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Book More Photography Clients Podcast | Photography Business, Photography Leads, Marketing
How I Shoot Indoors vs. Outdoors: My Exact Camera Setup
00:17:51
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- [00:01]
A
Hey friends, a quick note before we dive in. I'm currently recovering from surgery, so this month I'm sharing some incredible guest interviews where I was the one in the hot seat. These conversations are powerful, they are packed with value and I know you're going to love them. Enjoy the episode and I can't wait to be back with you soon.
- [00:22]
Welcome to the Book More Clients Photography Podcast. You can stop spending hours on Google and YouTube because you just found your number one resource for growing a profitable and sustainable photography business. Hi, I'm Brooke Jefferson. I'm a believer wife, mama to two and Oklahoma family photographer. I left the classroom in 2018 to pursue my photography career full time. Now I'm here to help you do the same. In this podcast we're covering the most asked about topics including pricing, marketing, client experience, and all things systems and workflows. You won't find any fluff or BS here. Just tried and true Strategy Strategy. Are you ready? Grab your kids some snacks and charge those camera batteries. It's time to jump in.
- [01:13]
It's finally the days right before Christmas. I hope that you are settling in, enjoying some off time, some rest. I hope that you guys are spending lots of quality time during the holidays and really honestly just paying attention to those kiddos. I know what a juggle it is to run a business or multiple in my case and run a household. It's a lot. It's a lot. So this is one of my favorite times of the year. I can promise you I am taking it easy in December. I'm still working, definitely behind the scenes, but I am taking a lot of rest time. I'm watching a lot of Christmas movies. I guarantee you I am decluttering my house and the minute Christmas is over we will be removing all the Christmas decor. I like a fresh clean house for the new year, so that's where I'll be. If you're curious today, I'm hoping for a short and sweet episode. This has been one of the most asked questions that I've gotten from my coaching clients and blueprint students here lately and I thought I better just create an episode for this because I know that I was curious just like many of you are. So today I am letting you in behind the scenes on what my camera settings are for indoor and outdoor locations. I hope that this becomes an episode that transforms your settings, especially for those of you that were like me in the beginning and had no idea what you're doing. So you're just going to figure it out. Some of these things I'VE learned from going to in person workshops and asking either the mentor that's leading it or, you know, talking to other people. I've learned some of this stuff from YouTube. I've learned a lot of this from trial and error. And again, I just want to make a little claim here that these are not one size fits all settings. These settings are going to depend on the camera that you use, which I'll be sharing what I use. But it depends on your camera, it depends on your lenses. It depends on is it a sunny day, a cloudy day. It depends on where you're located. If you're in a place that's going to be way more on the hillside or dark or have a lot of shadows, it's going to be different compared to those of us that have more open fields and grassy areas. So keep all of this in mind. Just because you may not use these exact settings doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong. It doesn't mean I'm doing anything wrong. I want you to take what I'm saying, try it out, and figure out what works best for you. That is my only purpose of this episode. And I will say a lot of the clients that I have shared this information with have seen a night and day difference in their images and are really pleased with the advice that I gave them. So without further ado, let's do it. So a few things that I need you to know about my sessions before I give you the camera settings. I shoot about an hour ish before sunset, so I am a sunset photographer through and through unless I am shooting indoor. And when I'm shooting indoor, I am typically photographing between 10am to 2pm so it just depends. But that's the two different times of day that I shoot. I will not shoot an outdoor session at any other time than in the evening. That's just my preference. I am photographing my clients in the state of Oklahoma, so we are typically using locations like open fields, lakes, grassy areas, areas with trees, sometimes forested areas, and occasionally some mountains, which if you live in a place that has real mountains, then I'm talking about hills. But that is where I am typically photographing most of my clients. I also so if we talk about indoor, I do photograph a few in home sessions and I do have a studio and I'm giving you camera settings for outdoor, indoor and studio. So they're all coming. I photograph with a Canon EOS R. It's a mirrorless camera. It's the most basic one you can get. I have actually not upgraded to the latest and greatest version. One of the best tips