White Balance C&C

[Christie Photo]

I usually shoot in aperture per recommendation of my current instructor and several entries on this forum. Is that a bad way to shoot?

Not at all. You have more control shooting manual, but that leaves more decision making up to you.

You have time for this in portraiture. You can put the camera on a tripod and assess the situation, choosing focal length, depth-of-field, camera angle, refine posing, survey background, etc. This all comes with experience and understanding.

Aperture mode is fine, especially in rapidly changing conditions.

Good luck!

-Pete

 

[KmH]

I suspect the hand is white because it has more light on it than her face does.

If so and you metered off her face, the hand has more exposure.

 

[NebraskaNewGirl]

I suspect the hand is white because it has more light on it than her face does.

If so and you metered off her face, the hand has more exposure.

Yes because that was where I focused and then recomposed the shot. I'm obviously doing that wrong. I should instead use the AE lock button to set the metering and then I can focus off her face. Is this correct?

 

[NebraskaNewGirl]

I usually shoot in aperture per recommendation of my current instructor and several entries on this forum. Is that a bad way to shoot?

Not at all. You have more control shooting manual, but that leaves more decision making up to you.

You have time for this in portraiture. You can put the camera on a tripod and assess the situation, choosing focal length, depth-of-field, camera angle, refine posing, survey background, etc. This all comes with experience and understanding.

Aperture mode is fine, especially in rapidly changing conditions.

Good luck!

-Pete

I will try. Manual mode is quite scary to a newb like me. Shooting in Aperature at least makes it one less thing I have to fiddle with and mess up. To improve the exposure, I need to decrease aperature in order to lengthen shutter speed and be able to use the lowest ISO setting possible. Correct?

 

[GnipGnop]

When I shoot slow moving stuff like people posing, in general I follow this: shutter speed 1/60th or faster depending on how steady of a hand you are, from there, I keep my ISO as low as possible, and adjust aperture to help with DoF, sharpness etc. Others people will have other methods, but if I prioritize like that, I usually come out with good results. Keep in mind that this is very general advice. I usually don't care about having perfect photos straight out of the camera, so I don't even touch WB until I get editing in Lightroom/Capture One or Digital Photo Professional.

As for exposure, play around with the methods above, making sure not to shoot any slower than 1/60th. I think it's better to not use a tripod as it gives you more flexibility when you're shooting. Tripods to me, are only helpful when the exposure is 1/40th or slower.

 

[MReid]

Stick with Aperture, you can control your depth of field and shutter speed with it.
You are correct to let the camera make the necessary adjustment to exposure, also use Evaluative/Matrix metering. This way the camera will make necessary adjustment that are necessary because you camera wants to make everything gray.
Keep your blinkies on and learn to use your exposure compensation dial to make quick adjustments if things are blown out or to dark.

Especially in the early stages of your education keep it simple and let that expensive camera earn it's way. Spend your time taking pictures instead of fiddling with your camera.

In the digital world taking photos can be very complicated, adjusting everything yourself....or very simple, let the camera do it.

If you are shooting jpegs sounds like you may need to reduce the setting for contrast.
If I were you I would not mess with raw right now....you have enough things to work on already sounds like....keep it fun and learn 1 thing at a time.

 

[NebraskaNewGirl]

Stick with Aperture, you can control your depth of field and shutter speed with it.
You are correct to let the camera make the necessary adjustment to exposure, also use Evaluative/Matrix metering. This way the camera will make necessary adjustment that are necessary because you camera wants to make everything gray.
Keep your blinkies on and learn to use your exposure compensation dial to make quick adjustments if things are blown out or to dark.

Especially in the early stages of your education keep it simple and let that expensive camera earn it's way. Spend your time taking pictures instead of fiddling with your camera.

In the digital world taking photos can be very complicated, adjusting everything yourself....or very simple, let the camera do it.

If you are shooting jpegs sounds like you may need to reduce the setting for contrast.
If I were you I would not mess with raw right now....you have enough things to work on already sounds like....keep it fun and learn 1 thing at a time.

LOL. Indeed I do have a lot to work on. I did a shoot over the weekend, using Evaluative Metering and my focus was all over the place. Was this the culprit? Or the fact that my Aperature was wide open on a 1.8 lens?

 

[MLeeK]

Aperture wide open is your culprit. Metering has no effect on focus. F/1.8 is hard to shoot at and get good focus. First it's not the sharpest the lens can be and that is a huge strike against you. Then at f/1.8 you have such a shallow DOF that if you are even slightly off you are OOF.

 

[MReid]

The trick is to keep it simple at first, stay away from raw and manual until you know why you may want to give them a try.

Use Evaluative metering (only affects exposure)
Single Point Focus (you put the focus point right where you want it, on the eye if you are shooting people)
1.8 is fine if you are not focus and recomposing and close to your subject, and want razor thin depth of field. I use it a lot when shooting people.
Until you get more confident with your focusing try 2.8 or 4 if you still have focus misses.
Check your focus at 1.8 to make sure your camera and lens combination is focusing where you think it is....sometimes the focus may actually be in front or behind and then adjustments/fixes are needed.

For white balance, I always leave it on Auto, then in post I click on something white with the eyedropper if any adjustment is needed. If you are shooting jpegs auto will be fine for outside but for inside you will need to change the wb setting to the type of light that is present when shooting...often some adjustment is needed.

If you process in Lightroom you can do everything to a jpeg that you can do to a raw....the only difference is that if something is blown out there is less lattitude for recover with jpeg.

 

[NebraskaNewGirl]

The trick is to keep it simple at first, stay away from raw and manual until you know why you may want to give them a try.

Use Evaluative metering (only affects exposure)
Single Point Focus (you put the focus point right where you want it, on the eye if you are shooting people)
1.8 is fine if you are not focus and recomposing and close to your subject, and want razor thin depth of field. I use it a lot when shooting people.
Until you get more confident with your focusing try 2.8 or 4 if you still have focus misses.
Check your focus at 1.8 to make sure your camera and lens combination is focusing where you think it is....sometimes the focus may actually be in front or behind and then adjustments/fixes are needed.

For white balance, I always leave it on Auto, then in post I click on something white with the eyedropper if any adjustment is needed. If you are shooting jpegs auto will be fine for outside but for inside you will need to change the wb setting to the type of light that is present when shooting...often some adjustment is needed.

If you process in Lightroom you can do everything to a jpeg that you can do to a raw....the only difference is that if something is blown out there is less lattitude for recover with jpeg.

Great advice. Thank you so much. And I process in Photoshop CS5 or Camera RAW.

 

[MTVision]

And as you probably already know you can edit JPEGS the same way in camera raw as you can a RAW file.

 

[NebraskaNewGirl]

And as you probably already know you can edit JPEGS the same way in camera raw as you can a RAW file.

Yes I figured out how to do that last night after a few trial and errors.

 

[DiskoJoe]

white balance? Id be more worried about the missed focus and white balance later.

 

[NebraskaNewGirl]

Ok. So I'm submitting this in hopes that I have improved at least a little. As I was taking this picture a few hours ago (and a few others in this series), I thought about aperature and shutter speed, correct expose and of course focusing on the subjects eye. I then corrected the WB in postedit. Critiques?

 

[The_Traveler]

That last picture was much, much better than the first.
The first one was too difficult a situation with the background in sunlight and the foreground relatively small and darker.
Pick a more comforting environment with less variation in the light and without large bright background with subject in shade.