Essential Camera Settings For Church Service Photography

Using a digital camera is an excellent way to level up your church photography, but it can be daunting because of the sheer amount of settings it has.

Essential settings for church service photography include; ISO, aperture, shutter speed, bracketing, focus modes, and white balance. Mastering these settings will allow you to take stunning shots of your church services.

Some of these settings may sound familiar, but what do they mean and how do they affect your photography? Keep reading as I go into depth on each one of these essential settings.

Not mastering essential camera settings is a mistake for church photographers, but not the only one you can make, check out my article highlighting 16 common church photography mistakes and how to avoid them.

The Exposure Triangle

The exposure triangle is comprised of three parts; ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. The goal is to balance the elements of the triangle for optimal exposure. Changing each of these elements will affect your exposure, as well as introduce an effect unique to each.

ISO can be thought of as “fake light” as increasing your ISO increases the exposure of your image. Back when shooting on film was more common, ISO was used to measure the sensitivity to light that your film had, called film speed. The downside to raising your ISO on a digital camera is that it introduces noise. Noise is comparable to grain in that it adds artifacts to your image. Noise can be taken away in editing, but it often looks artificially smooth.

Aperture refers to how wide the opening on your lens is. It is similar to the pupil of your eyes, the wider it is, the more light gets let in. Tightening also called raising, your aperture lets less light in, lowering your exposure. The wider your aperture, the more depth of field your image has. Essentially, the focus area of your camera gets smaller as your f-stop (f/) does. A lower aperture means a blurrier background, combine this with a longer focal length with compression, and you can separate your subject from the background.

Shutter speed refers to the amount of time your camera’s sensor is exposed to incoming light. The longer your shutter speed, the more light hits your sensor. Shutter speed is measured in seconds and fractions of seconds. When shown as a fraction of a second, the larger the denominator (bottom number), the less light comes in. With shutter speed, longer exposures create motion blur, which can be used as a creative tool for techniques like light trails.

Bracketing

Bracketing is the idea of taking multiple photos and merging them in post-processing software. It gives you more control over your image than taking a single JPEG or RAW shot. There are two main bracketing modes; exposure bracketing and focus bracketing.

Focus bracketing is when you take multiple shots on different focal planes and merge them to create one, hyper-focused image. This technique is most popular in product photography as it allows the entire product to be in focus.

Exposure bracketing is when you take multiple shots at different exposures, generally one to three stops above and below your set exposure. You then combine them in post-processing into one high dynamic range (HDR) image. This allows you to retain information in both the highlights and shadows and edit the photo to your liking.

Most digital cameras have built-in settings for bracketing, though it is possible to bracket manually. If you do intend to bracket manually, I recommend doing so with a tripod to make it easier for software such as Lightroom to align your images.

If you’re in the market for a new digital camera, check out my article highlighting 11 of the best cameras for church photography.

Focus Modes

Focus modes determine how frequently your camera uses autofocus on your shot. There are three focus modes; manual, single, and continuous focus.

Manual focus is just as it sounds, you focus your lens manually using its focus ring. To effectively use manual focus mode, focus peaking is an essential setting to use. Focus peaking outlines the areas in your shot that are in focus making it easier not to miss focus. Manual focus (labelled M or MF) is a good option when your subject and yourself are stationary.

Single autofocus (labelled S or AFS) focuses on your chosen area one single time when triggered. Once you’ve triggered it, you can move freely without it adjusting or “searching”, which is when your camera changes the focus to find the optimal focal point. Single autofocus is useful when you are moving but your subject is stationary.

Continuous autofocus (labelled C or AFC) continuously focuses on your chosen area while triggered. Once triggered your camera will continuously maintain focus on your desired area or subject. It is ideal when your subject is moving or you are in constant motion.

White Balance

Your camera’s white balance setting tells it the true value of white on a spectrum ranging from cool to warm. Your camera then adjusts the other colours in reference to this value. Your camera has multiple white balance modes; the key modes I’ll cover are: auto, kelvin, and custom

Auto white balance does exactly what it says; it automatically sets the white balance of your camera. This is a good option to save time and effort, though it can often be slightly off. To counter this, I recommend shooting in a RAW format so you can adjust your white balance while editing.

Kelvin white balance allows you to set your white balance according to a scale ranging from roughly 2,000K, warm, to 10,000K, cool. Daylight ranges from roughly 5000K to 5600K, with shade being around 7000K.

The final white balance mode, custom, allows you to tell your camera what “white” is. A common way of doing this is to use a white card, like this one from Amazon. The same results can be achieved with a white piece of paper, but white cards are far more rugged and will last if thrown in your camera bag.

Nailing white balance is important because, as stated before, your camera adjusts every colour in reference to what it thinks is white; because of this, white balance affects your entire image. If you want to avoid this completely and take advantage of other convenient benefits, read my article explaining why you should shoot in black and white.