NightClub Photography: All you need to get started

1. Intro: Have you ever seen a nightclub photographer and often wounds to be in their shoes? I know the feeling of knowing nothing about what camera and lens to buy. What settings do I need to know if I need a flash, how to focus correctly, how to replicate images with melted background like this, how to edit images, and much more. After 500 events over the past six years and having tested different setups, and in order to help others to follow this path, I made this course where I stated all the info, you need to become a nightclub photographer. You will learn from years of experience to avoid Camma mistakes and step up in the game fast. 2. WHAT CAMERA YOU NEED: Welcome to the equipment section of this course where we're talking about what camera should I buy? What key features do I need to look for? What I bought when I started class photography, and Pete says mistakes I did in order to save you some time and money. I spent hours of researching what gear to buy and learned what it works and what doesn't. After using different setups over the past years, I have some good answers to give you today. To begin with, we will prefer a full frame body over a crop size sensor camera, as Bigger sensor does collect more light in terms of total light gather per square millimeters. It has more stops on dynamic range and better low light IO performance. Will explain all that features next, and we will see some recommendations. But the first thing you need to ask yourself is what's my budget? If your budget for the camera is $1,000, you will probably look for something like the Nikon, Z five Nikon D 7,500 Canon EOS R ten. We will see that we can take great pictures even with cropped sensor. The camera I used most was the Nikon D 7,200 with the 18 to one oh five kit lens with a med flash. And we will talk in the next lesson why we want to avoid kit lens. All that cost me back then, $1,500 for the camera plus $200 for the flash. With that setup and some other lenses that we will see next, I was able to shoot hundreds of events before I upgraded to Canon EOS R mirrors system. If your budget is under $2,000, you can look for the full frame cannon, EOS R six, Mark two, Nikon, Z six, Mark two. If your budget is under $3,000, you can look for the cannon EOS R five. Icon, Z six, Mark three. I would not recommend buying such expensive gear, especially if you are starting now. As we will see, it's not much of what gear you have, but how to use what you have. Furthermore, you will be surrounded by drunk people or serve stuff moving fast, and anything could happen. Just buy what you can afford and upgrade later as you close more and more photo suits. If you do have one of those, definitely, you can use this powerful camera. Now, how did I get started? I always get asked this question because people don't know where to start. All they know is they want to be able to capture professional images in nightclubs and make money doing so. My first glance in nightclub photography was with the camera I own, a Fuji film, HS 25, but after my first demo shootings, and although I had zero experience, I saw that the image quality was far behind all others I saw on social media. They were not good or sharp enough and researched what to buy next and upgraded to an icon D 7,200, as it was back then recently announced. Today, we would look for a body with these ten features, full frame sensor for wider field of view and higher IO performance. Large sensor has larger pixels, which creates less noise at higher IO a decent dynamic range, at least 13 stops for pushing colors and sudo is in post, articulating screen for taking pictures from above Raw image format in addition to JPEG for editing purposes, Wi Fi function, as many clients want to send them some photos to share on social media during the event, ability to autofocus faster and thus shoot faster. With the Fuji, I missed many shots as it needed some seconds between shots, large possible choices for lenses, aperture and shatter speed dials, cheaper cameras may them in the menu, and it will slow you down. At least 24 megapixel in order to crop image in post if needed without losing detail. And finally, double memory card slot for backup in case one of them fails. The Nicon D 7,200 was my decision, as it had most of the key features I needed, and generally, I saw that it was at the time on the top options at my $1,500 price range with the lens. Once I saw it with that setup for some years and have saved some money, I was looking to upgrade between 2000 $3,000, and I bought the cannon ESR. Again, as I mentioned earlier, when you start, you do not need expensive camera gear. Keep in mind that knowing how to use your current gear will bring you better results than owning the best gear out there, but without the knowledge of using it. Generally speaking, buying decent gear means that will save you time of post processing, such as fixing colors in post, focusing and shooting faster, among other things than the cheapest setup out there. These are some images that I took with the icon D 7,200 at the Sigma 30 millimeter lens, and we will see more in a later section. Eventually, full frame or crop sensor, full frame has a wider field of view, more dynamic grains, and is better in low light conditions than crop sensor cameras. But if you are starting now and you are on a budget, we saw that we can capture quality images even with cropped body. Ideally, we need a body that is full frame for low light capabilities, high dynamic grains, Wi Fi as it may needed to post a photo during the event to social media and the lens that has certain features, and we will see them in the next lesson. Okay, in this lesson, we saw what we need to look for when buying a camera body. These are my top ten features to help you with your buying decision, and we will see more on later sections. Just look for the features that are more important to your needs. Next, we will talk about lenses that are one of the most important gear to help us achieve the best results. 3. WHAT LENS YOU NEED (PART1): Okay, once we know what camera to use, it is time to choose a lens for the camera body. Now, why do we need to bother with what lens to buy and not just get a kid lens? Because lens is one of the most, if not the most important piece of gear that affect the quality of our images, especially in dark conditions. That's why we will see what are the main features to look for when buying our new lens. Lenses have three key elements. What is the captured area? What is the maximum light that can let in? How well are able to capture images. We will see more about aperture as Rkness later, but now let's see what focal length means in nightclub photograph. Focal length in millimeters is how much of the scene our camera will be able to capture. The three lens types that we will see are wide angle lens that takes in more of the scene than what's perceived by the human eye. It provides a wider field of view or angle of view. Common focal lengths of this type are 14 millimeters to 35 millimeters, standard or normal lens like the 50 millimeters. 85 to 200 millimeters are telephoto lenses that have Zoom field of view. What focal length do we need for the portrait shots? We will need a 35 to 50 millimeters. If we want to capture the whole scene of the venue in just one photo, we will prefer a winding lens, something like 24 millimeters. In this way, the club will look more crowded. Keep in mind, though, that white or ultra white lens will distort people faces if we take close up portrait shots. A telephoto lens like the 70 to 200 or an 85 millimeters require a long distance between us from the subject in order to be able to focus. It requires at least 1.4 meters, and in action, it is not always possible keeping that distance, especially in a tiny club. Now, let's say we do not need a telephoto lens, and we need only a standard and a wide lens. Why do we need two or even three different lenses and don't just get a kit lens with 18 to 105? This is where aperture get into play, normally kit lenses do not have 1.4 aperture, and that is the main reason we cannot use them in nightclub photography. I personally prefer a 35 millimeters on full frame that is not ultra white and simultaneously not a telephoto. My main distance from the subject was two to eight feet or 0.5 to 2.5 meters. And in that distance, a wide lens may distort people's faces, and with the Zoomed view of a telephoto lens, I would capture only one person's face. It's a personal preference, but I only shoot 10% with a wide lens and only at peak hours or when I want to show the whole scene in one picture. That's why I prefer having on my camera a 35 millimeters F 1.4 on a full frame camera 90% of the time. The lens to go when starting out would be something a 30 or 35 millimeters, a 1.4 and a wide angle lens if you want to capture the whole club scene like a Sigma 20 millimeters. Nikon's Z mount lenses are for mirror less system and F mount for older lenses. Cannon have two mounts as well. RF mount for mirror less system, and EF mount for older lenses. Lenses have two main categories, Zoom and prime lenses. In short, the ones that can zoom and the others that cannot zoom. Zoom lenses often are less sharp than prime lenses. On the other hand, prime lenses cannot zoom, but they tend to be more sharp than zoom lenses. This is an example of how the kit lens 18 to one oh five look at 18 millimeters and at one oh 5 millimeters. Generally, we need a standard at a wide lens in our bag, but there might be some situations for bigger venues that you know that you're going to need a third option, having constant long distance between people or the guest artist. Only then you have to use a telephoto lens, and that might be a 70 to 200 F 2.8 or even better. If you have some more money, the canon EF, 18 millimeters, 1.4 L stabilized that offers sharp images with super fast autofocus. We will focus mainly on the first two types of white and sandar lenses as they are what we will need most. A good example for full frame cameras would be the Sigma 30 millimeters, 1.4 aperture, we have a wider field of view here than 50 millimeters. If you are on a tight budget, you can consider the cannon EF 50 millimeters, F 1.4, but you will lose the wider field of view the Sigma 30 millimeters has. It will be suitable also to take pictures from distance and crop a biting post if needed. Sigma 24 to 35 F 0.2 art length for cannon or Nikon. SIGMAT series provide a decent image quality, and with this lens, we have zoom capability that definitely will be needed several times during the photosut. A good example for APSC cameras would be the following Sigma, 18 to 35 art series for cannon or Nikon that has the desirable focal length of 18 to 35, the low price, and the 1.8 aperture, again with a decent quality. Now, if the stage is far away, you may consider the cannon. 