People often ask me “What settings do you use?” It’s pretty simple. 99% of the time I’m in “full manual,” meaning I am setting the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO settings. (Rarely I will also focus manually.) That’s a lot of factors to control. The way that I’ve come to really speed up changing my settings is by finding “home” in a particular shooting environment. By this I mean remembering what my aperture and shutter speed should be to get a proper exposure, so that when I deviate from that for one reason or another, I know exactly what to dial in without having to play around and miss shots.
Each environment is different and so you have to learn what “home” is every time you shoot. More often than not, however, the settings will be close. When I’m lighting the scene with speed lights, I will actually adjust the power of the lights (manually) in order to achieve a desirable “home” setting. I do this because I know what the exposure should be to give myself some latitude in order to over and under expose the scene without having to adjust the power of the lights.
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A mix of sun and shade on David and Liz.
