portraitures and d40/xti questions

[muffinman]

For those who own a d40: do you normally change the ISO/whitebalance/aperture or do you normally just use the auto setting?

For those who own a xti: how useful is the proximity sensor? Is it really that necessary?

As you can probably tell, it's b/w the d40 and the xti. I'm mostly interested in taking portraitures for my clothing company. I've tried both cameras out and they both feel natural in my hands.

 

[HomeingPigeon]

With my D40 I have used the settings in both manners. Both in auto settings and in manual. It all depends on what you are taking pictures of and if you no the difference between the different manual settings. Some things like white balance, I just leave on manual and change it because that is pretty obvious what it does. The different settings are like, outdoor, indoors, etc. Others I will just leave on auto though.

 

[GoCubsGo]

In my opinion proximity sensors are heavy on the "approximate" and lite on the sensor. It is not Canon vs Nikon when I say that, it's just function.

I believe both will suit your purposes well but you may want to go hold both and see which feels better in your hands. To me the XTI feels better, the d40 felt odd and I am a Nikon shooter.

 

[compuwar]

For those who own a d40: do you normally change the ISO/whitebalance/aperture or do you normally just use the auto setting?

For those who own a xti: how useful is the proximity sensor? Is it really that necessary?

As you can probably tell, it's b/w the d40 and the xti. I'm mostly interested in taking portraitures for my clothing company. I've tried both cameras out and they both feel natural in my hands.

Lighting will be much more important than the camera body. It'll also end up costing more once you get the modifiers and backgrounds necessary for good clothing shots. I think both cameras will require either a radio trigger or hot shoe to PC-sync connector to trigger strobes unless you're using the built-in flash for fill, in which case they'll trigger flash-triggered strobes just fine.

Spend as little as you can on an appropriate body and lens, hook yourself up with good lights and softboxes, that's where you're going to spend the real time to learn to shoot clothing.

 

[ChrisA]

For those who own a d40: do you normally change the ISO/whitebalance/aperture or do you normally just use the auto setting?

For those who own a xti: how useful is the proximity sensor? Is it really that necessary?

As you can probably tell, it's b/w the d40 and the xti. I'm mostly interested in taking portraitures for my clothing company. I've tried both cameras out and they both feel natural in my hands.

For those who own a d40: do you normally change the ISO/whitebalance/aperture or do you normally just use the auto setting?

For those who own a xti: how useful is the proximity sensor? Is it really that necessary?

As you can probably tell, it's b/w the d40 and the xti. I'm mostly interested in taking portraitures for my clothing company. I've tried both cameras out and they both feel natural in my hands.

You are talking here about studio-style portraits. This is a situation where everything is under your control, lighting, background and so on. And you have a cooperative subject. Because you can control thr light there should not be any reason to shoot using anything but the lowest ISO setting to minimize noise. So of course you'd set the ISO. But sert it and leave it.

Aperture would be set to control the desired depth of field. This is a little backwards from the way you work it shooing outdoors or candid shots where aperture controls the amount of exposure. In a studio you can adjust the power of the lighting and thereby shoot at whatever aperture you like. Shutter speed does not matter with strobes just use whatever the camera syncs at.

About "auto" mode. Generally you care about how the final image looks and want to have some control over it. It you don't care then just use "auto". But most photographers do care.

As for white balance, just shoot a grey card in the same light as the model. Correct that in post processing then apply same corect to all the shots in that light. It will be perfect.

In general camera used in a studio can be very simple. You don't use or need any automated features, you don't even need a built-in light meter for studio work.

If you are outdoors, not in a controlled environment then it is a little different but even there you might have an assistant to dothings like hold a large size refector to use as a fill light or even set upbatery powered strobes on a stand.

The types of shots you are thinking about require a very good eye for color, light and composition and it is a hugely competitive field. But if you can design clothing yo must already have some good judgments in this area. Learning about lighting will be the next thing.

 

[termina3]

Spend as little as you can on an appropriate body and lens, hook yourself up with good lights and softboxes, that's where you're going to spend the real time to learn to shoot clothing.

Since you didn't (you usually do), I'll mention strobist–very informative and interesting.