Absolute BS. You have not come across enough photographers. A computer is NEVER better than a human at evaluating light, unless you are looking at a uniform 18% grey card.
There is a child comment about manual vs auto focus. I would say even for manual focus, I have consistently beaten at focus accuracy with a split prism on my Hasselblad 501cm (a camera that does not even have a battery inside) than with a 30 something point focus of the latest Canon 1DX Mark something that I rented when shooting at sub 1.4 aperture openings.
> Leave manual mode for the studio.
Actually, a studio is the best place where auto mode will have consistent (and probably correct) exposures. Every. Single. Time. :)
Now if we talk about speed, yes, a computer is no doubt better at it.
Could you please substantiate your claim with any references or information? I am curious because I suspect you may be conflating dynamic range of human vision vs. sensor's dynamic range. Just because sensor's dynamic range isn't as wide as human vision, it has no bearing on sophisticated algorithms in today's cameras that determine the optimal exposure. Modern cameras have ridiculous processing power, scene recognition, face detection, and all kinds of algorithms that determine the best exposure. Please correct me if I misunderstood.
I use a Leica M10 and the auto mode almost always nails the exposure (I use full 3D metering).
In my view, "Manual Mode" in cameras is akin to "Manual Transmission" in cars, almost all super cars have automatic transmission for obvious reasons.
While wandering convention halls getting pictures of cospayers or suiters, the ambient lighting is consistent: I set to full manual and don't have to worry about the occasional light fixture in the background causing sensor confusion.
When I get home, I can bulk-process sets of images as a starting point, because they all have the same curves, then decide what I want to accentuate with each photo.
Source: Photography as a strong hobby for 35 years. I usually take around 20-30k photos/year at conventions and events, and the results are widely appreciated.
One, you can decide what parts of the pictures are used in this calculation and how they are weighted. These are your spot, matrix, and middle measurement modes.
Two, you can use a creative program, e.g., night photography. That will treat bright highlights differently, AFAIK.
However, the world isn't really an 18% grey card and how you expose the picture depends on your creative intent. The most obvious examples are high-key and low-key photos. In fact, photographers often use 18% grey cards to determine the light conditions and then lock the exposure and white balance down and shoot manual. This way, they have a precise reading and no surprises. I only do that when I do portrait photography because skin tones and therefore white balance are crucial. In most other cases, I look at the histogram to see if the exposure is correct and use auto white balance.
You can always adjust white balance when you shoot RAW in post processing. However, you cannot fix the exposure if you're missing the data. That's why I use manual.
If you understand how your camera’s metering system works (area selected, 18 percent gray etc) you can often work with the Metering system and compensate for when you know it’s likely to get it wrong - for example it’s not uncommon to dial a +1 if shooting a bright snowy scene, as most metering systems will be overly aggressive in trying to preserve highlight detail in the snow.
Similarly, if shooting in darker conditions dial in negative compensation.
Metering is pretty sophisticated in modern cameras, the exposure comp dial let’s you work with the tool and augment it’s measurements with your own human input.
Exposure comp plus histogram reviews with metering on is a pretty effective way to work a lot of the time.
The issue was the convenience of seeing it through the camera. The first automatic in camera meters were limited to high-key or low-key and tried to just make the picture's average lighting match the 18% grey card, a portion of it (center weighted or spot). Highly colored subjects could throw this off as the meters weren't always linear to all wavelengths. As technology advanced, matrix meters used multiple points to try and guess tricky lighting conditions. As more elements to the matrix were added, identifying where the subject became possible.
However, they all are just trying to guess at the level of light hitting the subject of the photograph.
I am assuming you are well acquainted with colour management, so I will just leave a brief suggestion. If you further need more pointers, let me know and I would love to elaborate.
Read about reflectivity and their influence on metering.
If you are dealing with a scene that has uneven illumination, for example, a sunrise or sunset, your camera metering will completely go nuts. The same happens when you are shooting snow.
Read about metering modes as one of the child comment had mentioned.
For places that are controlled for light and movement and field (tripod camera pointed at a sunset)... sure use manual.
This is why for challenging exposures, we use a hand held meter.
Good questions.
The problem with auto-exposure is that where you have a fast-changing scene with slower-changing lighting - especially fast-changing background scenery with constant lighting, the computer will change exposure when it shouldn't. This is a scenario professional photographers probably find themselves in rather more often than amateurs - think concerts, stadium sports, etc.
When the lighting changes more frequently than the scene then auto exposure can be helpful.