85 millimeters we mentioned earlier or if you have some more money, the fast 1.4 version with fast autofocus and stabilization, stabilized means that you can lower your shutter speed and still take sharp images. Keep in mind, though, that if your subject is moving, then you will get, again, a shaky image. The difference between 1.4 in comparison with a 2.8 lens is huge. There is an older cheaper option with 1.8 aperture and the 1.2 version, but its focus ability is more slow. It is not stabilized. Is more expensive. Generally, when we say faster lens, we mean by that that has high aperture, that it lets more lighting, and therefore you can use faster scatter speeds even when there might not be much light around. I saw that a 3.5 aperture or 2.8 was not enough for nightclub photography. Just look how much difference make a 3.5 to 2.8 and 2.8 to 1.4 aperture. Only downside with the Sigma 30 millimeters was that I often wish to have zoom ability, such as the Sigma 18 to 35 for APAC cameras in order to get wider results and not have to move back and forth, as it is not always possible or to zoom a bit in order to avoid cropping the image in post production. Now that we understand why we need the 1.4 or 1.8 aperture, let's see some more details about aperture on the next lesson. 4. WHAT LENS YOU NEED (PART2): Now, what is aperture or F stop? Aperture is measure in F stops. The number near the focal length indicates the maximum aperture value we can set. And as lower this number is, the better would be in low light, as it is capable of getting more light in the camera sensor, and more light will help us capture better images. F numbers have an inverse relationship to the aperture size. For example, a lower F number indicates a bigger ap that gathers more light, and a higher f number means a smaller aperture that collect less light. This means for every F number decrease, the amount of light going through the lens is doubled. This is what is called a one stop difference. The amount of light passing through the lens at F 1.4 is two times greater than F two, and going from 5.6 to F two increase exposure by three stops that is eight times more light. Moreover, the melted background we usually see in images is a result of an image taken with high aperture like 1.4 or 1.8, and higher aperture means that we get a shallower depth of the field and more bright image. In short, if we focus on a subject with high aperture, we will get this blurry background, and we will see more about focus on a later section. Personally use most of the time on a crop sensor body, 30 millimeters that is 45 millimeters equivalent field of view on a full frame camera body. This happened because crop size sensor cameras crop the frame by 1.5. The equivalent focal length is camera a crop factor times focal length. Now, we will find usually kit lenses offered with the camera. For example, Nikon, 18 to 55, 18 to 105, 3.5 to 5.6, et cetera, but these kits are not suitable for nightclub photography or in low light performance in general. As we remember, values closer to the one or below refer to larger aperture capability, and anything above 2.8 like the 3.5 kit is terrible in low light situations. Also, aperture is not cost under 3.5 as we see 3.5 to 5.6 and is going to 5.6 automatically as you zoom in. This is a feature usually in cheaper lenses that we want to avoid when looking for a new lens. The amount of light passing through the lens at F 1.4 is 16 times greater than F 5.6. Now, what's the difference 18-105 with a standard lens? Back to when I started having only the 18 to 105, 3.5 to 5.6 aperture, every shot I took needed extensive color edits to look good to me, and in some point, I ended up calling a editing three to 4 hours while now at the standard edit, I do not exit one to 2 hours for calling it 100 out of 200 images, and we will see more on and editing also in a later section. It is better to invest in a decent lens, even from the camera itself. Lenses are the eyes of the camera and must be fast and as sharp as possible. Moreover, they tend to maintain their price for a longer time period. It would be way better to buy a body with a Sigma 18 to 3,051.8, as we need a lens that is able to capture quality images in low light. I never found myself using 10 5 millimeters from the kit lens anyway. The 3.5 aperture also was not enough, and moreover, it constantly changed when I zoomed in. I ended buying a Tameron 24 to 70 millimeters F 2.8, as 24 to 70 is the most common focal length range and the Sigma art 30 millimeters. On the crop sensor, Nikon with 1.53 crop factor, this would be an equivalent of 36 to 72 to 107.1 millimeters. On icon and 38.4 to 112 millimeters on cannon with 1.6 crop factor on crop sensor DSLRs. The photos was a bit better with the Tamron, but way better with the Sigma 30 millimeters, as you see, even with the same aperture of 2.8. If you have a 24 to 70 millimeters, 2.8 lens, you could use it, but prefer primes with at least 1.8 because even at the 2.8 aperture, it is better than a lens with 2.8 max aperture at 2.8. The only downside is that we need to move all the time, as we do not have zoom capability, or we have to crop the image in post production to cut the unnecessary part of the photo. But we will get more SAP images, and this is something I literally had to sacrifice for a better looking photo when I purchased the Sigma 30 millimeters. Prime lenses are faster and they capture more light that is key for nightclub photography. If you only have a kid lens, the next thing you would consider to purchase is a prime lens and the speed light flash. As we saw, we will need lenses that has constant absure with at least one point aperture or 1.4 glass, such as the Sigma 18 to 35, 1.8 for APSC cameras and Sigma 30 millimeters for full frame. We may not look for a telephoto one because there are clubs that are small and crowded and you will not have the room to go back to shoot. If we go with primes and they have no zoom ability, we must consider that we may need to go back and forth constantly to shoot properly. Has quick focus ability. Most of the newer lenses tend to be faster than older versions. A focal length that is wide enough usually in a rage of 20 to 30 millimeters or the same equivalent on crop sensor like 16 to 20 millimeters, if we want to capture in a single photo the whole venue. For example, this image was captured with a 16 millimeter wide angle lens and is not very heavy. You will be there for some hours and weight is something to consider. Generally speaking, the more expensive a lens is, the better it should be, but it's not always the case. We do not have to buy the most expensive lens to take good pictures. We can buy one of the Sigmart series and save some money while getting a similar image quality of an icon or cannon glass. When you are looking to buy a new lens, make your research and look for the highest quality glass for your budget, and not what is the more expensive from cannon, Nikon, or Sony. Again, fixed lenses tend to give you a higher quality image over zoom lenses. Also, be careful from third party brands because you may have focusing or other issues like I had with a Tamron, and I have to buy a Tam Doc tapin console to fine tune its autofocus. Mainly saw lenses from cannon, Nikon, and Sigma, but the same principles apply to any brat out there like the Sony, Fuji, et cetera. In the next lesson, we will talk about flashes and why they can make or break our images. 