Lessons

Lesson Info

Technical Settings - Step 6

Now we're gonna talk about technical settings. This is not going to be a how to work your camera, how to operate everything. I'm gonna give you kind of an overview of what I'm talking about. But basically the three areas I'm constantly thinking about a shoot. Everything in manual mode I'm constantly thinking about is aperture shutter speed and I s O and my relationship the relationship between them when I'm trying to maximize a shot. Um, so let's start with aperture. You guys know that if you want to shoot something wide open, which is to have a narrow point of focus and a lot that's out of focus, you actually want a very shallow depth of field with aperture. That's a small number, but it's a wide opening, right? Not confusing at all. Um, so it allows you to basically selectively focus to figure out what you want to focus on. Just just the face, just the eyes, a little bit of the foreground, and everything else is blown out of focus. You would choose to shoot, shall it up the field. Bu...

t if you're in a situation and this next image is actually from one of our pre shoots. If you're in a situation where you want to show the surroundings, you want to show your subjects relationship to the surroundings, or there's something very visually compelling about the surroundings. You wouldn't switch that and actually shoot a more narrow aperture, which means you're gonna show more of field of focus. Your field of focus is larger, and more comes into the frame. That's actually the higher number on your camera on, and it shows Maurer of the image. So one of things I decide upon when I'm shooting is from an aperture perspective. Do I want to show my subjects relationship to either somebody there with another person or their surroundings, or do I want to just isolate them specifically if I'm shooting very shallow, which means I'm gonna photograph like a baby and I just would like the breath eyes under noodle fish, but I want everything else to be out of focus. I'm not only gonna shoot very shallow, I'm also gonna shoot very close because that's another factor with aperture. The closer the lenses to the subject. The more your field of focus narrows, the farther you are from the subject. The more. You have an extended field of focus. So you can ostensibly shoot a full family of five people and an F stop of 18 If you're far enough away, kind of a very interesting thing that has to do with lenses and aperture and proximity to subject. Um, when you're shooting with shutter speed, what you're doing is either freezing action or blurring action. And hopefully either one is with intention. You're doing that on purpose. Shutter speed, of course, is the length of time your shudder is open. It has to do. It also affects exposure. How much light is let in, um, and movement? The way something appears on a shot like this, I'm gonna crank my shutter speed up and drop. Ever get freeze every drop of water, every speck because I think it adds so much to the image, the frenzied kind of fun, vibrant feel. Um, but you can also then set your shutter speed so you just have the contact, their super super sharp, and everything else is behind them. That's again affecting the relationship. Um, I s o I S O is basically your garnering the most detail. The most color saturation. Most tone when you're shooting with a lower iess. Oh, it also depends on camera model you have. It's either 100 or 200 depending on what brand you're using. But the higher you crank your I s o The more light you let in, the more you can shoot faster moving subjects, which is great. But you lose some of that detail, you get more noise or digital green. Um, I tend to crank up my eyes so often and take a little bit of the hit for color of such saturation in detail. Because I know I'm gonna be going into Photoshopped later, and I can clean some of that up. Everything I shoot technically is with the understanding that everything I shoot will go through Photoshopped and that changes the way you shoot. If I'm only shooting raw and four file, I'm gonna shoot very differently when we do our live show today and we're shooting tethered, which, by the way, I have never shot tethered successfully. And by that I mean the tether is always broken. When I've tried to shoot live, we sounds like we have a secure tether and everything's gonna be great, but I'm gonna be just a surprise that this images showing up outside of my camera as you might be, it's gonna be a very weird thing. But I've shoot it. I'm gonna I'm gonna give you a heads up. I'm gonna shoot exactly how I always shoot, which is with the intention to knock everything through Photoshopped on purpose. So when I'm shooting a fast moving subject which is a child, this is actually from the posing playbook. I will. I can show you right here. The distinction. These were both shot with a Nikon D 800 with the 72 8 lens. And I'm at a focal length of about 48 meters. I am shooting this at 1 200 The shutter speed. Ah, 40 aperture and I eso won 60. I'm metering and incinerated the one on the right. The image on the left. That's how I shot that. The image on the right. All I did was shift the relationship of I s O to shutter speed. I cranked up my ass Oda 1000 and then