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Setting Your Camera Up for Crappy Light

setting off your camera for success in copulating. All right, but we talked about this. I just want to let everyone out there in the audience know, um, you I'm not gonna lie. I'm not like the biggest camera manual reader in the world, But maybe I won't through the manual look it up online, But everything is going to be different. We did the same thing. Everything's going to different on different cameras. Like my five d three isn't totally different than your five D or five to Nikon. So the concepts are the same, but it's gonna be different. So just keep that in mind. You probably have to reference manuals in a couple of things like this before we jump into things. I just have to make sure everyone knows I've not shot a J pig Onley image. I would say it's definitely minutely seven years for sure, but possibly longer nowadays, or cards or fast enough. And the memory is cheap enough. Shoot raw, especially especially especially in crappy like, because it gives you the most latitude to sav...

e your image in post if you have to. So if you know you're walking into a bad lighting situation. Don't think like O. J Peg. I can shoot Mawr save space or whatever you need to be about. What would you like to add to that? Yes. So it's been a long time since I've just shot a J peg as well because, like she said, we have hard drives, cameras, fasters. Once you shoot raw and you put process it or you save a really blown file like an over exposure color balance and it saves your butt, you will shoot raw every single time because, you know, you would have gotten the image otherwise. But I want to say, though, if you're transition in your listen to this, you're like, Well, I only shoot J Peg, don't take this and run out the door and Onley shoot raw. Your camera has the ability to shoot a raw file and a J peg file. I got in a bind once where I was like, OK, I'm gonna switch to raw. I got myself light room, you know, I had a bridge or light room to, and I was like, I think it's still bridge like Photoshopped. I'm gonna start shooting raw like everyone says, Shoot raw It's great. So I shot a job on Raw and it took me so long to process and deliver the files because it was like a crash course and raw raw editing, which is a little more work and need a little more robust computer. And I almost got myself in trouble because it was a client job when I was like, I start shooting rise like when I was first starting out. So it was Shoot J. Peg and Ross that you have to use, and then you can work on the raws until you're comfortable. Then switch over to Raul the way. But once you're familiar, there's no reason to shoot anything but raw. So what? What we did is Eric took a picture of me the other night underneath a street lamp, and he shot Raw plus J Peg and not like super small rough J peg just raw and jpeg. Okay, so this is what it looked like. It's under exposed and it's the wrong color. And so just, you know, for you guys, the screen over there is little more accurate for that color. So what I did as I tried to get the color right on the J Pang. And then I tried to get the color or the color and exposure in the J peg and the color and exposure right on the raw. This is how far I could get the J Peg trying to get it close. Do you see all that color noise? And it was hideous. And the actual photos are obviously much closer to get the result that I was able to get to. It took me about 15 minutes because I was going into going into curves and adjusting the different color channels. So I was I was going in. I was using selective color to shift with the shadow tones. I mean, I was working on this file. It was an amateur approach. She was trying to save. This thing is if, like, it were a job, right? So I was really working on this like it was a job. Where is that? Took me two minutes. No, 30 seconds. 30 seconds. Click a button, withdraw and you can see huge difference. So, I mean, it's it's all about workflow to you would spend so much more time trying to fix that Jay pek file. I mean I really was using all of my Photoshopped knowledge to try to get to the point where I could get it. And guys, raw files are basically they're not baked. Like if you go to the camera settings, you'll see profiles like portrait and landscape and stuff like that, where they apply contrast in sharpening color, like your color temperature that was all get baked into a J peg. So when it comes out, it's small because that's your only option. Your raw file doesn't necessarily have a set color balance. It has all of the different color information in there. And then you could just see the color balance of, like, a little J peg preview that lays on top of it so we can visualize it. But all of that data is raw and not interpreted. That goes in this weather way larger. So if you want to, it can be any color balance you want it to be. So we're gonna teach you how to do it properly in multiple ways to get it. But shooting raw files makes you can change your mind. You could be like I want that to look blue. Then you can just go go to town. So raw is everything