5. WHAT FLASH YOU NEED: Okay, you have selected the camera budding lens. Now, what is the most important thing to get the most of your equipment? The answer is the lighting. Lights are by default at all clubs to create the atmosphere, and this may create or ruin your photo, as we will see both of those scenarios. A common question you may ask is, do I always need a flash? Well, it depends on the situation. In case we don't use flash, the less light the club has, we need to increase the Io and most cameras with something above two to 3,000 IO, we will get a noisy image and depends on our camera body to find the sweet spot for the ISO value in order to get clear images. In most cases, the club has little or no light to take portrait photos, and the only way after raising your ISO is to decrease the aperture value. While lots of clubs have many light sources, they constantly change in direction and power, and your subject may be underexposed or overexposed as they get hit or not by light beams. You will probably have a hard time to quickly focus and capture the SOT if your subject is at the dark corner. The flash we use and recommend is Go Doc V one that comes in every brand edition, cannon, Nikon son, et cetera, and we move to this flash mainly because it uses lithium batteries and gives us higher speed recycled times than traditional flashes with A batteries. Another opt would be this cannon speed light for cannon. And you can also search for fast recycled times and lithium battery or other brands. In the field, moments last a few seconds, and you must be able to shoot fast, and you do not want to miss the shot due to flash recycling time. What is flash recycling time? It is the duration from the last flash to be ready to fire up again, and we will cover more in depth scenarios in the creative section. You can buy Nikon, cannon flash, or other brands like meds. But the key is that Godox has a living battery and the recycling time is fast. Plus, it has a fair price. With flashes that use double layer rechargeable batteries, after some flashes, they will not have the initial power to recharge fast enough to shoot again. You will miss such because you do not have flash power. You can search for a flash with lithium batteries as flash withA batteries tend to not have a battery percentage indicator, and the only way to know if the batteries are dying is from the increasing the recycling time. Of course, you could use alkaline batteries and not rechargeable batteries, but this is something I wanted to avoid in the first place and switch to a lithium battery flash. Go Dox battery VB 26 has a capacity to last for two to three vents, but you can have one more as a backup just in case. During the event, you can leave one runout and then just replace with the backup battery you have. In this way, you will need to charge later on an empty battery and maintain that way your battery is life over time instead of charging the battery at 40 or 50% power after every event. Moreover, most flashes do have a laser focus assist beam to help your camera focus fast in low light. Now, why I decided to move to Go Doc flash. My first flash was a Mg 44, as I was on a budget and still experimenting if Nightclub photography was right for me. And the problem with it was that it is not powerful enough, plus the recycling time increases during the event. The rechargeable batteries are not powerful enough like the lithium battery that has a constant fast recycling time, and you know exactly when you are going to run out of battery and it's time to recharge. It is super helpful to have the feeling that your flash is not going to disappoint you. Another question is, if we can use the built in flash that comes with some camera body. These images have been taken with the built in flash of the Nikon D 7,200. The shadow here created by the flash hitting the lens hood, people have red eyes, and we have poor light quality in general. For above reasons alone would not recommend using built in flashes. You can use en off camera flash bigger than V one like GdoxAD 200 with a Godox trigger, but we will discuss this in a future lecture. In this lesson, we saw what flash we need to buy and we will see how to use it. Next, we will see what computer hardware and software we need in order to edit our images. 6. WHAT COMPUTER HARDWARE YOU NEED: Okay, we saw what equipment we need to capture asomimages. Now, we will see what computer specs we need for those to edit. There are three options out there, but AdomsPhotos of Lightroom are among the most popular ones. We use these programs, and same principles may apply if you plan to use other software as well. Now, to be able to use these programs, we do not need to upgrade our system if we met minimum system requirements for lightroom. If we want full perspective, we need a fast computer to make our work efficient and fast. There are five main things to look for your setup. Either is a PC or a MAC. Storage, M two or SSD, CPU, RAM, GPU, and monitor. Now, your hard drive is probably the most important, as without an SSD or two, your system is going to be very slow. Prefer two like the Samsung 970 EVO plus or Pro Wer abite version if you have some more to spend. You will need at least 512 gigabytes for the drive you have installed the operating system and programs in order to work efficiently and fast as something lower than constantly run out of capacity and you will need to delete or transfer files in order to continue your work. After the edit, you will need to keep your files on a hard drive with four terabyte or more and keep on your two or SSD only currently working images. My first editing setup was on NI five, 3.2 gigahertz with 16 gigabyte drum and the G four GT 730 with 4 gigabytes. And now I work on I seven, 10700 K at 3.8 gigahertz, 32 gigabyte drum, RTX 2060 GPU, and the Samsung 970 Evo, 500 gigabytes M two plus eight terabyte hard drive. And do not go crazy with a CPU with many cores as something like six or eight cores will do the job fast enough. Just look to have at least 3 gigahertz frequency. The minimum ram capacity is eight gigabyte, but 16 gigabytes or more is recommended. GPU is not necessary to upgrade if you have one with a score of 2000 or greater. Be sure to visit Lightroom PC requirements panes to see more about PC and Mac specs. Now, if you are in a budget, you can use any montor you already have. But if you want to avoid eye strain and edit in colors that you see on the back screen of your camera, then you need a montor that is white, gamut or factory tuned at SRGB. Another option would be this monitor. I personally use the Dell UltrasAp. You pay 27 16 D plus the Dell ultrasAp U 25 20 D. And you will probably avoid calibrating your screen as it comes with accurate colors, but there are tons of options out there with such specs. These Mntors like the U 25 20 D, have the ability to switch color space to SRGB, and UP 27 16 D has AdoRGB as well to match your camera settings. One of the U 25 20 D stopped working after a few days, but Dell's customer support was there addressing my issue and quickly replaced it with a new one. If you go with Dell Motor, you can look for the following letters on each model to decide. Lastly, we mainly use light room to apply or edit our color settings. And maybe some minor skin enhancements and Photosop to add logos or more in depth editing of the image, but we will see more in the editing section. Photography plans for light room and Photosop start from about $10 per month. In order to cool our images and pick the good from the bad ones, we use the library section of the light room. When I started, I used to copy and paste the pit to a different folder, but I was searching for a faster browsing between images and ended up using Lightroom library as it is nowadays fast enough in browsing images. And with this method is more accurate and faster and is not error prone to forget some pictures out. Okay, we saw what to look for if you plan to upgrade your PC or Mac set up in order to meet light room system requirements. Again, when you start and you are on a budget, you do not need to buy the most expensive system. Just use what you already have and upgrade later as you close more and more clients, and the need for system speed have increased. Above system is what we use and recommend, but do your research before buying to meet your needs. 7. WHAT ACCESSORIES YOU NEED: This lecture, we talk about accessories. These are my top five must have ones. The first thing we will need is a memory card. I started with this sound disk extreme as one of them was included as a gift with a camera, and I regularly had buffer issues that I had to turn off and on the camera to keep shooting. Now, what do we need to bother with what write speed our memory card should have? Because when we take images, they are stored temporarily in the camera memory called buffer, and then from there are transferred to the memory card. If we take many pictures in a then the camera buffer memo will run out of room. It must pause image capture in order to let the camera transfer, first, all data to the memory card. If the memory card's write speed is slow, it is possible to fill the buffer with images faster than the camera. I can write them to the memory card. When I use these memory cards on my icon d72 hundred, the light indicator that was writing on the card was on for more than 10 seconds, and they are not recommended for that scope. I ended up buying the sound discs extreme P with high read and ride speeds and haven't any issues. Only after years of using it, one of the cards became super slow and I knew that it was time to replace it with a new one. This is the newer version that has up to 170 megabytes/second read speeds and 90 megabytes/second ride speed. Now, if you don't have two card slots and you have only one card slot to your camera or you need some more durable solution, you can go with a durable Sony tap series that will let you know before it has reached its right cycle or version with even more higher speeds. You do not want to mess up with your photos, make sure to invest in a good memory. That will not slow you down during the event or lose your work by using cheap memory cards. Of course, you could use some software to recover files from a corrupted memory card or other professional recovery service, but this is something we want to avoid in the first place. Protecting your gear may not be your first thought to invest next, as you may already have bought expensive gear by now. Using a free bag that usually comes as a gift with your camera purchase to carry all the expensive camera gear is not an option. You need a trustworthy bag to secure your equipment on accidental drops, as something like this will probably cost you as it does not offer you any serious protection. Besides, a robust bag will look more professional. Again, make sure that you invest in a good bag, as you will always feel safe on accidental drops or hits. Keep with you at least two batteries for your camera and two for your flash. If it's a lithium battery or eight to 12 if they are A batteries. This way, you know you will not run out of battery and