Candid Photos - What settings are you using?

[symes]

I much prefer to catch people being themselves as oppose to a posed Photo. It was terribly easy with my old point and shoot Kodak digital Camera...Aside from the obvious trouble of remaining unnoticed while handling a montrosity such as the rebel...What settings do you use?

[cactusclay]

It sort of depends on the lighting and whether or not your background is important to the overall image.If it is important, then you will need to use a smaller apature to get it in focus, if it's not important, then open it up and shoot it. If people are moving you will need somthing like a 250 th of a second to freeze the action, unless you want to pan with there movement.

[JulianoL]

I much prefer to catch people being themselves as oppose to a posed Photo. It was terribly easy with my old point and shoot Kodak digital Camera...Aside from the obvious trouble of remaining unnoticed while handling a montrosity such as the rebel...What settings do you use?


When shooting candids with my DRebel, first I change it to jpeg parameter 2, so I can have a little more speed and make adjustments to image latter. Most of the time I use a 70-200 f/4, at f/4. It works great wide-open.

Hope this helps.

[symes]

Thanks...I was looking for a couple of ways to take them...I am still finding it difficult without a zoom lens but I am sure that will come...

[KevC]

Aperature stopped down, manually focus so that the distance scale is approximately where your 'victim' is :D Pop up, snap, woosh back down. Only works well in good lighting though, wide aperature gives too narrow a DOF so you might not get your subject.

[poke]

I use a zoom lense at f2.8 - f4... depending on lighting. I usually find that the best candids are the ones where you can isolate the subject from their surroundings. I also take the shots (between 2 and 4 usually) on cont shooting mode, as that way you have a choice of facial expressions / positions. And in my case I need to take heaps :p as my keeper percentage is still rather low :D