Sony a6000 Portrait Settings for Beginners 

Hey Chris man I really appreciate your comment really sound like you know your stuff do you have a page I can follow. I'm a amature photographer but want to do weddings and portraits.

Also do you think it's a good idea to use aperture or is manual better.

@@dwill3233 I've been a photographer for a few years. My first camera was the canon 10D. I use to do some paid work, a long time ago, but hardly consider myself a professional. I don't have a page, but have often thought of starting one as part of my, now, photography hobby. I've done weddings, over the years, and portrait shoots. They are fun and do pay well. My suggestion to you is to use every opportunity presented to you to offer your photography services to friends and family, at first. You can polish your skills this way. If you know of a family member or friend that is getting married, offer to be an additional shooter at the wedding. You don't have to charge them for your time, if you don't want too, but never give your work away totally for free. If not charging for your time, be sure to sell them your finished photos. NEVER just give them all the photos you took. NEVER just sell them all the photos you took. A photographer, even a professional, will always have shots that just didn't come out right, for whatever reason, and those should not be seen by anyone. You're goal is to showcase the good ones, the keepers and the epic photos you've made, not the mistakes you've made. The same can be applied if you know of a family member or friend that is going to have a portrait session done; engagement, family, senior, headshots, etc. Once you feel your skills are ready to tackle the job as lead shooter, you're ready to book a paid gig on your own and have your own second shooter! I almost forgot, don't shy away from using flash either. It's not as difficult as you may think. Good luck too you and God Bless!

@@dwill3233 When first starting out, and for anything that is fast paced, Aperture Priority is best, in my opinion. Except for low light, where your shutter speed will suffer too much. Then you'd benefit from using Shutter Priority. For staged portraits, once you've polished your skills, nothing beats full manual.

Settings can be saved with the memory recall function. Set up the settings you want, then go into the menus and find memory recall and select bank 1,2 or 3. After it has saved, turn the mode dial to MR and select which bank you saved it to. These settings will stay forever unless you change them

For that you need a lens that has wide aperture like f1.8 or close to that. You want to use the lens at f1.8, because the smaller the number is the larger the aperture is, the larger the aperture is the shallower the depth of field is. The second thing you want to pay attention to is the distance between your subject and the background, the greater the distance is between them the more out of focus the background will be. Another thing that affects how blurred your background is the focal length of the lens, a short telephoto lens like 85 or 135 on a crop sensor will give more of an out of focus background than a 35mm or 50mm. Try to focus always on the closest eye to the camera, when you are shooting with a small aperture you are getting a very shallow depth of field, so you need to be careful that you have the eyes in focus, if you get that right the rest is ok, because the human perception is that if the eye is in focus the photo is in focus. Finally try to have a shutter speed somewhere 1/200 to eliminate camera shake and small movements of the subject.

@@bacikukacthanks

In auto ISO u can set the ISO range, there are minimum and maximum.

John Norbert Jovellanos yes they are, I have them both

Depends what type of shot you're trying to get. Just remember, the lower your aperture number, the smaller field of focus. If you set something like around 1.8 or so, you won't be able to get all of someone's hair in focus, any hair closer and farther away from what's in focus will blur.

It's a prime lens

I would recommend the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 for a general lens. It is extremely sharp, has a low aperture which gives a nice depth of field and lets lots of light in. It is a good focal length, not too wide but not too narrow.

Hey Devin, thanks for pointing that out. I just updated the description with my recommendations. I'll also drop them in this comment to make it easier to find. Here are my recommended portrait lenses to start with... 35mm f/1.8 OSS - camtips.co/sony35mmf18e 50mm f/1.8 OSS - camtips.co/sony50mmf18e For indoor portraits where you need a wider field of view, go with the 35mm f/1.8 OSS . For outdoor portraits where you have more room to compose the subject, go with the 50mm f/1.8 OSS.

@@cameratips thanks man i ended up getting the 35mm 1.8 lens and used your settings it's awesome just curious if doesn't let me zoom in and out with that lens is that supposed to be like that?

@@devincoyle3336 Yep, that's totally normal. The 35mm is a "prime lens" which means it stays fixed at the 35mm focal length. The advantage of a lens like this is that Sony can incorporate a bright f/1.8 aperture, OSS and also keep the size of the lens to a minimum. If they were to make the lens zoom from say 18mm to 35mm, while maintaining a bright f/1.8 aperture and incorporating OSS, the lens would be MUCH larger, heaving and more expensive due to all the aspects needed to construct a lens like that (see the Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 as an example). Essentially, with the 35mm lens, you'll need to "zoom" with your feet.

@@cameratips awesome thanks so much for the info man!

Are the two lenses capable with the a6000?

Naomi kit lens

Carl Cabanie uup

From what I know, 50-120mm works best for portraits

kim jennie Hope all is well, did you figure this out? You have it set in continuous shooting. Change it in your settings:)!