Next thing color space. So color space is basically how much information or how robust the colors are that you're working with SRG B is what you're gonna deliver your files to. So if you're shooting and j pegs on your camera and you're gonna put them on your computer and put them under your Facebook and you're never gonna edit them and you know that you're gonna get exposure and color balance done, SRG B is the way to go. But we're saying if you're shooting and crappy light, you're gonna miss your going to save. You're gonna have to tweet color. So you're gonna want to shoot raw because you want all the data. So wouldn't it make sense to you also want all of the color fidelity and the depth of your colors to? So that's why you want to go adobe RGB. So we're going to get into discussions of white balance and all of the different options because I want to make sure I can show everybody some custom. White balance is and what not. These are all the different ways you have to handle color. One of the very first things that I got overwhelmed with with color when I was when I was trying toe handle bad lighting because it's just it was just another realm for me on top of exposure, on top of all that. So I'm gonna give you all the different options you have available to you, and then you pick what works. So we start with the 1st 1 You can do whatever you need their auto white balance. Um, our cameras are so, so smart now the auto white balance often does a pretty phenomenal job. It's scary like really, really, really, really good. Here's the problem. There's a couple problems. Auto White balance sometimes will screw up based on the color shirt someone's wearing. So I don't know if you've ever had that situation. You're shooting a scene and a blue person of blue shirt walks in. You take a picture, keep shooting the scene person a redshirt, walks and take a picture. The color would be totally different, often because it's it's in introducing another color that is trying to work into the equation. That's not always the case, but that does happen. The other downside of using auto white balance is, if you're shooting a job where you're shooting auto white balance, it's bouncing all over the place. And so you don't have consistency and the job so you will spend more time trying to get the files toe look similar color versus if you pick even just a preset. It will be consistent. And then, if you need to tweak the color like treat the white balance a little bit, you can make that change and apply it to all the rest. And it will be a consistent change versus if it's bouncing all over the place. So do I shoot auto white balance? Honestly, sometimes. But that's more if I'm just like going around the city like taking pictures for fun for a client job. I just pick a preset for what I'm in. Nothing is worse than she didn't crappy light and then having to go home and edit hours, you really start disliking your job life. Your client. Yeah, it's not a good road to go down. Okay, so this is these air, what I'm talking about when I say presets. So when I'm shooting indoors, if I'm shooting in fluorescent light. I would switch over and try the fluorescent light. If I'm shooting for okay, you know, makes sense. Problem is not all fluorescent lights, the same color. And when you walk into an old cafeteria, you see some look blue. Some greens. I mean, you can actually see it. Same for daylight, just different types of all the same thing with tungsten. You walk into a room that one's really orange. That was really yellow, that one day light. You can actually see it. So a lot of times the presets are great for getting new clothes, but not all the way. So it's at least gives you an acceptable image. Like if you want to have your clients view the images immediately thereafter, you don't have time to go in and tweak things. It's close, but we probably want to do is at least shoot a great card, and we'll show you how this will work in post later so that it's a neutral point in your scene. And so, in photo shop for light room, you say this is neutral. Neutralize it. So some control point your chaos. You know what this is? And the same time the color checker were mentioning. She's gonna go to now also has a great card option built into it. Thats guy right there So you can keep this in your pocket. This is great for getting your white balance. You flip it over this way, this top part is actually for selective white balance where you can warm it up and cool it down. There's a couple different options here. Right off. Just the matter of what Grace watch you pick. And then what she's gonna mention now is this will be talked about earlier, and that allows you to do color profiles. Explain the difference between that for them. Okay, so the color profile we touched on it a little bit is just making sure blue is really blue. So the shirt you're wearing looks the same all the way throughout your workflow. Where is this? Right here. Just warms up or cools down the photograph, just like you would with the temperature slider in your post processing. But you can do it selectively by just putting your little eye dropper on here. And