that I was ever given was once you purchase your first full frame camera to stick with that as long as you can. A lot of times just upgrading your camera or a lens itself is not enough to make a huge difference in your images. Now sometimes absolutely. But most of the time what you can master with what you have is going to get you a lot further rather than putting yourself into debt over 3,000 or $4,000. Camera or lens. You what I mean, so that was the best thing that I was ever told. Now what I will say is if you are currently shooting with a crop sensor and if you don't know what your camera is, a quick Google search is going to tell you this. Okay. When I first started shooting I was using a borrowed Canon Rebel and I don't remember the little letters and numbers but I was a Canon Rebel girl. It was not a full frame camera, it was a crop sensor. And the minute I upgraded to the Mark series, so the canon Mark 2 I think was the very next camera. It was my first camera I paid for. That was night and day difference because I saw why my images and why my frames looked so different than the other professional photographers in my area. So I will say if you are on a crop sensor and you can afford to go ahead and move to a full frame, it does not have to be any of the mirrorless cameras. Great if it is, it is new technology. But I would get yourself to a full frame camera as quickly as possible and then stick with that camera for a couple of years before you trade up. Okay. So I shoot with L series Canon lenses and then I have a couple of Sigma lenses as well. And I'm cringing as I'm saying this because my canon L series 50 millimeter has some error going on with it and I have to purchase a new one and I'm actually going to get a different kind of lens. It's a Canon lens, but I think it's the EF series and I am cringing at the price but I have to do it like it's. It's not even a. I want it, it's. I have to. So anyway, have fun with, have fun with that. Go look up lens prices. It's so fun. Let me tell you about it. Okay, So I use 35 millimeter and 50 millimeter. I would say 90, 95% of the time. Very rarely do I pull out my 85, but that's it. Those are the only three that I use that I have ever used. I do prime lenses. I do not like zoom lenses. I'm probably weird in that sense, but I get a clearer image out of prime lenses than I ever have from zoom lenses. And that is just a brook personal opinion. Okay, let's get into the settings and then we're going to have you take notes. Outdoor settings. So ISO and I'm going to give you guys just a couple of standard tips. Your ISO always needs to be as low as it can go while still providing you enough light. Okay? Another thing you guys should know too, I shoot underexposed, so I underexpose one or two stops. Just so you all know. I try, I really try to underexpose. Occasionally I will accidentally overexposed by one, but most times I am under exposing and bringing back my highlights and whites in post editing. That's another thing that's really important for you guys to note because if you are a light, bright, airy photographer, these are probably not going to be the correct settings for you. Okay, back to outdoor settings. Let's start all over. ISO. You always want your ISO to be as low as it can possibly go. Okay? However, you are going to have to crank that baby up in multiple different occasions and settings. All right? So ISO as low as it can go. Your aperture, which is going to be also known as your f stop, it's the One that's like 2.8, 4.0. That one. Okay. If you are googling how to use the little triangle and the aperture thing, they're always going to tell you to. However many heads you have in the picture is what your F stop is. That could not be further from the truth. Unless you are shooting events or weddings or extended families, you are actually going to want to keep your aperture, your f stop pretty low. So again, we'll come back to that in just a second. But keep in mind that the lower your F stop is, the more light you are letting into your lens, the higher it is that you're 4.0 and above. That is going to close out light. It's going to be darker image shutter speed. This is one of those things I learned from a mentor and from when I was at an in person workshop. Shutter speed is movement. It's how much detail do you want captured. So if you're finding that if you're a family photographer and you have a lot of wild, rambunctious kids and you're finding that those images are more blurry than you would like them to be, it is probably because of your shutter speed. So I Hear people say, oh, I'm shooting, you know, a one over 200. And guys, I don't know if you guys are calling this 500s. If you're like, I don't know what you're calling this, but I'm literally gonna just say the fraction. Okay? So if you're photographing 1/200 or 1/250, it's too low for a family session. You need to crank that up. My mentor taught me like 1 over 500 at an outdoor family session is going to be the least amount. Like that needs to be the lowest you go. Because if you're wanting to capture the blowing hair and the kids running and still have them in somewhat focus, that's the higher your shutter speed needs to be. Now again, the higher your shutter speed, the