In this sense full manual settings could be viewed as a longer lasting "exposure lock" type function in a way. It's not that the computer-assisted metering is not useful - more that you want to get the metering locked in for the actual subject then stop it from changing.
With auto-ISO, "manual" camera mode (which refers to manually setting aperture and shutter speed) becomes an automatic exposure mode because the camera is metering the scene and adjusting ISO automatically. It is also possible and practical for certain applications to use "full manual" mode which also involves setting ISO, especially for something with a mostly-fixed scene such as astrophotography.
While camera-adjusted ISO and post-processing lightening (moving the exposure slider up in lightroom) are similar, the reason post-processing alone is not enough is because of dynamic range. Each camera sensor has a certain number of stops of light it can capture. If you're within that range, you can adjust in post and arrive at an image similar to what you would've got had you exposed in the camera. If you aren't within that range, you clip the highlights or shadows.
There are a few reasons why manual mode is beneficial. They mostly relate to speed and accuracy of control. First, aperture and shutter speed have different effects on the result of the image (depth of field, and motion-stopping capability respectively).
For example, I went to the shoreline on Monday and photographed birds. There were terns flying around protecting their young, the young wandering and gaping for food, while osprey were fishing just offshore. For terns and fast-moving birds, shutter speeds in excess of 1/2000 sec are necessary and there are many times when 1/3200 sec is not enough. Meanwhile, the tern chicks being about 25ft away mean that depth of field is shallow because the subject is near (minimum focusing distance on that lens is about 19ft). So an aperture of F8 for chicks is helpful but F5.6 is better for the further subjects and faster motion.
There's no good way to have a camera adjusting multiple settings (ISO and either aperture or shutter speed) because it doesn't understand the circumstances. In order to do this with aperture or shutter priority camera modes, you would be constantly switching the dial between aperture and shutter priorities which requires a button press and command dial turn, as opposed to ONLY adjusting the desired setting using one of two command dials.
Did a few weddings/senior pictures as side gigs but what I enjoyed the most was the thrill of getting the 'shot' in action moments where you have a split second and that is it. Also hiking some trail to be at the top of the summit to get a perfect sunset is also very rewarding.
Some of my photos can be found https://www.timsoperphotography.com/norwayspeedway
Simple website using zenfolio which has been abandoned as I now have a tech job that is full time so I don't have as much time for my photography hobby anymore.
I can't watch the video right now, though, and maybe it really does mean "the dial setting with the M", no more and no less, when it says "manual mode". But I think that is a bit silly. Lots of cameras have different controls.
> "I know almost no professionals who shoot on manual mode...Instead, shoot on aperture mode...Use ISO setting to adjust further for light..."
For non-pros like myself, it's unfortunately not common to shoot with a camera that has good auto-ISO: basically anything above ISO 800 is going to be unusable, and ideally you want ISO 100 or 200 if your lighting situation can allow for it.
So most of the time I find myself in semi-manual modes: where I lock the ISO to a setting that's ideal for the light I have, use auto-focus (unless it's failing to lock on the correct target), and set either the aperture or shutter speed to what I want. The camera then adjusts the other factor appropriately, but I still find myself using Canon's quick adjustment exposure compensation tool almost constantly because my Canon blows out highlights pretty badly a lot of the time.
For a pro I imagine the situation is usually reversed: set both shutter speed and aperture how you want them, and trust your camera to be good enough with the auto-ISO. It sounds to me like GP was basically right: in a non-controlled setting, full manual mode is pretty rare.
The important distinction is that "manual mode" is being discussed and compared to "aperture mode." So it's about the PASM setting and not specifically about "true manual mode" (auto-ISO or not). The clear (and in my view incorrect) assertion of GP is that manual priority/mode is not for use outside the studio. It is said three times:
> I know almost no professionals who shoot on manual mode outside of studio settings.
> The only time manual mode is used is when you're in a studio...
> Leave manual mode for the studio.
There's Manual with Auto ISO, which does almost the same as Aperture/Shutter priority, but lets you select _both_, and the camera chooses an ISO. Or you can specify the ISO as well.
Nikon, Sony, and Canon all have _excellent_ metering systems, but there are two main reasons I sometimes ignore them and go full-manual:
1. In tricky lighting environments, where a face is in shadow, but another is not, and zone or spot metering is causing the camera to meter for the wrong part of the frame. Think dimly-lit weddings, PJ scenarios in night scenes...
2. When you're shooting something with a uniformly-lit area (e.g. stage, sanctuary, podium area) and you can lock in the exposure so you don't accidentally get a few frames underexposed because the meter was looking at the black curtain and not the bright face you focused on.
