D7000 Wedding Shooters / Settings

[JohnZZZ]

Hi All,

I have my first wedding with my D7000s this Saturday; prior, shot all my weddings with the old and dated D80s. Anyway, was wondering if anyone doing weddings would be kind enough to share some of their favorite settings.

My current settings from minor around the house testing:

AF Mode (AF-A), 9 point
Center weighted metering

Picture Control; "Standard" with the following tweaks...sharpening 7, contrast up 1, saturation up 1. I like my images to pop a bit more right from camera; I did similar settings with my D80s.
Color Space: Adobe RGB

Anyway, a little nervous for formals as I haven't taken any shots with larger groups of people yet with these cams; with my D80s, I'd use a second SB800 flash remotely on a light stand along with my on-camera SB800 (which was nicely diffused).

Thanks!

 

[azguy]

Not shooting with a D7000 but I believe you limit yourself if you don't shoot in RAW. It gives you MUCH greater control over the finished image.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1916538147593.269188.1066143684
--
JohnE
Some of my work is shown here:
http://www.biltmorephoto.com

 

[JohnZZZ]

Yes, I shoot in Raw. Any other D7000 shooters doing weddings?

 

[crankerchick]

I don't understand. If you shoot in RAW, then why do you change in camera settings to "pop more" as you said? Do you PP in CaptureNX? Otherwise, don't your changes mean nothing, as non-Nikon software doesn't recognize the incamera settings anyway, so your changes really only affect the embeded basic jpg in the RAW file? How does CNX handle with Adobe RGB? Sorry for the questions, your post just interests me.

I'm not a pro at all and have only shot 1 wedding recently. My lessons learned (there were many but these are just the first to come to mind) are that a lot of my shots with center weighted metering tended to overexpose some. I hit the exposure on a few shots and was washed out on just as many others. Watch the exposure. Things were better when I switched to manual from aperture priority, but I'm still learning this and didn't do a good job of paying attention to the meter on every shot.

I preferred AF-C, 9 point AF area mode. For the reception shots, notably the dancing, I actually used the Auto 3D for the AF area setting with decent (for me) results. I have tried this mode now for soccer, basketball, and dancing and am happy with the results (for me) as compared to choosing the focus point on my own.

Yes, I shoot in Raw. Any other D7000 shooters doing weddings?

--
Push the button more--that's a start.

 

[jocko411]

You don't have to PP in Capture NX to get the settings from the camera. You just have to import through Capture NX (or View NX) then you can open in lightroom, Photoshop, or whatever.

As for shooting a wedding in manual, and I'm no pro photog, I can't see that being easy.

There is no way, in my mind, to be able to react that quickly to the changing settings. I feel like you would miss so many moments fiddling with exposure or miss exposure all together.

If you shoot in Aperture or Shutter priority, even if you are stop or two off, you can probably fix that after the fact if you shoot in RAW.

I myself agree with the poster and would shoot aperture priority, unless of course there was a shutter based effect i was going for. I'd also turn auto iso on, let it only go up to a reasonable number and set an appropriate minimum shutter speed based on my lens.
--
My photoblog for anyone interested...
http://throughmylens.aminus3.com/

 

[Nikonworks]

Yes, I shoot in Raw. Any other D7000 shooters doing weddings?

Regardless of camera used shoot at 1/250 sec at all times.

You can always recover shadows (I use DXO) but you will
never recover a blurred smile, kiss, yawn, tear, etc., etc., etc.

Of course this means using off camera flash.

Good shooting to you.

 

[crankerchick]

As they say, your mileage may vary. I let my ISO float and set my shutter speed to what felt was fast enough for the setting and left it. For the posed portraits, 1/80 seemed to dominate. I set it and forgot it. I didn't find myself missing shots due to messing with settings, I guess because the only setting I was really adjusting was aperture as the scene demanded and the camera was bumping the iso if necessary to maintain shutter and aperture I wanted to use.

I was,however, missing shots in A because my shutter speed was too slow sometimes. I could have set the min shutter speed higher, but I decided to shoot manual instead. It was only upon looking at my shots on the computer that I saw that an added bonus was I was nailing exposure more often once I switched to manual.

I can definitely fix my washed out shots in post processing, thank goodness, but I still prefer to learn to get things right in camera.

Of course one would say letting the iso float is worse, but I felt more comfortable with getting the shot, possibly at higher iso (the max of which I can also control) than to have an unusable shot because the subject was blurred or the photo was soft.

I don't believe just using VNX or CNX to import the photos will maintain the in camera settings like Picture Mode, D-Lighting, etc. Anything beyond white balance is ignored by non-Nikon software. One would have to convert the nef to jpg/tiff in Nikon software.

This wedding was the first time I've seen that some of my shots files actually looked more pleasing to my eyes in Lightroom then the same RAW capture viewed in VNX with in camera settings applied.

You don't have to PP in Capture NX to get the settings from the camera. You just have to import through Capture NX (or View NX) then you can open in lightroom, Photoshop, or whatever.

As for shooting a wedding in manual, and I'm no pro photog, I can't see that being easy.

There is no way, in my mind, to be able to react that quickly to the changing settings. I feel like you would miss so many moments fiddling with exposure or miss exposure all together.

If you shoot in Aperture or Shutter priority, even if you are stop or two off, you can probably fix that after the fact if you shoot in RAW.

I myself agree with the poster and would shoot aperture priority, unless of course there was a shutter based effect i was going for. I'd also turn auto iso on, let it only go up to a reasonable number and set an appropriate minimum shutter speed based on my lens.
--
My photoblog for anyone interested...
http://throughmylens.aminus3.com/

--
Push the button more--that's a start.

 

[Thunderjam]

Believe it or not, I just found this link today. He has a setting for portrait/wedding. Hope it helps!

http://www.nikonians.org/forums/dcboard.php?az=set_linear_mode&forum=329&page=&topic_id=4398&prev_page=show_topic