we're really gonna touch all this in detail on Day three when we in just a bunch of photos and fix all the mistakes that we made over the next couple days of shooting and actually specifically the color checker, this one in particular. It comes with software that you install it as a plugging into light room, and when you take an image, it will automatically make a custom profile for that lighting situation and for that particular image, and then you can apply. It's all photographed in that scene, but it's not just like a like a white balance your eye dropper. It is a profile for every color and every tone in that scene, so it's definitely much more advanced. I mean, it's just you don't have to just get the eyedropper. It's like an X one little extra step to get exact color all the way across the board. So if you have, like a room in your house or studio our location, you like to shoot in. It'll make a profile for your camera in that lighting scenarios. So every time you go into light room, that's the color profile you pick and you're good if you like. If you have a window late in your studio and you just wanted used over and over again. Definitely. All right, so this is something that we want you to all take a look at custom white balance. All right. Costume White balance is where you're able to in camera. Tell the camera what should be white in your seen. It will make your camera neutralize the scene toe white so that every picture you shoot when you have that little icon on will automatically look correctly white balanced instead of having to do it in post. Or instead of picking a preset to fix in post, you're actually will photograph the light in the room. Tell the camera that that's the light. Please neutralize this light and then you can shoot correct color of white balance right in camera. So I'm gonna show you in mind. If you don't mind, I'll give you an idea of how this would work. OK, so there's a couple ways you can do this. For example, some people will photograph basically like, Okay, you're my subject, and they'll hold a great card or white card where that subject is Zuman. So the only thing the camera sees is that gray or white card and use that as its neutral reference. The problem is, it's not really calculating all the late in the room. It's just calculating what's hitting the face and the and the light falling just on whatever great card is. So when we simplify what most people use for a custom, white balance would be this. It's an expo disk, and you understand how expletive works again. You show people that, yeah, we showed a little bit early. Basically, it's It's like like a lens filter, but in it it's got just raised little die odes or like little bubbles on it. So rather than just catching the light that's directly hitting it like a flat plane, it's catching the stuff coming in from the sides. Filter it all out to Ah Gray. That's a little more representative of all the directions of light coming in. And this also comes in really handy to because if you're going into a church and you're like, OK, well, there's some older lights here and warmer lights here, and you're trying to get a white balance to shoot the reception or shoot the ceremony with you can't just like Frisbee this over to the groom and be like, Hey, dude, hold this for me really quickly. I get a shot. So this is great, because all shoot like annual reports or different meetings and things where you've got a CEO of a $1,000,000,000 company. Whatever walking around here like a like, hang on to this, it doesn't work. Where is this? You just basically put on the front of your lens and we'll show you how to do in the camera here in two seconds, aim it towards the light source and gathers all of the light within this field of view gives you an average for that. And that's what you make your custom white balance from. Right. So presets get you close. It's true. And so they have different side. This is the 82 because that's what I have for my team for 70. There's a 77 7 that makes all the size for the different lenses you have. All right. So I'm gonna show you how it would do in a canon. Okay. What I would dio is that it screwed on and I would take a picture this court's bothering. I would take a picture of the light source. So I'm pointing it at, like if I'm photographing you any light that's hitting you So pointed out that light source. And by the way, turn up the focus on manual. It will not You get really confused. All right, so I'm gonna try to get an image. Okay, so this is supposed to be kind of neutral, By the way, these lights are very neutral because it looks pretty good the other night. So I've got that. So then I go into my menu. All right? This is for Canon. And it has something here that says white balance. I would want to school, right click, select, and I would scroll over and say, OK, we're going to use custom, But right now it doesn't know what custom is. So you have to tell it. That image is my custom white balance. So if I pop down towards his custom white balance when I click on it, it just says it brings up the last image you shot. And if I hit the okay button or set again, it will now