,,,that’s how I made the window light portrait of Michelle Monroe at right. The portrait was made with a Canon EOS D60 (not 60D) and EF 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 lens with an available light exposure of 1/200 at f/5.6 and ISO 800.

Many photographers, including myself, wear glasses. I guess that’s why camera manufacturers invented built-in diopter corrections! As far as I can tell, the first cameras to have adjustable diopter correction, as opposed to screw-in viewfinder adapters, were the Olympus OM’s (3 and 4) and the Nikon F4.

Most DSLRs and mirrorless cameras offer a monochrome capture mode and you can always convert your original color file to black and white, after the fact, using Photoshop or your favorite digital imaging software, I’d like to give you a few reasons why, in some instances, direct capture may be a better option:

Creating a low-key headshot: Low-key lighting is a style of portrait lighting for creating a chiaroscuro effect. Chiaroscuro is Italian for light-dark. The use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition.

When I first became involved in digital infrared photography, making portraits was not a recommended use of this technology. Yet, one of the earliest non-landscape applications of IR photography was in wedding photography and you can see some beautiful examples of this from creative photographers in my book, The Complete Guide to Infrared Photography.