don't have to charge your battery at 50% by having one battery only as you want to have a fully charged battery for your next shoot. Shooting a few images and then charging the battery will shorten its life far quicker than using the battery until it is almost empty and then recharge it. While there are some third parties that offer cheaper batteries for your camera, the best option is to buy native batteries from your camera brand like Cannon, Nikon, Sony, et cetera. While it is important to have high speed memory cards, make sure to have a nice, reliable USB three card reader in order to have the maximum transfer speeds. After the event, you will realize that the lens is full of dust, a rocket blower and a microfiber cloth will clean the lens. At this point, as you see, the cost for all the gear you will need is increasing, but all of these are essential for you to work safe and secure. Now, there are some good to have options. When I started, I used to wrap my camera strap around my hand. This was a technique that I saw elsewhere and thought I would have the security walking among dacing people plus a protection for my wrist. But it was not convenient to tie it all the time. A pieces a head strap and more recently a second one for my cannon setup. This has saved my camera from accidental drops and my wrist from pain. For logger nights, I would not buy a battery grip as this will add extra weight for my wrist. Instead, you can have a second battery with a battery case on you to avoid battery overheating and moisture. And if you plan to use enough camera flash, you could buy a mobile softbox at least 40 by 40 Satmts. Okay, in this lesson, we saw all the essential and we have accessories we need. Now, let's dive in and see all the essential technical stuff we need to know. 8. MY CAMERA SETTINGS (NIKON): In this lecture, we will see the common settings you need to know on a con setup and next on cannons. These settings are similar to other camera brands like Sony's, and you can use the following icon and cannon settings to guide you do the same to your camera as the principles are the same. First of all, let's begin with the bottoms of the camera. Satter button, when we press the sutter button halfway down, we activate the auto focus before we press it way down and take a photo. One of my first questions when I started was, how do I focus correctly on a subject? We will see more on how to focus correctly later on. Top display, here you see the current settings of the camera. On top left, we see the sutter speed, top right, the aperture, eyes down below, and the amount of photos left in memory card storage. Some of these settings, you can see through the viewfinder as well. Around dial near the viewfinder is the deodor to set if your view into the camera is blurry, even when the camera lens is in focus. In mode dial, we use most of the time manual mode to have full control of the settings. The other are aperture priority, sutter priority, program, and full auto mode. No flash mode, U one and U two are user defined settings, and we can use this later on when we are fully familiar with the aperture, sutter speed, and Io settings. These modes let us save most common settings we need during our photosut in order to quickly change to. On the side, you can turn autofocus on or off and change the autofocus mode. We will see more on that on a later lecture. We need to enable auto focus on the lens as well. If lens has vibration control, we can enable it to allow us take better results in lower sutter speeds as it compensates handsaking but not a subject that is moving. With playback button, we can see the picture we have taken and the trust button to delete in camera images. If you are just stating you can avoid deleting images in camera as it may look bad on the LCD screen, but it could be fixed in post. On icon, back control dial is for sutter speed, and the front is for aperture. This light beam will help to autofocus in lower light situations if you have not mounted an external flash that has laser autofocus as this lamp to autofocus in very dark scenarios, just like the Gdox V one. Live view is something I rarely use to take photos on the Nicon d72 hundred. Now on the menu, we can hit question mark to see information on a specific setting. It is handy when we start and we have many settings that we are unfamiliar with. On playback display options, it will help to enable focus point. This would have saved me a lot when I started because when I took a shot and I was thinking that have nailed focus only when I come back to BC and see clearly that the subject I wanted was out of focus. We do not want to focus on hands or on a subject in front of the person we want to take picture. Like a bottle of water or something like that. Image review is something that will get in your way. You do not want to see every picture you take right away, but only when you need to. As I have selected raw option in image quality, it will store a backup raw image in slot two. If we have selected backup option in a role played by card in slot two. With this option, we have a copy of every single image stored to the second memory card. With this setting, I have the raw image file format has all the image information in opposition to compressed JPEG images that they do not have much room for editing. Nef recording in 14 bit white balance as we will see later on, we can easily change it in post. We can live on auto white balance. Feel free to set a custom temperature and find a value that after taking a picture is more like the real colors. We can have auto white balance, and when you are more familiar with the other more essential settings, you can adjust with the white balance only to have correct colors to show to other people during photosut or to not edit it in post production. For example, this place have blue piden walls, and we have set the Kelvin at 9100 to compensate for the blue light reflection. We set color space SRGB. We will not bother with picture style that is for JPEGs. We will edit raw files in post long exposure N R of Iosensitivity settings. I rarely go above 2000. I just let it 2000 during nighttime. As I saw, that is a fair Io level that has barely noticeable noise, but this is something that differ per camera model and vignette control on normal. Custom setting menu, AFS priority selection focus, AF activation on, focus point wrap around on, focus point illumination on number of focus points AF 51, built in AF assistilluminator, is the light beam to help in focus. I leave it always on except if I am in a situation that I do not want to distract people. Io sensitivity step value one third, IV steps for exposure control one third. Set up menu. Cleaning at sensor. It vibrates the sensor and do some cleaning, but not always get the dust removed from the sensor. Be careful here if you plan to do it on your own, as is something that you must be confident to do without causing damage to the sensor. And finally, in my menu, I have all the common settings I need to check often. Okay, these were all the common settings we need to know to get started, and we will see what we need to constantly change during the photosut in the action section. 9. MY CAMERA SETTINGS (CANON): This lecture, we will see the cameron settings, you need to know on a camon setup. These settings are similar to other camera brands like Sony's and Nikons, and you can use the following cannon settings to guide you do the same to your camera as the principles are the same. Let's see the buttons on the cannon EOS. This is the Satter button. When we press the Satter button halfway down, we activate the autofocus before we press it way down and take a photo. We will see more on how to focus correctly later on. This is the top display. Here you see the current settings of the camera. On top right, we see the Satter speed. Down below the aperture and so value. Some of these settings, you can see through the OVF as well, the round dial near the viewfinder is the diopter to set it if your view into the camera is blurry, even when the camera's lens is in focus. Upright, we have the mode dial, and we can change to scatter priority, aperture priority, or what we will use most manual mode to have full control of our settings. Now on the menu, we can hit the info button to see information on a specific setting. It is handy when we start, and we have many settings that we are unfamiliar with. On cannons, the command dial here in front change the aperture and the other the scatter speed. Image quality, we have row or zero. Zero is just a smaller row file. You can use zero if you want to save space in your memory card. I always shoot in row as I need to have the best available quality to work and post. Plus, it will help us with the wide balance as we will see in editing section. And we will see the differences with JPEG later on. Dual picture row disabled, we do not need such a feature for this type of shooting. Cropping aspect ratio, full Image review of image review is something that will get in your way. You do not want to see every picture you take right away, but only when you need to. Release Satter without card off, lens aberration correction of on. External speed light control will leave them as is. Exposure Censation to zero. Io speed settings. We change the IO manually and do not use autoio, but you can limit the auto Io with maximum and minimum value that can take. I just let it 2000 during nighttime. As I saw, that is a fair Io level that has barely noticeable noise, but this is something that di camera model. Exposure simulation, this feature will help you if you are not using external flash and want to see a simulation of the exposure of the photo before we take it. This is very helpful, especially during daytime. But we use external flash on nightclubs and we will disable this feature. White