Family Shots Take Two Need Help With Settings

[BCordeiroPhotography]

Hello Everyone i have learn on my d7000 that it was not the lens or the body that was making everything out of focus on the first photo shoot of a family of 3 that i was shooting last week and we are you to retry the shoot again this weekend can someone please help me on what setting i should be using on my NIKON D7000 to shoot the family for 3 please i would highly appreciate it.


DSLR= Nikon D7000
Lens= Sigma 17-50mm f2.8





Thanks From
BCordeiro Photography

 

[tirediron]

There's no magic 'setting' that will produce perfect pictures, rather you need to understand how each of the variable work and inter-relate to the others in order to acheive the result you want. Those settings will vary depending on location, light, time of day, background.... if you have absolutely no idea, then set the camera to 'Auto' ("Green Box" mode) and snap away; it will normally provide acceptable results. I would however suggest you read these tutorials as well as search YouTube for topics such as, "Exposure triangle", "DSLR metering" and "family portraiture".

 

[BCordeiroPhotography]

ok not a problem i will start reading now

 

[KmH]

The settings you would consider using outside would be a lot different than the settings you would be using inside.

It boils down to how much light you have to work with - the light quality and direction (direct sunlight, open shade, cloudy, solid but light overcast, heavy overcast) your artistic and technical goals for the shoot - like poses, depth-of-field (DoF), lighting ratios, lighting styles, etc.

A basic outdoor portrait kit has more than just a camera and lens.
Also needed are tools to provide fill light, like a reflector and a flash unit.
Light from a flash unit usually works best if the light is not on the camera hot shoe and is known as Off Camera Flash or OCF.

Strobist: Lighting 101
http://neilvn.com/tangents/flash-photography-techniques/

Settings you would want to be mindful of are - the shooting mode, ISO, lens aperture, shutter speed, focus mode, focus area mode, light metering mode and white balance.
Use the lowest ISO you can.
Center-weighted metering works well for portraits as long as subjects are fore lit. If your subjects are back lit switch to spot metering and meter on the subjects faces, but fill light from a flash unit can help keep from over exposing the background.
Since you will have 3 subjects you'll need to make sure you use point of focus (PoF) distance and lens aperture settings that provide sufficient depth-of-field to have what you want in focus actually in focus. If you want the backgrounds out of focus be sure the backgrounds are well beyond the far limit of the DoF.

Here is an online DoF calculator you can use in addition to the one in the tutorials John linked you to - Online Depth of Field Calculator

Use AF-S focus mode. You might want to practice using the AF Dynamic Area mode that lets you use the 9 cross-type AF points thew D7000 has.
You might want to review the section on Focus - pages 91-100 of your D7000 users manual, and Exposure/Bracketing (Metering) pages 105 - 116.
The section on White Balance - pages 117 - 130 are kind of important too.

 

[Braineack]

There's no magic 'setting' that will produce perfect pictures, rather you need to understand how each of the variable work and inter-relate to the others in order to acheive the result you want. Those settings will vary depending on location, light, time of day, background.... if you have absolutely no idea, then set the camera to 'Auto' ("Green Box" mode) and snap away; it will normally provide acceptable results. I would however suggest you read these tutorials as well as search YouTube for topics such as, "Exposure triangle", "DSLR metering" and "family portraiture".

Someone that runs a photography business should have an "idea"...

 

[BCordeiroPhotography]

I do have a idea i just wanted to see what other people use i know all about f stops iso and stutter speeds

 

[The_Traveler]

I do have a idea i just wanted to see what other people use i know all about f stops iso and stutter speeds

is that on your business card?

 

[robbins.photo]

Hello Everyone i have learn on my d7000 that it was not the lens or the body that was making everything out of focus on the first photo shoot of a family of 3 that i was shooting last week and we are you to retry the shoot again this weekend can someone please help me on what setting i should be using on my NIKON D7000 to shoot the family for 3 please i would highly appreciate it.


DSLR= Nikon D7000
Lens= Sigma 17-50mm f2.8





Thanks From
BCordeiro Photography

Ok, well I guess my first question would be have you determined why your first attempts were out of focus so that at least that issue has been corrected?

 

[BCordeiroPhotography]

yes that issue was corrected i had to fine focus my body.

