best settings for filming outdoors? canon rebel eos t3i

[kateamonsta]

my brother is getting married this Saturday the 15th, it is going to be an outdoor wedding at 4pm pacific time. The weather forecast is sunny highs of 74 lows 55 with a chance of showers. what are the best GENERAL setting to record the ceremony? Im a camera newbie so I don't know squat! any help would be greatly appriciated.

[Waddizzle]

The real trick to getting sharp pictures is to get as much light as possible into the camera, as quickly as possible. Learn to read the information being displayed in the viewfinder, particularly the light metering. I suggest that you put the camera into one of the creative modes, and put in a little practice with it. The different modes allow you to set either ISO, f/stop, or shutter speed, while leaving the other two settings in "Auto", or at a specific setting. What setting to use will depend heavily upon your choice of lens. I'll assume that you're using the 18-55 kit lens, which is a pretty decent walk around lens, and no tripod. Your distance from your subjects can also change things, as well as he angle of availble light sources relative to your camera. I prefer to use as fast a shutter speed as I can possibly get. I would set the camera to auto-focus mode, and use the "Tv" creative mode and set the shutter speed for something between 1/320 and 1/1000. I would then set the ISO to between ISO-100 and ISO-400. I prefer ISO-200. These settings would leave the Aperture in automatic, which hopefully will settle in somewhere around 5.6-8, which will give a deeper depth of field and reduce the chance of shots that are in focus in some areas of the image, and out of focus in other areas. Another good method is to use the "Av" mode with an aperture setting fo f/8, and an ISO-400 setting, which should force the camera to use very quick shutter speeds when you are in bright sunshine. Just remember this....the faster the shutter the better....the more light [wider aperture] you can get, the better. Just remember, that with wider aperture your depth of field [focusing range] becomes shallower, which causes a pleasant blurring of backgrounds. Hope this helps.

[ScottyP]

No time to learn cameras now. Better stick with Sports mode in bright daylight and green square Auto mode elsewhere. Do use flash outdoors even if it is sunny because it will work as fill light and un-harsh ugly face shadows from overhead sun.

I hope you are not the primary photog with all the responsibility for that on your head?

[TCampbell · Accepted solution]

For outdoors in "sun", I'd use a flash.  The difference in the sunlit vs. shadow parts of your subjects will be extreme in full mid-day sun, but using flash ("fill flash") while outdoors is a great way to improve the look of a shot.

Switch to "Program" mode on the mode dial.

Raise the pop-up flash (the small button near the mode dial with the lightning bolt symbol release the catch-hook and raises the flash.)

Note that when you look through the viewfinder to take a photo, there is some information displayed along the bottom... most of which is exposure information.  But on the far left side you will see  a small lightning-bolt icon.  If you see that icon illuminated, it means the camera will use flash when you take the shot.

In the basic modes you have little control over when the camera will use flash (it's automatic), but in the "creative zone" modes (Program, Tv, Av, and M) you have full control and can force the camera to use flash.    HOWEVER, using "Program" mode is the same as using the full auto mode (the green box) *except* that you can override several things that you can not override when using full auto.

It would be much better if you had an external speedlite (e.g. like the Canon 430EX II) because the built-in pop-up flash is very limited (subjects need to be close for that flash to have much effect).  

When I shoot outdoors (I'm also shooting a wedding tomorrow), I set a feature called "Flash Exposure Compensation" to "-1".  You can find instructions on this on page 102 of your instruction manual (not the "basic instruction manual"... the full version of hte instruction manual for your camera.)  "Flash Exposure Compensations" asks the camera to determine how much flash power it needs (which is what it normally does) but then adjust the amount of power either upward or downward based on the "compensation" level that you set.  The reason I dial it down is that I do not want my photos to have the look people commonly associate with flash photography... I still want the sun to be the main source of light... and I only want the flash to fill in the deep shadows (you'lll still have shadows... but they'll be weak shadows instead of strong shadows.)  This improves the lighting.

When you go inside, you will want to turn "flash exposure compensation" feature off by setting it back to "0" (zero means don't alter the amount of flash -- do whatever the camera wants to do.)