balance. We can have auto white balance, especially when we are starting out as we can easily fix colors in post. Feel free to set a custom temperature and find a value that after taking a picture is more like the real colors. Again, it does not matter if you have auto white balance or a custom value and the pictures you take are bluish or yellowish, as this is something that we can fix easily in post. For example, this place have blue piden walls, and we have set the Kelvin at 9100 to compensate for the bluish light reflection. Can have auto white balance, and when you are more familiar with the other more essential settings, you can adjust with the white balance only to have correct colors to show to other people during photosuitO to not edit it in post production. Color space, SRGB, picture style we live as is. We suit mainly in raw format, it won't affect raw photos. Touch Satter. It means that when you are live view on the back screen and you touch the LCD, it takes a picture automatically. This is handy only when you take pictures from above. Autofocus menu. Autofocus operation one SOT AF. It means that if we have pressed the fire button half pressed down, it will focus only once, and in servo mode, we try to refocus if the subject is moving. We set this one shot AF. We enable autofocus on our lens, and if the lens has stabilizer control, we enable it as well to allow us to take better results in lower sadder speeds as it compensates for handshaking, but not a subject that is moving. Autofocus method, personally, I use match the one point AF in order to control the spot I want to focus. We do not want to focus on hands or on a subject in front of the person we want to take picture like a bottle of water or something like that. Continuous autofocus is auto focusing without having our finger on the sutter button. Non OSR does not have a joystick, and instead, we can use the back of the screen to touch and move fast the auto focus point when we are looking through the viewfinder. We leave the rest as it is. AF assist beam on. This is the light beam to help in focus. I leave it always on except if I am in a situation that I do not want to distract people in playback menu. With the playback button, we can see the picture we have taken in the trust button to delete in camera images. If you are just starting out, you can avoid deleting images in camera as it may look bad on the LCD screen, but it could be fixed in post. AF point display enable in order to check if our focus points is where we want to be. This would have saved me a lot when I started because when I took a shot and I was thinking that have nailed focus, only when I come back to PC and see clearly that the subject I wanted was out of focus, power saving display of auto power of 5 minutes. The last thing you want is to check back later on the bag and see the camera is got hot and with low battery because you just forgot to turn it off. If you fight that off, sensor cleaning, it vibrates the sensor and do some cleaning, but not always get the dust removed from the sensor. Be careful here if you plan to do it on your own, as is something that you must be confident to do without causing damage to the sensor. We leave it all as default. In Wi Fi settings, if we want to send a photo to our phone, if someone asks to send them a photo to send it to social media. The last menu is for things you want to add there in order to have quick access. These were all the common settings we need to know to get started, and we will see what we need to cost until it change during the photo suit in the action section. 10. RESOLUTION, IMAGE TYPES (JPEG - RAW) & PROFILES: Every photo we take with our camera has a resolution that is measured in megapixels. What is a pixel? Pixel is the tiny box or square of color that is a part of an image, and the photograph with 24 megapixel resolution consists of 24 million pixels. A camera with 24 or 30 megapixels are enough for nightclub photograph. A higher megapixel image means we can crop more the image without losing any visible quality. If we take a 24 megapixel photo and crop a bit in post, we will barely notice a decrease in the quality. But if we overdone it, we will get a low quality image. Nikon d72 hundred, for example, has 24 megapixel, and EOSR has 30 megapixel. Okay, what is jpeg and the row type of image? All images have a suffix, just like any other file type. Ending of the title is referring to the type of the image we have captured. Either is a JPEG or row. JPEG is a compressed image format. This gives us the possibility to take more photos before our memory card filled up, and we shoot in Zipeg only if memory storage is our priority and not the flexibility fixing colors imposed. Usually, full size Jibeg has the half amount of size of the row image. Professionals tend to shoot always in the uncompressed row format. In order to make the necessary adjustments in post like raise the brightness, changing the white balance or other treatments, as we will see in editing section. In Nightclub photography, it is necessary to sit in a row format to make those edits. You can do such adjustments on a JPEG too, but you have limited room in comparison to the row version before your image became unusable. You may see differences in your photos when you edit JPEG or Raw files. This is a common issue when you have selected a row color profile in Lightroom to handle the colors from the raw image. This is something that I was struggling with for a long time. It is just a click away, and we use mainly camera standard on Nicon d72 hundred and camera standard version two for Canon EOSR. We will see more Nanditic section. If you have any further questions, please let me know. 11. HOW TO TAKE FULL ADVANTAGE OF APERTURE, SHUTTER SPEED & ISO: So what is aperture, Satter speed, and ISO and why we need to understand them? Because understanding and learning these three things, we will not have to use the camera as auto settings again. These are the core basics of photography. Let's take as an example, the human eye to illustrate the aperture. We have a larger opening on a lens that can capture light, the more exposure we have. This means we will have more bright images. Generally speaking, more light to our image means a more sharp image. But if we have doubts about overexposing the image, we prefer slightly darker images than overexposed images because we can recover colors more easily from exposed images than overexposed ones. Now, the aperture is measured in F stops. Let's assume in our example that the maximum aperture is the F stop 1.8. As we go to 2.8 and way up, we will notice that the opening of the lens gets smaller. This means that less light passes through from the lens to the sensor and we will get darker images. Aperture does not only affect the amount of light but the depth of the field itself, as we will discuss in next lecture, 1.4 F stop has sallow depth of the field and images taken with 11 F stops have large or deep depth where both foreground and background are sharp. We will talk about the aperture values that we constantly use in different scenarios later in the action section. But generally, we are at F 2.8 to F four. As we need more light, but not the salar depth of field, and we will explain why. Satter speed is the amount of time the sutter is open and the sensor is capturing the image. In our example, a sutter speed of 1 second is like we have our eyes closed and open it for just 1 second duration. Satter speed at 100 of a second is 100 times faster than 1 second. At these speeds, we can freeze our subject even if it moves a little bit. But if we have a 1 second sutter speed and our subject is moving, then we will get a blurry image because that second subject is moving. Depending on the speed of the subject, if we want to freeze the action, we need to raise sutter speed as well. But after one in 200 sutter speeds, we will get dark images in low light situations. That's why we constantly change sutter speed according to our needs, and the result we want to every situation. We will see more on what sutter speed we use and how to find the desirable shutter speed in the action section. But generally we use 160 to 1125 sutter speeds or as low as half a second based on the results we want to achieve. As it already seems, we need another element to help us, and that is the ISO. ISO is an artificial light that will brighten our images, but also it will add noticeable noise after a specific point before ending up unusable. That's why we cannot raise the ISO too high. For example, 3,000 to 6,000 depending on your camera model may have a lot of noise already. For example, a photo taken with 12,800 and the photo taken with 2000 is looking like this. We only raise our ISO when we cannot bright our photos with aperture or shutter speed. We will see what ISO levels we have more frequently in the action section. Of course, we can bright up the photo in post, but the final image will have less noise if we have correctly Io levels during our shooting. Thus, we are trying to get as close to the final image during the and make micro adjustments later in post. We do not forget that we have a different tool to help us achieve best results, and this is the flash. So that's all for the three key elements that you need to understand in order to set your camera to manual mode. You need to practice these three tools in order to achieve the best results, and we will see exactly how we think before we make any adjustment to our camera settings in the action section. This will help you in the field to see a photo and understand what you need to adjust in order to take better images. And if you have any further questions on these topics, please let me know. 12. UNDERSTANDING DEPTH OF THE FIELD & FOCAL LENGTH: In this lecture, we will talk about depth of the field and focal length. Do