I know that when I hold it in my hand, I can go from off-to-on-to-take-well-exposed-sharp-picture in less than 1/15th of a second. With my phone there are times when the camera seems to take 5+ seconds to allow a picture to be taken. And with my older Sony alpha mirrorless startup times can go from 1-10 seconds, I guess depending on what mood the camera is in.
There's a reason professionals use chunky bodies even though they (sadly) severely lack good software processing—they get the image. You have to do more post processing still, but hopefully someday Nikon, Sony, Canon, et all will catch up to like 2010-era smartphone camera software :P
Built-in HDR is also decent - no match for manual work in PS/LR, but usable.
There's a lot of other things too - your advice is really very over-simplistic and misses a whole lot of important things. There is no such thing as the perfect picture, artistic choices matter and there's more than one way to tell almost every story.
The camera can still do auto exposure for manual lenses, so your example of tilt-shift only applies to manual focus. For panos, I use the "exposure lock" feature on my A7Rii, but it is still auto.
Other than that, I agree. I use manual mode all the time.
Sometimes controlling depth of field is most important, so you'll be in aperture priority. Sometimes controlling motion is most important, so you'll be in shutter priority - a photo of a moving car or a waterfall looks very different at 1/125 compared to 1/1000.
Manual is less frequently used today, but it's still vitally important. There are plenty of creative applications where you want or need full control over the exposure triangle. Modern autoexposure systems work incredibly well, but they'll still fail catastrophically in some complex lighting situations and still make decisions that aren't in line with your creative intent.
Big strobes aren't a studio-only tool and are often used in the field for fashion, product and architecture photography; TTL strobe systems are available, but you won't always have (or want to use) TTL metering. I've often gone fully manual even with just a speedlite, because any sort of automatic control introduces an unpredictable variable. Underwater photographers nearly always use manual exposure, because AE and AWB systems can't cope with underwater conditions. There's still an important place for bulb exposure, particularly in ultra-low-light and lightpainting situations.
More broadly, learning to shoot in fully manual mode is IMO essential if you want to fully understand exposure. I still highly recommend shooting a few dozen rolls of film early in your photography career, because it breaks your reliance on automation and the shoot-review-reshoot loop. Autoexposure is an extremely useful tool, but your skills will always be severely limited if you depend on it totally. Learning to use the zone system and estimate exposure in your head is hugely empowering and liberating, even if you go on to shoot predominantly using AE.
Yes, fully manual is the best way to miss the moments and should only be used in studio settings.
I would tweak that to say "controlled settings". I occasionally use manual in the same fashion as you, but I don't have a studio, or anything close to it.
Sometimes you want to control for depth of field -A mode-
Sometimes you want to control for motion blur -T/S mode-
-Edit-
Also, you usually don't want to adjust ISO to fix over/under-exposure. Shoot to your camera's native ISO unless you literally don't have enough light or your exposure is super off. Try to use the lowest or closest to native ISO as you can, and use the cameras built in metering adjustment feature (e.g. if you're under exposed tell it to over-expose by a stop or two...)
The native ISO isn't usually published along with typical product specs, but you can usually find it by searching online.
In a practical sense, however, I completely agree. I shoot on aperture priority and just keep an eye on shutter speed to make sure it's reasonable, adjusting ISO as needed.
Sorry, can't edit my previous post, posting from mobile app.
Low light or twilight scenarios is just one. For example higher ISO adds noise that you need to take into consideration and can make the decision to opt for a darker image and bring it back to life on the edit, but without the crazy noise.
The same thing happens with action/movement. You may sometimes want to actually blur some movement and not freeze the action entirely or hit that spot where the focal point is sharp but the background is moving. (ie. taking an up close pic of a dude kayaking some crazy river)
Often when I take a high ISO (relative) I find myself also adding an extra layer of edit ("remove noise") which I think just hurts the image. Adjusting exposure alone I feel does less damage.
I really don't find adding exposure on post (when RAW) damages as much as adding ISO and adding noise.
ISO is really just boosting a sensor sensitivity to light which I feel is not optimal and adds it's own set of artifacts. I would always prefer to add more exposure and me being the one adding the artifacts and playing with the edits, rather than the camera.
But then again, I just shoot for hobby and not a PRO! You can check out some of my pics at @franciscojgo
Now if i’m shooting indoors and my glass doesn’t have a decent f-stop that shoots in lowlight, i can leave my aperture down and raise my ISO to maybe 1200, but when you do this, that is when you’ll get grainy pictures because you’re moving away from the cameras sensor base ISO that it’s calibrated for.
