Lyons33
New member
What have people found to be the best settings for headshots/portraiture while possibly keeping as many of Steve's BIF settings intact ? Thanks in advance everyone for your help !
If you would like to post, you'll need to register. Note that if you have a BCG store account, you'll need a new, separate account here (we keep the two sites separate for security purposes).
There's no problem using the Z8 for portraiture work and really Steve's recommended wildlife configurations will work just fine.What have people found to be the best settings for headshots/portraiture while possibly keeping as many of Steve's BIF settings intact ? Thanks in advance everyone for your help !
I have moved to only using Profoto with the Nikon varient of their triggersI shoot 100% in Raw and then batch process the sorted files using Photoshop actions to create JPGs at the size and resolution I want for the B&G. The D3 was fantastic for group pictures with its 5:4 crop so image could be sized for 8x10 prints automatically. Removing the 5:4 crop makes the Z8/Z9 cameras far less useful for wedding photography. I would be inclinded to use a D850 with its 5:4 mode and a 24-70mm lens for the group shots. It is important to minimize post processing time as much as possible.
The big question is how speedlights will work with the Z cameras. We lose IR AF assist with these cameras and the use of SC-29 IR flash cord. This has been invaluable with the usual dimly lit receptions and the dancing.
Go watch Hudson Henry’s videos. I don’t think Steve uses the banks much…but have banks setup similar to what Hudson does. Bank A is action and once that was setup with a comBo of Steve/Hudson/me settings I copied it to B and C and made slight changes there for Landscape/waterfall and Walking Around. Bank D currently unused. Unfortunately…the shooting mode isn’t remembered in the banks so I have to reset that and if I need to bracket for post I need to enable that as well…but it is what they gave us.What have people found to be the best settings for headshots/portraiture while possibly keeping as many of Steve's BIF settings intact ? Thanks in advance everyone for your help !
I was referring to single or slow or high or whatever frame rate you set…guess I termed it badly. Shucks…
use banks. I set B to wildlife/action and D for night skies I could set C to macro or portrait if I needed it.What have people found to be the best settings for headshots/portraiture while possibly keeping as many of Steve's BIF settings intact ? Thanks in advance everyone for your help !
This is a great group of settings. The one thing I'd change is Active D Lighting to Low - not Auto. ADL at anything above Low also changes the exposure - something you would not want in the RAW file. It's okay for video or JPEG only - just not RAW+ JPEG.Z8 is great for wildlife and other genres but it is SUPER GREAT for portraits and skin
There are a host of vids dropping from Nikon Europe on this. BUT in summary:
The rest depends on where you are shooting, how you are lighting your subject, what minor adjustments you need to make to "reduce" redness and odd colours
- Obviously drop to L3-5 not 20fps
- Choose PT in picture control - but drop mid-range Sharpening to -2.0; clarity to -1.00.
- Select Raw + JPG Fine* (reason later)
- Active D-lighting Auto - for the jpg
- Skin Softening Normal — applies only to jpg
- Portrait impression balance Mode 2 - may only apply to JPG — be very careful if changing colour tones
- Metering to Spot (Normal)
- Subject Detection to HUMANS
- Enable b4 matrix detection human faces — just in case you choose to switch to matrix metering
- e4 - to subject only
- e5 modelling flash on
- Consider 4x5 or 5x4 crop.
Obviously WB should be as accurate as you can -- we use SpyderChecker for every set up.
Don't just shoot in f/1.2 -- remember folk paid a lot for the dress, the set and and -- think f/5.6-f/8.0 FIRST -- then go creative.