you have seen images with isolated item and all other things in the photo are melded, creating a beautiful result? Well, that's an effect of the depth of the field. Depth of the field is basically controlled by the aperture in addition to the size of the sensor, a deep depth of the field capture a larger area in focus and the sallow depth of the field captures a smaller area in focus. This means that if you are trying to get in focus, a couple of people and there aren't in line, but some are in front, may focus on the front faces, and behind ones would be blurry. Now we will see how we'll take advantage of this to separate a subject from the background that we want to eliminate. When I started, I saw images with melted backgrounds, and I was wondering, what can I do to produce the same result? Answer is to lower the aperture F stop. This effect is getting more intense as we use lower aperture values like 2.8 to 1.4 and having only the kit lens with 3.5 maximum aperture, I was not able to produce images like that. We have seen focal length in previous lecture, but what is focal length? Focal length is the basic characteristic of a lens and is measured in millimeters. All we need to know at this point is that focal length tells us how much of the scene will be captured. Lower millimeters means wider view. For example, you can see the difference in 35 millimeters, 30 millimeters with crop sensor that is an equivalent of 45.9 millimeters and 85 millimeters. If we want to capture the whole scene, we can use a 16 millimeter lens. But keep in mind, if you are enclosed distance with someone, the pace will look unnatural. Also, if you use a crop body, you have to multiply the millimeters of the lens with a crop factor to find the equivalent focal length. The lens I ended up shooting on a crop body is a 30 millimeter lens on the d72 hundred with a 1.5 crop factor. And on the EOSR full frame mirror less camera with a 35 millimeters for wider shots and 85 millimeter lens. I use a cannon EF 85 millimeter lens, mainly at cafe bars with exterior seats. The basic lens we need is a wide angle lens to capture the whole scene, a standard lens, something like 50 millimeters or 35 millimeters. And if you are shooting or plan to shoot on large venues with stages, et cetera, you will need a telephoto lens, 85 millimeters or a 70 to 200. Keep in mind that 70 to 200 most likely will have 2.8 max aperture in comparison with the 85 millimeters that has three versions, 1.8, 1.4, and 1.2 version. 1.2 version is slower and more expensive than the 1.4 version. Okay, that's all we need to know about depth of the field and focal length for now. Let me know if you have any further questions. 13. LIMITS OF DYNAMIC RANGE & WHITE BALANCE: What is white balance? We all have seen images that look too orange or too blue. Usually, we want our images to have accurate colors, but in practice, it's not necessary. As we always shoot in a row. We can change colors easily, and it is something that we do anyway when we apply our filters. If we get a photograph that is too warm, we basically want to find a way to tell the camera to put more blue in it in order to balance and give us natural colors. But if we overdone it, then our image will turn blue. This color balance of the amount of orange or blue is called white balance and is measured in kelvin temperature. When you are starting out, you can leave the setting to auto white balance in order to let the camera do the work for us and decide the temperature for the next photo. In case colors are not accurate, we don't sweat, as we know that we can easily fix colors in post in light room using raw image format. Again, this is something that we can ignore for now and set the camera to auto white balance. Later on, when you will get used to all other camera settings, you can set manually the correct white balance, and this will lead to edit images faster by not having to correct the color each time. As we will see, it is easier to add a fixed number of Kelvin to each photo in our labrary as opposed to being radom each time with what the camera has chosen to do in other white balance. Besides, in case someone asks you to see his photo during the event, you can show it with natural colors. If we have taken images only in Jibec then we may have a hard time correcting the colors in post. Now, why should we know about dynamic range? Dynamic range is the ability to recover colors from shadows or highlights without losing detail. Because when we edit images and we would like to brighten or darken a specific part or whole image, it will still be usable if it has been taken with a high dynamic range camera. Dynamic range is measured in stops. Every increase at one stop on an image means it is twice as bright. Some of the best modern cameras have at least 13 stops maximum dynamic range. As we see, Nikon d72 hundred with cannon ESR have about one stop difference. Our camera need to have at least 13 stops and preferably at least 14 stops of dynamic cranes. We will understand and see more of the effects of what balance and dynamic grains in the endit section. But now let's see in action what we will need. If you have any further questions, please let me know. 14. INTO THE ACTION: TOP 5 TIPS ON COMPOSITION: In this section, we will see all the things we need to know during the event. We are now going to dive into my top five introduction tips in this lecture to achieve better results. If you set the aperture correctly, you will end up having images with beautifully melted background, and this is a very effective way of simplifying your composition. We keep our subject in frame and try not to crop heads or other significant parts of the subject, except if we have a special reason to do it, like to fill the frame, for example. It is also important what is not in the frame. While in most cases, we can crop the image in post. We always have in mind the editing section in order to save time and effort while working from PC. It is not always possible to correct things in post without putting a lot of effort to it. If someone is behind your subject and you do not want that person to be in your frame, we ask our subject to move a step right or left in order to avoid having that person in your frame or we try to create depth with larger aperture. We need to shoot our subject from angles that we see that we will get a more appealing portrait photo. This is something that we develop with practice as more and more quickly, we see from OVF that we are not going to get a beautiful looking image if we take pictures from below or from the side, as the nose is going to look awkward or the lower neck of the subject. If the subject is looking in the right direction, we try to leave also to the right side room in our frame as an attempt for the viewer to look also there. Else, we try to keep our subject in the middle of the frame. We will not see in depth the rule of thirds, but generally we try to put our subject in frame. Be confident to ask someone to correct the shoulders if they slouching. This way, you will boost their confidence, and as a side effect, you get a beautiful portrait image. Okay, these were my top five tips for composition. Let me know if you have any further questions. 15. INTO THE ACTION: HOW TO FOCUS: In this lecture, we will see all the steps on how to accurately nail focus. First of all, let's see how to enable autofocus. First, we enable single area autofocus, AFS, we enable single area autofocus on icons or one sot AF on cannon cameras. We do not use continuous AFC or Servo mode. We enable autofocus on the lens. And on icons, we enable autofocus on the camera. Lastly, we press the fire button halfway down to focus and way down to take the shot. Now, if we want to quickly take images without having to move every time the focus point, we simply set automde. These photos have taken with Nicon in autofocus AFS in auto area mode. Be careful here for what is the closest item to the camera as it may focus on the wrong subject than was intended. Like on the glass on the table, for example, and thus all phases will be blurry. Now, what we could do to focus on them directly, we change to single spot autofocus, one shot AF, and move the focus point directly where we want to focus. Some newer camera models like Canon EOSR series have made focusing in one shot AF especially easy, since we need only to touch the LCD screen and drag the focus point. There are situations where there is hardly any light in the room, and you might strangle on getting focus at all. If this happens, then you will not be able to take a picture, just like if you are trying to take a photo with a lens cap forgotten on the lens. If this happens, try to focus on a different point or move a bit and try again. Here will help the flash unit we have like the Gdox V one in TTL mode that has laser autofocus assist that will let you take a shot easier in darker scenarios. We use two man patterns of focusing. We can start with the beginner friendly automde auto mode on icons and large zone AF on cannons that will pick the closest subject to focus on, and the single area autofocus mode with a single focusing square. We must be careful though, because we may end up missing focus if the subject is moving or dancing. Same is applied with the cannon systems like this example that we wanted to focus on the glass. We do not use eye detection feature as we do not always seek for the eyes. In conclusion, nailing focus is controlled basically by the autofocus speed of the lens, the amount of light available, and the knowledge of how autofocus works or how to pick the correct autofocus mode in every situation. As we will see, you will become faster and faster with practice. And for all those starting now, you can always take more pictures if you are in doubt. That's all you need to know about focusing and start to practice your skills. Let me know if you have any further questions. 