Camera & Flash Settings
Lesson 7 from: Introduction to Flash for Children and Family ImagesMike Hagen
Camera & Flash Settings
Lesson 7 from: Introduction to Flash for Children and Family ImagesMike Hagen
Lessons
Class Introduction
06:37 2Gear For Flash Photography
19:00 3How to Use a Flash Meter
13:57 4Shoot: Flash & Light Meter Single Subject
10:42 5Setting Your White Balance
13:35 6Light Modifiers & Backgrounds
11:59 7Camera & Flash Settings
03:00 8Lighting Approaches For Individuals & Groups
11:13Shoot: With One Child
23:58 10Shoot: With Two Children
10:14 11Shoot: Create a Pure Black Background
04:05 12Shoot: Freeze Action
18:43 13Group Lighting & Posing Overview
05:38 14Shoot: Flash with Mom & Children
16:15 15Shoot: Flash with Dad & Children
08:14 16Shoot: Flash With Family on Couch
16:26 17Lightroom® Post Processing Overview
13:01 18Lightroom® Post Processing For Family
08:39 19Lighting For Black & White
06:14 20Shoot: Black & White Child Portraits
17:44 21Shoot: Etherial Child Portrait
07:41 22Heirloom Portrait Overview
05:04 23Shoot: Heirloom Portait
09:46 24Black & White Post Processing
22:50Lesson Info
Camera & Flash Settings
Real quick, I wanna go through your camera settings just to kinda get us prepped for the next segment, which we're gonna actually start taking pictures. Camera settings: I want you to set your ISO for about 200. In the studio, typically with these smaller flashes, we need to help out the flashes a little bit, so we're shooting with a little bit higher ISO than maybe you normally would. Today, I'm gonna be between 200 and probably 400. When I go to the big family shots this afternoon, I'll probably up my ISO to 400 because I need, that flash is gonna have to be pumping out a lot of light for the whole scene. Apertures, I'm at about f/5.6 for my single portraits. Shooting kids, kids are a lot more wobbly than adults. Brandon's pretty good about sitting here still, but his kids may not be, so with kids, I might actually go to f/8 to get even a little bit more depth of field. We'll see how that works. With families, you gotta shoot a smaller aperture. You got to, that's bad English, you mu...
st. Be at f/11, be at f/16, the reason why is because you've got depth now, you've got a kid in front, maybe on the lap. You've got mom, and then you've grandma behind all of that. You have to get some depth of field there so we'll be more like f/16 in those scenarios. Shutter speed, like I said before, around 1/200 of a second, 1/200, 1/250. Why, why are we doing that? We're doing that to cut out all the ambient light. We don't want any ambient light to show up in this photo 'cause we did all that work on white balance, now we don't want any weird color casts coming in. Flash sync, front curtain flash, and then white balance, custom white balance, I showed you how to do that, and then, file type, please shoot RAW. You're gonna be so happy you shot RAW, especially with these big photos. Sometimes you make an exposure mistake, and it's the only shot you got with grandma smiling, or the kid looking at the camera. You're gonna wish you shot RAW. For your flash settings, make sure that the remote is working, so make sure it's all speaking on the same channel and group. Set your flash power, well, that's all over the map. You saw with Brandon earlier, I was at a quarter power. That's a good starting point for most of your portraiture. Then, if you do shoot TTL, if you do, then your TTL range is all over the place. It may be down to minus two EV, 0 EV, or plus 2 EV. I'm not recommending shooting TTL for this class. This sounds kinda funny, but as your skills improve, a lot of times you can get away with TTL because you know exactly what's happening in the TTL mind, but if you don't, then sometimes TTL can send you for a loop because you're like, why is this photo so bright? Why is that photo so dark, what's going on? TTL can be more trouble than it's worth sometimes for fixed scenarios like this in the studio.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
user-182390
Great course really love the way Mike teaches so informative with very useful tips and tricks to use in photography
Dortohy Lyner
Loved this class. Great basic essential information. Mike filled in many gaps concerning my knowledge of studio photography.
Martin
Love the natural way Mike has to explain and to work on the studio. Plenty of tips and clear knowledge transfer for me that I manage quite well natural light but that I still mess with the on-camera flash.