Getting your camera settings right can be the difference between capturing unforgettable moments or losing them entirely. Whether it’s the first kiss or the dance floor, wedding days offer little room for mistakes.
Coming to you from John Branch IV Photography, this practical video walks you through essential camera settings to master wedding day photography. Branch emphasizes starting the day by choosing between aperture priority and manual mode. Although aperture priority can simplify your process, it risks allowing your camera to make poor decisions in tricky lighting situations. Branch advises choosing manual mode to maintain complete control, especially during unpredictable lighting scenarios. Similarly, he tackles the raw versus JPEG debate clearly, urging the use of raw files to provide maximum flexibility during editing. According to Branch, this decision alone can save countless photos that might otherwise be unusable if captured only in JPEG.
The video further covers another crucial but often overlooked setting: white balance. Branch typically sets his camera to auto white balance for convenience, but he carefully explains when and how to switch to manual Kelvin adjustments. He points out scenarios where your camera’s auto mode might fail, such as rooms bathed in a particular color tone, requiring you to make quick manual adjustments to maintain accurate skin tones. Branch also discusses a critical safety feature—setting up dual card slots. If your camera supports dual card slots, using them simultaneously ensures your photos are securely backed up throughout the wedding. This advice alone is invaluable for ensuring you never have to explain to a client why their photos were lost.
Branch moves beyond general settings to walk you through specific scenarios you’ll encounter during weddings, starting with detail shots and flatlays. He clearly explains how adjusting ISO between 200 and 500, aperture between f/2 and f/4, and shutter speeds between 1/60 to 1/160 helps you nail these essential opening shots. Understanding when to change these settings based on your camera’s capabilities and lighting conditions is essential to keep photos sharp and free from unintended motion blur.
When moving on to portrait sessions and first looks, Branch suggests managing outdoor scenarios by keeping ISO as low as possible, aperture close to wide-open for dreamy backgrounds, and shutter speeds fast enough to freeze motion. However, Branch smartly advises photographers not to obsess about wide-open apertures, as slightly stopping down often delivers sharper, more reliable results. He covers situations photographers dread, like shooting ceremonies in dimly lit cathedrals, explaining clearly how to manage your ISO, aperture, and shutter speed to handle challenging conditions without flash.
Branch wraps up by addressing the toughest scenario—indoor receptions. He introduces flash photography clearly, outlining both on-camera and off-camera flash setups. His explanation about balancing ambient light with flash, particularly using higher ISOs to retain ambiance while avoiding harsh flash effects, provides essential advice for getting natural-looking reception photos. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Branch.
Didn't watch the video yet. But now that modern cameras have had good Quiet-Mode options for a while, even my older Mirrorless camera. Can we please use 'Electronic-Shutter' only during the actual ceremony? It's very annoying hearing shutter-click-click-click, click-click-click whilest the guy's giving the Wedding speech.
Sadly you can get banding from lights when using the electronic shutter which is why people wouldn't want to use it. They would take annoying you over ruining the photos of someone's big day because they were using silent shutter.
If Banding were to occur, that's generally easily fixable in post on the off chance that happens, plus more modern cameras are getting better and better at 'E-Shutter'. Rather than making such a disturbance at their wedding.