Hello Everyone i have learn on my d7000 that it was not the lens or the body that was making everything out of focus on the first photo shoot of a family of 3 that i was shooting last week and we are you to retry the shoot again this weekend can someone please help me on what setting i should be using on my NIKON D7000 to shoot the family for 3 please i would highly appreciate it.


DSLR= Nikon D7000
Lens= Sigma 17-50mm f2.8





Thanks From
BCordeiro Photography

Ok, well I guess my first question would be have you determined why your first attempts were out of focus so that at least that issue has been corrected?

 

[robbins.photo]

yes that issue was corrected i had to fine focus my body.

Hello Everyone i have learn on my d7000 that it was not the lens or the body that was making everything out of focus on the first photo shoot of a family of 3 that i was shooting last week and we are you to retry the shoot again this weekend can someone please help me on what setting i should be using on my NIKON D7000 to shoot the family for 3 please i would highly appreciate it.


DSLR= Nikon D7000
Lens= Sigma 17-50mm f2.8





Thanks From
BCordeiro Photography

Ok, well I guess my first question would be have you determined why your first attempts were out of focus so that at least that issue has been corrected?

Ok, well thats good news, at least that problem is out of the way. I'll be honest I'm not really certain what sort of advice your really looking for here, or what sort of knowledge level you already have on the subject so I'll just keep it general and basic. As far as camera settings it's a trade off. Lower aperture number settings (shooting wider open) mean less DOF which means you need to be careful in posing subjects so that they are more or less on the same horizontal plane relative to the camera's lens. Otherwise you'll wind up with shots where one of the family will be in sharp focus and the others not so much.

Decreasing your aperture (by increasing the F number) will increase your DOF to help compensate, but it also means that at some point your ISO will start having to increase as well for the proper exposure depending on the available lighting. It also means that your background will come into sharper focus as well, meaning less seperation from the background which means you really need to look for backgrounds that are interesting and will add something to the shot if that's the route you decide to take.

No idea if any of that might be helpful, but hopefully it will be - good luck.

 

[BCordeiroPhotography]

Thank you so much that was very helpful im going out today to take some test shots with a friend that has a family of 4 so i will get better understand of lighting and etc

yes that issue was corrected i had to fine focus my body.

Ok, well I guess my first question would be have you determined why your first attempts were out of focus so that at least that issue has been corrected?

Ok, well thats good news, at least that problem is out of the way. I'll be honest I'm not really certain what sort of advice your really looking for here, or what sort of knowledge level you already have on the subject so I'll just keep it general and basic. As far as camera settings it's a trade off. Lower aperture number settings (shooting wider open) mean less DOF which means you need to be careful in posing subjects so that they are more or less on the same horizontal plane relative to the camera's lens. Otherwise you'll wind up with shots where one of the family will be in sharp focus and the others not so much.

Decreasing your aperture (by increasing the F number) will increase your DOF to help compensate, but it also means that at some point your ISO will start having to increase as well for the proper exposure depending on the available lighting. It also means that your background will come into sharper focus as well, meaning less seperation from the background which means you really need to look for backgrounds that are interesting and will add something to the shot if that's the route you decide to take.

No idea if any of that might be helpful, but hopefully it will be - good luck.

 

[TWright33]

I do have a idea i just wanted to see what other people use i know all about f stops iso and stutter speeds

is that on your business card?

This might be my favorite post I've seen on TPF

 

[IronMaskDuval]

I do have a idea i just wanted to see what other people use i know all about f stops iso and stutter speeds

If you know this stuff, you'd know better than to ask what other people use for their settings. Each environment requires its own settings, and even in each specific environment themselves, settings should be changed dependent on the task you are trying to accomplish.

 

[BCordeiroPhotography]

I guess this was a dumb question.

 

[BrickHouse]

I find that asking specific questions will always get better responses than broad sweeping questions. Asking something like "if I were shooting 4 people from a distance of 4 meters on a 50mm prime at 1/125, ISO 100, what in your experience would be a good f-stop to get appropriate DOF?" and someone would likely post within minutes a handy DOF calculator and you'd have a great answer. If you ask something like "how do I take good photos?" then you're likely to get snark.