Changing Conditions and Camera Settings
by admin
The other day I had the opportunity to do a photoshoot with Australian motivational speaker Sam Cawthorn. We started in a fairly dark film-studio with permanent lighting ans just used the place for an indoor shoot to basically squeeze as much as possible into a short timeframe. This meant, higher ISO, different white-balance, different lenses etc. The inside shoot went pretty well, and was fun work with which is no surprise when youw ork with someone so enthusiastic and outgoing as Sam.
But I wanted a bit more, I wanted daylight, colors, texture and a bit of live. So out we stepped into a bright sunny Melbourne Saturday morning in St. Kilda.
We got going, I popped on the 70-200, F2.8 and I was shooting some nice portraits down a small alley with brick buildings and some background action. Now this was happening really fast and as I was shooting the first frames, I just somehow realised that the shutter speed (shooting in Aperture Priority) was really fast something around 1/5000 sec. It should have clicked immediately! But it took a little while .. until I realised I had changed my ISO settings from Auto to manual and pumped them up considerably when I shot inside. Now, I was still shooting on that High ISO and got lightning shutter speeds – and grain. Well, once it did click it was an easy fix, ISO back down to 100 and all was good. I still had time and I still had a few CF cards to fill.
BUT … what if I hadn’t realised, what if I had continued to shoot at a high ISO? or any other setting had changed? A lot of my shots would have been more grainy than necessary, maybe even lost and parts of the shot could’ve been lost. The ISO setting is really just one example of this.
Now this doesn’t happen always and often you have more time at hand. Understood. But, a lot of this comes back to establishing a fixed workflow forcing yourself to check everything you do. Typically this means, when changing locations, lighting scenarios or else, to go through a checklist to make sure you’re all set for the next phase of the shoot.
Images RAW – Check, WB – check, ISO – check, Metering mode – check, Single or Continuous – check, Batteries – check, CF cards – check (if cards are getting full and you got a natural break in the shoot, change them). If you shoot speedlights such as an SB 800 or SB 900, a few extra items can be added to that list.
It all comes down to your preferred shooting style and environment requirements to get the results you want. Don’t let sloppy practice get in the way of the perfect moment – especially when shooting on the fly or covering a developing story.
It all reminds me a bit of flying. It always seemed to me when doing my Privat Pilot’s Licence that check-lists are 80% of the game – and they are. Photography is a bit like that.
Now thankfully there is another thing you can do. Save your standard basic settings on an old CF card – a 128mb will suffice. In Nikon Camera Menu, got the Set-Up Menu (or the Spanner Menu) and scroll down to Save/Load Settings. Your camera will either let you save setting onto a CF card or load settings from a CF card. Pop it in, load your pre-saved standard settings and know that you got the camera ready for your shoot.
Comments
hi 58, have you gotten yourself a nikon in parallel to your canon ?
i have recently tried HDR with that amazing german program called photomatix – heard of it ? Anyway it has another great function called Fusion in case you make three photos where on each one you moved slightly it corrects that. On this follows my question, in order to make photos to be used for HDR, i use the Bracketing function, i set their level on 1. I switch on that function that allows you to make photos one after the other on one press / in this case it will always make 3 – but always doesn’t do it, sometimes it just makes 2. Also its slow, and until you have all three clicks, you already have moved slightly, even if you use the tripod. Interesting to read about your ISO settings. I usually make photos during the day, i use ISO 200 standard, should i increase it and it would shoot faster ? Other question would be, is there a way to set the timer that when it launches that it makes those 3 clicks one after the other on its own ?… I still use the “P” function, hope to get there someday with some understanding of: “We got going, I popped on the 70-200, F2.8″…
Hey there … this is how to shoot an HDR: http://fiftyeight.net/2010/04/10/hdr-photography-how-do-shoot-an-hdr/