16. INTO THE ACTION: MY SETTINGS: Okay, let's jump into the camera settings used during the photo suit. It all depends on the result you want to achieve. We will see now what generally the 90% settings used for the type of images of our liking, and then we will see examples. Keep in mind that we mainly tested APSC camera Nikon d72 hundred with the Sigma 30 millimeters, 1.4. Tamron 24 to 72.8 and Cannon EOSR with 35 millimeters, 1.8, Cannon EF 85 millimeters, 1.4 with RF adapter. But the following may apply to most modern cameras out there. The goal is to learn the basic principles for different scenarios, to take a photo and know in an instant what settings we need to adjust for the desired look. Of course, some practice is involved here, and the following information is what I wish I had been told when I started and not have to learn them in a hard way. First, we set the camera in manual mode. I know that my cameras above two to two and 500 ISO have some visual noise, and I rarely go above that to 3200. It is better to raise some more ISO during the SOT and fix noise in post than lower ISO rates and try to raise the exposure in post. You can test your camera before your first page. See what is the maximum level of ISO before the image gets too much noise. When I started, I used to have auto ISO with a maximum of 2000. But now I would like to have full control of my settings to keep most of the images similar in exposure to help post production. Keep only into the flash alone, and manually direct it as we will see in next lecture. Next is the sutter speed. My shutter speed usually is in the range of 80 to one to 20, as most of the times people who stand there and watch you taking the sot. But for the more artistic effects, I go to have one tenth of a second using second curtain sink with an on camera flash. With a slow sutter speed, you can create a light train following the subject. The flash fires right before the shutter closes. With that speed, we adjust the aperture and dio in order to get motion the background without overexposing or underexposing images and one tenth speed is low enough to have a bright image. This technique is something that many photographers like. I personally take only a few to enhance my album and not try to fill the album with this type of photos. The last setting is the aperture. As we saw in the lens lecture, we need a lens that is suitable in low light situations with 1.4 aperture or less. Most of the time we are on 2.8 to 3.2 on a crop sensor or full frame, and 1.4 to four aperture on the rest, 10%. I am not going close to 1.4 frequently as I want to nail focus correctly when I am targeting pass without the need of going back to suit again if I miss focus. 3.2 or 3.5 if I am taking a picture of one or two people that are hugging in the same distance from me, and 3.5 or four, as more and more people are in the frame. If you are with 3.2 aperture with crop sensor and you have in frame five to seven people, then only the front people will be in focus. Higher than or 4.5 aperture will give us dark images that may not be what we look for. I tend to use 1.4 to two aperture in certain scenarios when I shoot subjects like the glasses, lights, or other objects of the room in order to isolate the item and make it pop and in general, if I am not target people's eyes, as with such a narrow depth of the field, would be very hard to focus directly on the eye. Not to mention if we use other than single area of focus. In short, we have our base settings to 2000 ISO 100th sutter speed, and 2.8 aperture all the time. And depending on the scenario, we adjust our settings from there, and then we make adjustments to the flash as we will see in the next lesson. Okay, that's all about my settings. Let me know if you have any further questions. 17. UTILIZING FLASH: TACTICS: This is one of the most important sections in this course. Lighting is what you need to excel. Now, why is the direction of the light so important? Because the images that you will capture will be way better than making the mistake and use direct flash to the subject. When we are referring to flash in photography, we mean either on camera flash that we simply attach the flash on our camera or off camera flash when we use triggers to use our flash. We do not use the built in flash of the camera if our camera body has as it will produce bad light on the subject, and we will probably create lens ado, as we see in these examples. This happens because the flash pops up and is not far enough up from the camera body and lens. With an external flash, we will get much better looking images, and this is what we will focus. Starting with on camera flash. The most common mistake is to direct the flash to our subject. This way, we will kill all ambient light, and the subject will look unnatural. By bouncing the flash to the walls, we will get a more apiaren looking image. The goal is to light our subject from a different angle than our camera does. Bouncing flash on walls is one technique that will spread light across the room and light out subject from different angles. Now, what happens if we are in a large venue? There are no walls nearby and placing Vicov camera flashes is not an option. Either we can use some kind of diffuser like Gary fog letspere or we can use monopods with softbox and flash, but this is not suitable for many cases. The goal is to find the nearby wall to direct the flash and make sure we do not direct it to unsuspected nearby guests. But if they are present, we simply ask them to be careful not to look directly at our flash. Here comes the direction of the flash. If we have it straight upward, it may produce dark cycles under the eyes, and this is something that we want to avoid. If we tilt the flash at 45 degrees, our images will look like we have a big diffuser on the ceiling. There are situations that we will get a more appealing light on our subject if we put a mobile softbox, for example, an octagon 40 ctimeres in a corner of the club and put a ring light on our camera. Now that I understand what we need to do with light, let's see how to do it in action. Okay, that's all about working with flashing fury. Let me know if you have any further questions. 18. INTO THE ACTION: UTILIZING FLASH: In this lecture, we will see how to use our flash in practice. Let's begin with flash settings. Most flashes have three different modes, manual, TTL, and slave mode. In manual mode, and debating on the flash we have, it may have different manual increments. GodoxV one, for example, has a power output from full power that goes all the way down to one to 256, which most speed lights do not. In this mode, we need to make the advances manually every time we need a different flash power. Usually, this is dependent on the distance we have from the subject. Keep in mind that reverse square law is telling us that the flash power is reduced exponentially as we move away from the subject. TTL mode is referring us through the lens, and Godox V one for cannon has ETTL mode and Nikon has ITTL. I found that TTL works better and quicker than shooting a manual flash power in most cases. If you find that TTL is not enough, you can increase by small increments by plus half stop, for example. It is useful in situations where minor adjusting of the DTL system is needed based on the environment. For example, if we see something like that, we know that we need to lower two thirds stops. Plus, you can continue to your next shot, as you know you can fix such exposure in post also. Thus, you do not need to take photos of the same person again. In the editing section, we will see more in depth editing techniques that allow us to fix lighting in post. Slave mode stands for when we use the flash as an off camera flash with controller. We can direct the flash 45 degrees or direct it to the closest wall and take two to three shots with different angles to experiment with. For example, if you are here and you want to take a photo of someone here, you can shoot and take three different photos if you are not sure where to direct the flash. The first option is directly to the upright corner at 120 degrees. This is the most common vertical angle. In portrait mode 330 degrees. This is the most common horizontal angle and directly upwards 90 degrees. But this way, it may produce dark cycles under the eyes. And again, would not direct the flash to people except if we try different methods and does not work. For example, there is no wall nearby. We are in a we do not have the time to adjust the aperture and Io settings. By taking three pictures in three different ways, we will achieve three things. First, we will eliminate the chance of getting exactly the same image, potential closed eyes, and most importantly, we will have the option to choose the photo with the best lighting. We not want to take two to three pictures from the same angle and flash in the same direction as we will have three identical images and we will only eliminate the chance of the potential closed eyes. There are flashes like the mens and others that have a built in bounce card and we may use to have the flash in 90 degrees and bounce light from the ceiling, but I personally do not use it anymore. Moreover, the external bounce card accessory from Go Doc V one is magnetic and is very prone to falling down. We will notice that when we actually take a photo, the lead indicator of the flash is blinking or turned off for some time. This duration is the flash recycling time. The actual time the flash needs to fire again. If we take a photo while the lad indicator is not ready, we will get a very dark image compared to the previous ones. Flash recycling time is the duration from the last flash to be ready to fire up again, and the more power the flash is needed for the current sort, the more the recycling time Go Dox V one, for example, has only 1.5 second recycling time and is good enough for our purposes. If we have the flash in manual mode in full power and we take a shot, it will need 1.5 second to be ready again. If we have it in DTL mode, it will automatically calculate the necessary amount of power it needs, and it will probably be less than 1.5 second for most cases. There are times that after taking many photos in a row and the flash is constantly using its full power, it will overheat and it will need significantly more time to be ready to fire again. If we find that we are in a venue that does require frequently full power flashes and we are overheating the flash itself, we can have a second battery with us, make the change, and let the first one cool down. Else, if we do not have a backup battery with us, we need to be more selective about how many images we take in a short period of time. And this is something that will definitely make us better and better over time, as it is a way to teach us patients for the perfect SOT. Okay, that's all about how to work with flashes. Let me know if you have any further questions. 