Learning Center
Group Portraits

Successful group photography is a combination of excellent equipment and technique. If you have poor lens quality and great technique… you will produce poor images. If you have a great lens and poor technique … you will produce poor images. You need to apply both to insure first class professional images.

Lets start with the lens. The new Tamron Di series of lenses has brought tremendous confidence to our family and group photography. I have the manufacturers glass for my cameras but in a side by side comparison… the Di lenses were sharper and certainly far better value. The best part is even with a zoom lens and a group of 100 (using the 28-75 2.8), I have sharp images edge to edge and that is the acid test.

Your choice of lens for groups should be made with a goal of controlling the perception of background (assuming you have the working space to achieve that). Many default to a wide angle lens because of the greater depth of field. If your technique is well handled you don’t have to fall back on wide angle lenses. It is actually quite exciting to use long lenses for groups as it gives you a whole new “look” to backgrounds and can also give more control to a choice of sharp of out of focus backgrounds.

Now for the technique component. Many photographers rely on depth of field to insure they have sharp images edge to edge and front to back. This really is very false security. The best approach is to insure that your group is equidistant from the film plane (edge to edge on the horizontal). It is very easy to assume that all people are the same distance away from the film plan but all it takes is to be out a few feet and you have soft people on one side or both (depending on your point of focus) and that is a serious problem. The easiest way to insure that you have equal distance (approx.) is to use a long thin cord and attach it to your tripod head. Run the cord out to one side of the group and draw the cord taught to the tripod … Now move the cord horizontally across the group. If everyone is close to the point you are holding the cord… you will have sharp people edge to edge. If you find that some people are closer or farther away as you move across the group… you have a problem and must adjust the line of the group or your camera angle. I realize that in a large group you will essentially have a curved group… it is not enough to worry about. It is far better to string the group and know that you are sharp. In actual practice… you can expose many groups at f4 and 5.6 and have confidence that all is sharp. This is critical in environmental groups where the light is often low or you want to put a background out of focus and maintain sharp people.

The last issue is where to focus in terms of depth in a group. The laws of optics define that to achieve maximum use of depth of field you should focus 1/3 of the way into your group. Assuming you have nine rows… you would focus on something defined in the third or fourth row… then as you stop down… you will increase the sharpness in the foreground and background in a mathematical formula that defines a greater increase in sharpness the further from the focal point than in front. To confirm this … look at an older 35mm lens. When you use the little “hash” marks for depth of field you will notice that at any given point of focus… the depth of field marks defines that sharpness increases in a formula of 1/3 in front and 2/3 behind the point of focus.

In review… always focus 1/3 into any given group, always insure that everyone is approx. equidistant from the film plane and be sure to use the Di series of lenses. They are well worth the investment.