detail, lighten areas deep within natural shade, and intensify, simplify, or almost utterly obliterate the relationships between land, clouds, sea, rocks, foliage, and sky. Adams found in this system the answer that pictorialists in photography had long been seeking: a means of controlling the optical, mechanical medium with the same finesse the painter managed with the brush and palette.

In Adams's work, then, the American vision of the spirituality of the West is realized through careful and conscious use of advanced technology. This union of technology, nature, and spirit derives from the nineteenth-century's belief that technology could be a means of achieving America's spiritual destiny. Art, technology, and religion joined in the common cause of controlling, defining, and recording nature in order to gain both economic advantage and spiritual truth. Adams's photographs derive their power by restating those grand aspects of the landscape that were already a part of American consciousness. Unlike Stieglitz, Strand, or Minor White, who would follow him, Adams does not use the new technology to search into the motives or forces behind the obvious. He seems oblivious to the exploitation, plunder, and technological destruction that made the West accessible to the white man. Rather, the grand and obvious are generalized to the point where they become the ideal.

The formalism that pervades Adams's work relates directly to his belief in technology. For Adams, technology is redemptive. He can even sell automobiles on television with a straight face and a clear conscience. Indeed, it seems at times that Adams relies more on technology than on vision. Of all the major American photographers, he is the most inconsistent. When his work succeeds it is breathtaking. When it fails it becomes mere finger exercises in the Zone System, work that is decorative and cloying.

Adams's work is in the Puritan grain: straight and rigorously conservative. His obsession with technological control also displays another fundamental American trait-a trait we have also seen in Stieglitz's work and will see in Steichen's-an aggressive, acquisitive, inventive preoccupation with engineering and the practical uses of new technology. As de Tocqueville pointed out in a chapter of Democracy in America entitled "Why Americans Prefer the Practice Rather than the Theory of Science," the emphasis in the United States has always been on "useful knowledge." In the nineteenth century, America imported almost all of the major scientific ideas from Europe, but the widest applications of these ideas to common life were made here. This was especially true in photography. At the birth of photography American daguerreotypists quickly became the most inventive practitioners of the new medium. Samuel F. B. Morse, the inventor and portrait painter, played a significant role in the introduction of photography into this country, and other major American inventors - Thomas Edison, George Eastman, and Edwin Land - made significant contributions to photography's capability and popularity. Today there is an unparalleled exploration by younger photographers into the image-generating possibilities of a variety of electronic, electrostatic, and mechanical reproduction methods.

Adams's concern with craft, technique, and reproduction quality helped initiate wide participation in expressive photography. He has shared his insights in numerous books and articles. His first technical manual, Making a Photograph (1935), contained the most accurate photographic reproductions since Stieglitz's Camera Work. And the Basic Photo Series (1948-1956) dispelled the atmosphere of alchemy surrounding photographic technique, allowing any photographer to produce a fine print.

Yet Adams's standardization of photography as a set of scientifically explainable and repeatable processes has also been strongly challenged. Much of the aesthetic ferment in the sixties can be seen as a response to Adams's teaching, particularly his notion of previsualization. For some photographers the use of the Zone System has been a badge of honor; others have questioned the whole idea. Jerry Uelsmann introduced the concept of postvisualization, in which the final photograph is synthesized in the darkroom from many negatives. And Garry Winogrand has cantankerously announced on many occasions, "I don't have anything to say in any picture. My only interest in photography is to see what something looks like as a photograph. I have no preconceptions."

In our gallery of archetypal heroes, Adams fits well into the role of the American nineteenth-century engineer. Like the great builders of that age, he uses his knowledge of science for the aesthetic and spiritual welfare of man.