more you're going to need to adjust your ISO or your aperture. Okay. Because it all connects when you're shooting in manual. It all connects to one another. And then also I. This is white balance. If you're shooting an auto white balance and you enjoy it, amazing. One of the things I learned was to shoot in Kelvin. I used to be terrified. I would recommend that you either shoot Kelvin, which means you're setting your own white balance, you're setting your own tone, if you will, and I'll explain it in just a second, or you do the auto white balance. All those extra little settings on your camera, I would not use them. They don't really turn out well. And there's so much extra that you have to do in post editing. So those are the two. The quicker you can learn Kelvin and you can master that, the happier you're going to be with your images. So all that to say, here we go, outdoor settings. So this is a typical sunset family session for myself. My ISO, I start at 200. My aperture is about 2.8. And then I try to go as low as I can go throughout the session for different parts. Shutter speed is 1 over 500 at minimum. And then I increase it as high as I need to go, which typically I don't really like to go above a thousand or twelve hundred. I really like to keep it right there and then my Kelvin. So again, this is like your automatic. Your Sorry, not your automatic. This is your white balance. This is your tone. I like to shoot with a little bit of a warmer tone and outdoor anyway. And that is why my Kelvin is typically around 6,800. And then as we head into blue hour, I increase this a little bit as well. So that is my outdoor Settings, my indoor settings. So this is for in someone's home. So my ISO I started at around 400 to 600. That's the range that I start at because again, it's pretty dark in there. My aperture, again, 2.2 to 2.8. Shutter speed now it's lower because when I'm in someone's home, they're typically like, we're not running around in a grassy field, we're typically being pretty still. And it's usually like a family newborn session. So things have a much slower pace, They're a little more, you know, candid pose, that kind of thing. And so my shutter speed here is usually around 1 over 250 and my Kelvin settings. And guys, this changes from house to house, but as an Average it's around 5,500. Around 5,500. The lower you go, the bluer your image will get. The higher you go, the more yellow warm your image will get. I would say around 5,000 to 5,500 is somewhere right there in the middle. And that's what's going to help you achieve those better white balance tones and skin tones. So if you really want to mess with skin tones, that goes back to your settings. Okay, last thing. Oh, and I also want to say I do have a Godox V1. I think. Tell me why do I think every time I say that I think of that V8 juice in the store. I don't know why. Okay, so I have a Godox V1 and I will occasionally use that if it's really, really dark in someone's home or it's so cloudy just happened. I don't know why, but I feel like all of my in home newborn sessions, which I don't do a ton anymore, but every time I have one, the sun's like, yep, never mind, let's send a storm yalls way. It's just, it's phenomenal. So that's another thing to know as well if you need extra light. I love my Godox flash. Okay, last but not least is studio settings. So in my studio I am typically either doing Christmas minis mini sessions or like cake SM smashes, which again, my cake smashes are from families that are continuing to grow their family. It's not like I'm trying to niche in three different things. All of these sessions I'm talking about are my like loyal repeat clients over and over and over again. So that's just a side note. Studio settings. My ISO is around 500 to start with. Typically I would say on a good day. It's 500. My aperture is again, 2.2 to 2.8. I don't leave this often. Occasionally I'll go down a little bit lower than that for like a detailed shot. But you're gonna find me in my happy zone, which is 2.2 to 2.8. Shutter speed is 1 over 250 to 1 over 400. And then Kelvin is 5,000 to 5,600, typically for the studio. So again, I try to keep it right there in the neutral zone and then I can, like, fix everything in post editing. Okay, that was a lot of numbers and I'm not a math girl, so I hope you were taking notes. You may have to slow me down to listen to this again. But we also have a blog post and we're going to put all of this in there as well, if you like the nitty gritty, you know, camera settings, episodes, and how I pose and prompt clients and things like that. Check the show notes because we're going to link a couple of other episodes that relate to this one. That way you can go ahead and get your binge done and over with and friend while you're here. If you love this podcast and it really does bring value to your business and to your day, I would love it if you would just take two minutes right now and go leave us a five star review and a rating. Tell me, why do you love this? Why do you keep coming back to my podcast? Or was this the very first episode you ever listened to? I would love to know that too. Thank you so much for tuning in and I will catch you guys on the next one. Have a Merry Christmas.