Photography moving group subject

Equipment I'm using.
Nikon D3200 with 18-55mm vr2 kit lens & Nikon 35mm F1.8G & flash I have is Nikon SB-700

Can An experienced photographer offer me some advice for this scenario.

My photography involves large groups of people walking towards camera so essentially a large group portrait only moving.

What focus mode should I use for this AF/A AF/S AF/C MF ?

Also what AF area mode
Single point AF - Dynamic area AF - 3D tracking or Auto Area AF ?

My metering is on matrix

I've looked on YouTube etc but there are like 10 different answers which just adds to the confusion for a beginner photographer.

I would like to achieve the largest majority of the people in focus front to back.

Are you shooting outside in good light, or nighttime or are you shooting indoors?
It makes a difference.

Welcome,
hang in there answers will come.

Most of my photography is in good light during the day between 2-4pm outdoors which is what my original post info was regarding.

but I also Photograph a similar scenario at night in poor light from 7pm-11pm

Thanks.

Bright day should be relatively easy to get the shutter high enough that walking speed isn't an issue.

How deep the people are will affect the f stop you use. If they are in a nice straight line, only 1 person deep, you can shoot as wide open as you can with your lens... of they are 4 or 5 or 6 deep, then you may (depending on how far from the subject you are) need to up the f stop to make them all in focus if this is important to you. I would go with single or 9 point continuous focus.

For the night image, this will be a lot trickier. Depending on crowd size, 1 SB-700 may not cut it.

Why do they have to be walking towards you? Why can't they be stationary?

Auto area AF has face recognition and will track multiple human faces

kevy73 said:

Bright day should be relatively easy to get the shutter high enough that walking speed isn't an issue.

How deep the people are will affect the f stop you use. If they are in a nice straight line, only 1 person deep, you can shoot as wide open as you can with your lens... of they are 4 or 5 or 6 deep, then you may (depending on how far from the subject you are) need to up the f stop to make them all in focus if this is important to you. I would go with single or 9 point continuous focus.

For the night image, this will be a lot trickier. Depending on crowd size, 1 SB-700 may not cut it.

Why do they have to be walking towards you? Why can't they be stationary

Click to expand...

im photographing football/soccer crowds exiting stadiums for photographs to be used in football programmes/magazine etc.
sometimes one row is ok & other times it's a large crowd In 10 or more rows.

Thanks for the reply.

Ok - so super sharp focus across whole rows of people isn't massively important... as long as the first 1, 2 or 3 rows are in focus and the rest is recognizable as a crowd leaving a stadium, this will be ok. You will need to be up pretty high to get the desired shot I would imagine.

Stadiums at night should have sufficient ambient lighting for your camera to pick up the back of the crowd if the SB-700 highlights the first...

Depending on light and speed of movement, you may even be able to slow your shutter speed down a tad and have the flash freeze them in place...

For night time - I would start with ISO 640/800, Shutter 1/60th, Aperture as close to 4 as you can keep it - as long as you are getting enough depth of field and the flash on manual set to 1/4 or 1/2 power depending on distance to subject and the speed they are moving. The closer you are, the less flash power you will need.

That would be my starting setup and I would tweak as necessary. If the front people are super bright and the back fading away into dark, up the ISO a tad, slow the shutter a tad and lessen the flash power....

If the people are moving very fast, you will need a faster shutter though. But generally leaving a stadium, speed can be quite slow from the crush of people.

You have chosen quite a difficult scenario with lots and lots of different variables to take into consideration. Good luck.

I will give those setups a try for both scenarios day & night & see how works out.

I had searched YouTube etc for solutions but there was way too many different answers which just confused me more as a beginner.

Thanks.

You are welcome!