And I mean a real noob. I'm taking a crime scene photography course now (work as a deputy coroner) and this is the first time I've ever touched manual settings on a camera. I understand the concept of the exposure triangle.

As far as we've been taught, the three major principles of this kind of photography are:

1. Maximum depth of field (backgrounds can't be blurry because defense attorneys can say you're hiding something in the blur).
2. Take overall/midrange/closeups of everything, with and without a scale in 3.
3. Parallel film plane.

So based on that, I should probably set my f-stop to something squinty (f/11-f/22ish depending on scene), then ISO, then pick the slowest shutter speed possible for ideal exposure, right? None of the subjects are moving, it's all just photos of guns and blood droplets and shoeprints, just static nonhuman things.

Am I thinking this through correctly? I have to do night photography for an upcoming assignment that still maximizes DOF, so I'm guessing I'll need a tripod and a super slow shutter speed. Can't use flash or anything but ambient light because fuck things you'd do in real life.