19. POST PRODUCTION: NEW LIGHTROOM CATALOG & COLOR PROFILES: In this lesson, we will learn how to create a Lightroom catalog in order to cool and edit our images. We go to File new catalog. We give a name, we pick a folder and hit Create. Now, we will import our raw files with File Import or with drag drop, and we will hit Import. Before we jump in and make our selections, let's see what smart previews are. Smart Previews are in simple terms, a smaller sized copy of your image. It is used by Lightroom to make edits faster. As your PC or Mac, use that smaller image to make your adjustments and replicate these adjustments on the original ones during export only. Keep in mind that creating smart previews will take some time depending on your system. And if you are using a powerful enough machine, then it is not necessary to make smart previews at all if your system is not lagging during the edits, now it is time to hit Import. First of all, let's make sure that our color profile is camera standard or camera standard version two. You can use any other color profile you like, but I found that camera standard has colors similar to what I see in my camera screen during the photoshoot. If Camera standard docton is missing, you can click Browse and add the camera standard profile to your favorites. Next, we will see how to edit our images. Of 20. POST PRODUCTION: ADJUSTING WHITE BALANCE & EXPOSURE: If we go to develop, we will see in basic section that we can change the exposure and white balance easily to get our desirable look. It's a personal preference here, and it is not something wrong if you are not overdoing it. There are five raw images to download replicate all we teach in this video in the description below. We set the exposure and wide balance to our desirable levels and make any other adjustments to our liking. Feel free to check all the options available and see what we can do and hit reset if you want to restore the initial image settings. Keep in mind that usually we can recover colors better from another exposed image than an overexposed one. If we have an image that needs exposure adjustment only at a specific part, then we can use linear gradient or brass tool to make edits only at a specific area. Let's see an extreme example how was before and after our edits with the brass tool. The goal is to take our pictures correctly during the event using the correct settings as we saw in action section. Not have to exit more than one stop in exposure or even worse reach the limits. Another shortcut is to hit previous button to paste settings from the previous image. This is a trick that will save you ton of time down the road, as you can save them as presets and having ten to 20 presets will definitely help to deliver fast your images. Next, we will see how to apply more edits and how to create and use our presets. 21. POST PRODUCTION: FAST EDITING TECHNIQUES: In this lecture, we will see some editing tools that we use constantly and how to use presets to make edits faster. Luminans will help to smooth the image or reduce noise created by high Io setting, but it is a personal preference. As I've seen, my image editing by client to add noise back after I deliver them with some noise reduction applied. We can add a bit of vibrant. Be careful here. Not to add too much. I use texture and clarity mainly at objects or men and not women, as we will pop up all these things they try to remove with makeup. We can use also saturation bar to make a black and white image. When we are satisfied with the result, after we make our edits on an image, we can save these edits as a preset in order to use it as a starter point in a similar one. Presets are applied to our current viewing image just by click on the name of the preset. While on Hover, we see a preview of the preset on current image. We can even apply a preset to several images at a time by having autosync enabled and some images selected. Again, these are the most common settings we use, and we will not see every light room feature as it would need a whole new course for this. If you have any further questions about presets, let me know. 22. POST PRODUCTION: REMOVING UNWANTED OBJECTS: In this lecture, we will see how to remove spots or even bigger objects, how to crop images, and how to apply vignetting effect. We can use the spot removal tool to remove minor things on the image. We can hit forward slash to let light room automatically try different area or just drag it to wherever we want. We can apply our preset and remove some spots. I rarely remove all the spots in an image as I do not want to be unrealistic. Be aware here not to hit previous on the next image, as it will apply spot removal tool on the same spot we selected on the previous image. If we want to crop a bit the image, we use the crop tool, and we hit them to apply the crop. Now, what we can do to remove a bigger object, we will use AdobsPhotosop for this. The first thing we do is to make our color edits in light room and let the object removal task for last. After we've done our color edits, it is time to remove the object. And in order to do so, we right click on the image and select Edit in Adopt Potsp. For this, we have different ways to make it happen. But for this particular, we will use the Clone Stamp tool to clone some of the background image and base it on this dude's hunt. We make Alt and click on Windows or option and click on MAC. To select the area that we want to copy, and then we remove carefully the unwanded element from our image. In order to adjust the clone stamp effect area, we do so from pixel size. When we are okay with the edits, we go to File Save or controls, and we will see a second version of our image in broom catalog. If we want to change the file type after we hit saving Photoshop, we go to edit preferences, external editing, and we select the file format of our choice. Another tool we use constantly is the vignetting effect. From effects, we drag the amount bar to the left until we are done, and that's all. As always, if you have any further questions, please let me know. 23. POST PRODUCTION: EXPORT SETTINGS & ADD LOGO : In this lecture, we will see how to export our images and how to add our logos. When we are done with the editing gliderom, we go to File Export. In export location, we select the folder. We want the images to be exported. In file settings, we keep quality at 100%. In case our images are meant to be uploaded to Facebook, we enable resizing at log ends in 2000 pixels and we hit Export. When export is finished, we have to create a photos ofpaction first in order to add to all our images our logos and reduce a bit the size of the image without losing any visible quality. We have to make our photos of actions once, and then we can use them every time we need to use the same logo to an album. To do so, we create a new set, we give a name, then create new action, and we give a name. We will see a rec icon here. This means that every step we do in Photoshop, it would be recorded in order to replicate to the other images as well. First step is to drag our logo, resize a bit, and make sure it is in the right spot. We can add more logo as well. We go to export and save for web. We set the quality to our desirable levels. As we see, if we overdone resizing, we will get a poor quality image instead. Down left, we get a potential image size of the exported image. If we plan to upload images to social media, we try not to exit half megabyte per image. We could use the full image size instead, but we found that this way our images are uploaded faster to social media, and more important that Facebook and other social media use their own algorithm to reduce image size. By doing so, we will get a better quality image uploaded on social media because they will not have all the heavy work compressing our images. We hit Save, we pick a folder, and again, save. As we see here, all steps we do are recorded into our action. Last step is to close current image in order to record this step as well. And then we stop the record process and we just create our new action for horizontal images. We replicate above steps for the vertical images to create one more action. We pick only the horizontal images, and we will run our first action on those images. We go to file, automate, but we select the folder containing our images, and then we hit Okay. As we see, we have successfully run our photos of action for all the images in the folder. Now we can run again the vertical action for the rest images, and that's all about creating photos of actions in order to add at least two logos to our images. Let me know if you have any further questions.