Technique assessment

Full control

Ania says... I got Ian to set up his D810 for the shoot and he was pretty close with the settings. He used Manual mode right out of the gate, which is ideal for full control over your parameters, but I noticed he set an aperture of f/8. I suggested he drop down to f/5.6, as f/8 wasn’t quite tight enough; we actually want the back of the head to fall out of focus slightly, so f/5.6 will retain sharpness in the face and drop focus behind.

Sync speed

Ania says... Ian had set his shutter speed to 1/160 sec, but his camera is capable at syncing at a maximum shutter speed of 1/200 sec, so I adjusted this accordingly. There is nothing inherently wrong with using a slightly slower shutter speed, as it’s actually the very brief burst of flash that freezes any motion, but it’s better to be safe than sorry!

White Balance

Ania says… I like to colour correct before I start shooting, so I always use a grey card under the lights that I’m using and set my Nikon’s white balance system to ‘PRE’, which is the Preset manual white balance option. I fill the frame with the grey card and press the shutter. It doesn’t take a photograph in this mode but the camera will take an accurate white balance reading, even if the grey card is out of focus. If done correctly, the Nikon will then flash ‘Gd’.