I and then I updated my shutter speed toe 1/12 50 and I got a clean, crisp, sharp image. The only difference between the two is that my shutter speed wasn't high enough to get the fast action that was happening. I was having her jump up and down in a frenetic way. And even though I was out in this bright, sunny day with all this available light, I still didn't have enough shutter speed. And to be able to lift the shutter speed which drops the light that you get on your portrait, you need to make up for it somehow. And you can either add light like a flash or an external light, or you can crank up your I S O Was that too much to faster? Was that like awesome on point? Awesome! And for you with a nod. All right, great eso when you're thinking about that and this is something a mistake. I made a lot with kids. I'd be out there without their take five shots. I'm like, Yeah, I'm glad I got one of them because the other four sucked. The reason why was I wasn't being as generous with my shutter speed as I should be. And now I'm a lot more careful to be generous with shutter speed. And by that I mean to go up, up, up. He snapped the shutter faster. Um, the other aspect that you want to think about that I see a lot of people missing is meat. Oring Metering is big because it's about exposure, the the amount of light that falls on your frame and technically falls on each zone of your frame. That's what metering is, and it comes as either matrix or evaluative, partial or spot and center weighted. Some camera models have four options. Some have three um, the matrix or evaluative metering facing looks at every zone in your frame in this unbelievable algorithm that I could never explain to you because I don't understand, but this unbelievable algorithm that basically takes light, dark, light, dark like narc. Where are we great? Here's your exposure comes up with a calculated idea of the best exposure for your frame, and this works very well when there's no dramatic, like shifts happening in your scene when everything's kind of relatively the same lighting, evaluative or matrix is a great place to be center weighted means and center weighted metering came about because most people, when they take a photograph of a person, smack the person in the middle of the frame, the right in the center, and that's what center weight it ISS Senate weight, It is about said, indeed, 80% 75% depending on your camera manual camera model. I'm gonna keep saying that because people say, Well, my camera 7 to 1.4%. Roughly 75% of the sensitive sensitivity of exposure is that noodle point around the center of your frame when you don't want to have Senator Weighted Metering on is when you want some balance of exposure in edges of the frame or if you're doing a really tight head and shoulders, and the eyes are right here on the crops right here. Center waiting is a poison as a poor choice because it's exposing for here, spot metering or partial metering again different options on different camera models. It's about 1 to 5% of your viewfinder in a spot and about 10 to 15% in a partial, and so these are great for backlit subjects. I use this all the time for backlit subject and a back that subject doesn't mean that the subjects are facing you. It just means where the lights coming from. It's coming from behind the subjects. This is also a great metering option. We're choosing Danny needle pieces and parts of a baby or, like you were photographing a bug like you're sitting the whole day photographing this one bug or any sort of little detailed pieces and parts. This kind of metering options is perfect, cause it's very precise. So this all brings us to the question of what is correct exposure in a frame. What is the important way to make sure you're 18% gray is working in your favor? My answer, as somebody who photographs very frequently, is if it's the exposure that you wanted to achieve for the scene based artistically, on how you wanted to capture it. The correct exposure is the exposure that you achieve for the scene based on artistically, how you wanted to capture it. That makes a huge difference. This theme, someone might say, We're just not very well explores records. My current court shooter, people in front. That's what I wanted to get. So I exposed it for what I wanted to get when I shoot people in front of a very backlit seen. I will make the decision whether or not I want that back, that what the scene behind them, to be in full detail and be able to see the color and tones and shapes, or for what? A blow it out entirely and have it just be bright white light that's wrapping around the back of people. So you really need to know. So what your in camera meeting options are so that you can shoot your vision. It would sex to get out here and try to take the shot and say, I really want this bright light coming from behind them, but I do kind of want to see them. I don't want them blown out and be fiddling with your meter and lose the fun. So if you haven't had a lot of time to practice their immediately options to go out with one subject and try it three different ways and see all the creative toning options you have for exposure. I just made that up this noble atoning with exposure, but you're kind of toning your exposure