Photo shoot camera settings (Nikon D90)?

I'm going to be doing a shoot tomorrow. It's going to be kind of cloudy/dull outside. I'm wondering what manual settings i should use to get good exposure and clear sharp pics? As far as aperture, shutter speed, white balance, and iso? I also want the round circular bokeh affect in some of the background pics. I'm going to be using a Nikon D90 and a 50mm 1.8 lens!

Set your white balance to cloudy if it will be cloudy…

As far as what other settings to use - will you be photographing kids that will be moving all over the place? If so, set a faster shutter speed and then use your meter to figure out what aperture to set… If you will be photographing a single person and want a creamy bokeh in the background, use a larger aperture (smaller f stop number)… A lot of it really depends on what the conditions are and no one on here can predict that for you. Read your manual and make sure you understand how aperture, shutter speed, and ISO interact with each other.

If its dull/cloudy, you're going to have very 'flat' light. You may want to use a little fill flash to give a bit of life to the eyes.

To shoot with a shallow depth of field, you want to be fairly close to the subject, with a wide aperture (f1.8 or 2).

Do some test shots with WB & see what they look like on Auto compared with cloudy setting.

Aperture/shutter speed combinations will depend on what your light meter says - we have no idea what the light levels will be where you're shooting.

Keep the ISO as low as possible for best image quality, unless you have to increase it to get a decent shutter speed to prevent camera shake.

Without being there by your side, we can't really do more than give you a rough idea. If you insist on using manual (not that there's anything wrong with that) even though you never tried it before, take a couple of shots in "P" mode and see what the camera chooses. Copy these settings in "M" and make adjustments after looking at your results.

I could go crazy telling you about white balance, but since your photo shoot is tomorrow, you won't have time to learn. Stick to auto white balance. If it actually is cloudy, you can use the cloudy WB setting. If you know what to do with the images, use RAW so you can adjust for WB later.

To get those round bokeh circles, you will want to stick to f/1.8, so leave that there and adjust the shutter speed as needed. The lower the ISO, the better, as mentioned above.

This might help you learn about bokeh before tomorrow:

This might help you learn about white balance before tomorrow: and

For more

Try shooting the subject in better light."With portraits, softening or diffusing the light often is the best strategy. Photographing people on a sunny day will lead to strong contrast and shadows on the subject. What are your options to soften the light? You could return on a different day with no harsh sunlight, or you could move the subject in to some shade or window light, add diffused flash to overpower the sunlight, or pop out a reflector and fill in the shadows.