set that as my custom white balance. So now anything I said if my camera's white balance up top is set to this little triangles with the square in the middle of whatever. Anything that set to custom white balance will have that custom white balance that I said. Now, if you want to turn it off, you could either create a new custom white balance or just switched to another preset, like if you if you want to just, you know, more custom that I could just go to, like, a light and it won't stick. But if you stay on custom white balance and you're shooting here and then you go outside and you don't change it, you know, mess it up. Just a ziff you were leaving on any other precept that might be an appropriate part because it basically made it another preset for you. So, Nikon, I'm gonna give you that run through. But then I'm going to show you something needs. So if one of the cameras can get ready to zoom in on my top window here, so his is different. I don't think that's cool. I need a little affirmation sometimes, and I'll show you what it gives you. So same thing I shoot up. Here's my image going to the menu going a white balance preset manual. There it is. I hit OK, it creates my preset based off of that. So if I photographed somebody, it's beautiful. There we go. So we've got a good white going on there. But what's even better than that, though, is if you want to zoom in really close on the top here, that's the same way to do it between Nikon and Canon. But what if you like running and gun and really quick? I keep this, that they have a neck piece of land or to keep it in my pocket. So I'm running like a different room of a church or different women of events space. I can really quickly be making presets. So all hold down my white, my white balance button here on the top. You got that? And in the bottom I'll see the little pre button blinking. Okay, then I'll just do this, shoot into it. It will blink good or no good. So it's like already telling me I'm great or even take the shot. It's like a way to go, buddy. Go take some cool photos and then you're good to go and then hopefully to some plug you take the next shot and you have your preset white bounce. So night time gives you a pat on the back when you do a good job setting your white balance. So it's like more of an incentive to actually go do it. Make presets. All right, so we have to pop over. I just want to show you one last thing because I need you to see the back of the camera for this back in focus. OK, I just want you guys to see this. Okay? So the reason back button focus is a shooting and crappy light camera setting is because it's helping you focus. So here's the problem that I used to run into rides walking down the aisle at me, tracking her focus, trying to maybe do it on continuous. But the time I've locked in focused and click my shutter, she's two steps ahead, and she's autofocus, so I can't continuously focus on her. She's already out of focus that she's coming at me by the time I click. So this for tracking subjects, moving and trying to hold your focus. So what you want to be able to do so about that. What you want to be able to do is, uh, set your camera to continuous mode so it's continuously tracking somebody. What you want to separate. What's continuously tracking the button to keep that focus from your trigger? Because what would happen is that would do the half second click and she'd already moved. So on the back of your camera, you can tell your camera to make one of these buttons. Handle focus, and the reason that matters for the bride coming down the aisle at me is I can hold that focus, but in and it will track her, and I could just hold that in. It will track her as she's walking towards me and then click instead of having to do Focus split, focus click. It will track her as she walks at me. The other instance was the back of the backlight situation, because if I am trying Teoh lock my focus on the subject to recompose. Oh, and I want to grab exposure from over here, and I'm not on spot meter. The exposure, the trigger and your focus is all in one button so you can actually change in the back of cameras. So if I could see the back of the camera, here we go. OK, in my particular camera, my particular camera, it's under custom controls. And so if I click on custom controls, this is what it shows me. I can change what every single button in my camera does. So right now that top left one that's saying the trigger button. It does meet a ring and focus and trigger. That's what that says. If I click on this, I can tell it to just do metering Click that if I wanted to. Next, um, for this is showing you the but and lit up right now. I already have it set that I could make it meter Or do focusing. Aiken just set it to auto focus. I could set it to locking exposure. I can set it to whatever I want. So you can see in here that I make in set anything, all of these things. So I'm gonna dio that. And so now when I hold my A F button back here, this is what focuses hooked up this that's what focuses. So I just focused on you and I trigger I can click so I can hold, focus and click, and I'm holding focus in tracking you