Couple of Questions Re: Family Sessions

[NicoleScraps]

Weekend after next, I have two family sessions for practice.
I just wanted to double check on some things that I am not 100% sure about.
One session is going to be a 14 year old boy and his black lab. They had asked if it was okay for the dog to be in the photos and I said yes as long as they were able to get the dog to sit still. I am not really a dog kind of person.
The other session is a family of 5.
My questions are mostly about aperture and metering.
With the boy and the dog, should I (spot) meter off the dog since it is darker than the boy? Or vice versa? Or is it not going to matter with them being close together in the photo.
Aperture, I am thinking in order to get both the boy and the dog in clear focus that I probably shouldn't go wider than f4. I am planning to use my 50mm 1.8 lens, so I will for sure be at 50mm focal length.
With the family, I am thinking that I need to use a smaller aperture, how much smaller? f8? Is that too small? Do I meter and focus on the person in the center of the frame, depending on how I have them posed?
Both families are aware that I am still learning, but I want to make sure that I know what I need to do and not end up with a bunch of crappy shots.
For both sessions we will be outdoors, late afternoon. Possibly out in the open or in some shade. I have one hour for each session so I need to have it all in my head before I start.

[autofocus]

Originally Posted by NicoleScraps

Weekend after next, I have two family sessions for practice.
I just wanted to double check on some things that I am not 100% sure about.
One session is going to be a 14 year old boy and his black lab. They had asked if it was okay for the dog to be in the photos and I said yes as long as they were able to get the dog to sit still. I am not really a dog kind of person.
The other session is a family of 5.
My questions are mostly about aperture and metering.
With the boy and the dog, should I (spot) meter off the dog since it is darker than the boy? Or vice versa? Or is it not going to matter with them being close together in the photo.
Aperture, I am thinking in order to get both the boy and the dog in clear focus that I probably shouldn't go wider than f4. I am planning to use my 50mm 1.8 lens, so I will for sure be at 50mm focal length.
With the family, I am thinking that I need to use a smaller aperture, how much smaller? f8? Is that too small? Do I meter and focus on the person in the center of the frame, depending on how I have them posed?
Both families are aware that I am still learning, but I want to make sure that I know what I need to do and not end up with a bunch of crappy shots.
For both sessions we will be outdoors, late afternoon. Possibly out in the open or in some shade. I have one hour for each session so I need to have it all in my head before I start.

A few questions...will you be shooting RAW? If not, I'd highly recommend you do so. By spot metering off the black dog you are likely to blow out your primary subject, the boy. Plus, your focus point should be on the boy, and not the dog. You often need to underexpose the shot by a stop or so when there is a lot of black in the shot. Do you shoot in manual? F/4 - F/5.6 should be fine as long as they are grouped fairly close together. Get the exposure on the boy correct and you'll always be able to fix the dog in post. Depending on how you have your family setup (and that's important) any aperture from F/5.6 - F/11 should work out for you. You also may want to brush up on posing a group before the job. Hope this helps

Vince

[NicoleScraps]

Do I shoot in RAW? Not typically. I just haven't experimented with it too much at this point. I might start to try out the RAW+jpg option so that I will have both to play around with later. My problem right now is I have no storage for RAW. My EHD is almost maxed out. I need to buy another one soon.
Do I shoot in manual? I understand how to shoot in manual and have been successful with it. However, I am relatively inexperienced so I cannot look at a situation and just KNOW what settings I need to use. I tend to play around, take test shots, change setting etc, which ends up taking me a couple of minutes to get the camera where I want it to be. So I tend to shoot in AV for the most part. Especially when I have a limited amount of time.

[oldwolf]

Tips for the dog. Bring treats and a squeaky toy. You also need to have the camera up to your face ready to take a picture at any moment. My wife and I take family portraits and she loves the dogs. They don't hold still but you have to learn to think like them.

When you get the boy and his dog positioned then have someone in the family right behind you hold the squeaky toy above your head and squeeze it. The dog will look your way and you can take the picture. Don't have the family members stand to the side telling the dog to look at you. The dog will look at the family member trying to figure out what's going on.

Give the dog a treat after every time he/she does something good like sit or look at you and after you press the shutter. This will get the dog to think that the shutter release is a good thing as well as whatever command you just gave it (i.e. sit, flat, chill, shake, etc). Our dogs lay down when we tell them to chill.

Meter off the dog to see what exposure settings you get, then meter off the boy and use something in between. Shoot in RAW and it will help save some of your shots in the end.

Last piece of advice for the dog. Don't expect him/her to be ready for your shoot right away. You're new. They want to play and get to know you first. Let them run around to wear themselves out. This will help you in the long run because the dog will get all the excitement out and hopefully get a little bit tired enough to pay attention to commands.

As a side note, I don't really like taking pictures of pets because I'm the one setting things up and getting drooled on while my wife is the one that takes the pictures hehe. I have nothing against pets though because we have both dogs and cats in the house. I'd just never be a pet photographer. I'll leave that up to her.

On the family shooot, have ideas in your head before you go. Print up a pose sheet if you have to. Refer to it when you need to. Depending on the situation and size of the family, I normally shoot them starting around 5.6 all the way up to f11.

Good luck with your shoot.

[szuzu1969]

Good luck to your first shoots. I found that this was alot of fantastic info on photography. Thanks everyone I am setting my camera to RAW now. Does photoshop read RAW files or do I need another program?

[pcressey]

Originally Posted by szuzu1969

Good luck to your first shoots. I found that this was alot of fantastic info on photography. Thanks everyone I am setting my camera to RAW now. Does photoshop read RAW files or do I need another program?

Simple way to tell if you have the RAW plugin (to open the files) is to open Photoshop, then click File --> Open. Click the Files of type dropdown (where you can see a list of all the files Photoshop can read)... look for Photoshop RAW (*.raw).

If you don't have it, just go here: camera raw | Adobe Photoshop CS5