photo people - a pnr question

kittybits21

er, more like a pngtb - post and go to bed.

what settings do you use if you don't use flash? I'm talking about taking pics inside in good lighting. I always struggle with my white balance, and if you have any pointers for me I'd love to hear! I have a nikon d40 if it helps. TIA!

sandy02

I use a grey card to nail my white balance.

hippotree

I use whatever aperture, shutter speed and ISO give the proper exposure on my meter.  It's different for pretty much every photo.  I usually use auto white balance but sometimes do custom.

Emie28

I shoot auto WB and in RAW and adjust it if needed in RAW editor.

I also have a gray card, but only use it if I'm shooting JPEG.

jkish22

What is a gray card?

SandNSurf

I use a Nikon D300. My camera is a little more sensitive to light than yours, but you have a couple options. If you have a lot of movement, use a wider open aperture and quicker shutter speed (just take a few to see how they are working until you come up with one that works) or if people are sitting still, you can use a slower shutter speed. 

I personally like to shoot on aperture priority, which lets me pick the f-stop, while the camera decides the shutter speed to go with it

Have fun with it.. use a gray card if you want it to be accurate (skin tones on the average caucasion works well, too), and just experiment.

 jkish - a gray card is a photographer's tool that reads middle gray (18%). In the old dark room times, we would take the first photo in a location of the subject holding the card. Once you get your settings right in the enlarger (the way we printed photos), you could leave the settings the same for every photo in the same location after... now that we're digital, you can use the card as a reference for editing in photoshop. 

 ETA - I have a wonderful flash ( Nikon SB900) that works well indoors.. You can adjust the brightness and use a filter over it and bounce it off the ceiling or a corner of the room as well to create even low light... but I still prefer no flash at all indoors. 

sorry for the long response... hope it helps! 

jCamsquared

Emie28:

I shoot auto WB and in RAW and adjust it if needed in RAW editor.

Ditto.

MrsT2008

hippotree:

I use whatever aperture, shutter speed and ISO give the proper exposure on my meter.  It's different for pretty much every photo.  I usually use auto white balance but sometimes do custom.

Ditto