But if you want to adjust everything in post processing, you’ll need to shoot RAW because JPEG do not hold enough data that’ll allow you to adjust it accurately.
Just like if you just got a Raspberry Pi and you're writing some code to blink the lights on your christmas tree, you may not want to do it like the pros and write unit tests and develop features in branches that get merged by pull requests.
Once you become accustomed to manual mode, it is much more reliable and equally as fast as other modes, with the benefit of knowing that the camera isn't interpreting some specular highlight in the background and under-exposing a bunch of images.
This all applies to the professional sports, news, and event photographers I know, as well as myself personally.
Further to this, there are many photographic effects (long exposure light trails and panning, capturing fast moving subjects etc.) that are done much more easily and don't often occur in a studio setting. I think that the technique you've suggested may be valid for a certain subset of shooters, but your understanding of the photographic profession in general is very shallow.
If I set ISO to auto I can manually pick shutter speed and aperture and the ISO automatically adjusts. I use exposure compensation to adjust as needed.
Technically speaking, it's not pure manual, but there are many times when I want to achieve a minimum shutter speed and let ISO compensate.
Nowadays, I find myself shooting in S mode a lot.
Having said that, I don't like shooting wide open on a fast lens except in certain circumstances, so like you, I sometimes prefer to set both the shutter and aperture and compensate with ISO. I guess this is a luxury with newer digital cameras than it is with the older ones that had a barely usable ISO 1600.
Ha, my Canon 1D Mark II strangles itself around 800. This is quite a difference from a modern Nikon D5 that can shoot at a maximum ISO of 3,280,000. Picture at an ISO of 3mm - https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/image-comparison/fullscreen...
I've also, on my Nikon D3S, decoupled the focus control from the shutter release button (there is a dedicated 'operate the autofocus now' button on the back). But that is a whole different story,
But sometimes the auto mode is simply not enough. For example when doing night photography. The camera (at least my Canon) typically pushes the ISO beyond good.
Taking pictures of apartments is another case where the auto mode often creates subpar results. Most of the time you want to overexpose those pictures to let the apartment appear brighter than it is.
And I am sure there are more cases, where there are no alternatives to knowing how to handle the manual mode. Btw. some cameras also support those semiautomatic modes, where you can set some options and let the camera determine the others.
During the day, I set the exposure once and change it when conditions change. That mostly works out but can be annoying when clouds and sunshine change often.
During golden hour or blue hour I want absolute control to get the lighting just right.
For astrophotography the camera's guess will completely wrong, so you have to shoot manual.
During night-time street photography, I dial the ISO up and set it to shutter priority mode. I want the time to be ideally over 1/200, otherwise movements of people start to streak. That often looks ugly. It can look nice but then it's an artistic choice and I set the exposure time accordingly.
So, long story short, I almost never use aperture mode.
Even if aperture priority mode is all professionals use, not everybody will always be taking photos for money.
In general, some of the worst advice comes in the form of "you should always ______", especially when suffixed with "because that's what professionals do". Learn the basics, learn what the professionals do, then figure out what works best for you. Most importantly, remember to try weird things and have fun!
However, I wouldn’t want to hire an engineer who can’t write pseudocode for sorting algorithms or explain space/time trade offs.
It is the same for photography. Many photographers never shoot full manual, but I wouldn’t want to hire a photographer who doesn’t understand what makes an exposure and wouldn’t be able to shoot manual if they really had to.
Where quantity of light isn't an issue, and where I want to create a certain effect with depth of field, as you said, aperture mode is more than adequate, with the ability to change exposure and cap ISO, and let the camera figure out the best shutter speed.
Beyond the parent comment, the key to getting the priority modes to work is separating focus and meter-- most modern cameras can put these functions on separate buttons. Fix ISO 100 outdoors and 800 indoors, and let the camera do the math.
...but if you want to learn manual mode, get a film camera without a meter and shoot two rolls.
I will go to manual in challenging light situations or when taking specialized pics like of the moon or something.
I do recommend using manual when learning so the learner sees what happens.
Fundamentally, cameras are terrible at picking a decent A/S/P values for scenes ( though they have much improved ) because the cameras cannot correctly analyze what important vs. unimportnat portions of a scene.
So if you are using your DSLR or mirrorless for something other than phone-like snapshots you should give your camera a hand, and that hand is semi manual mode ( the reason why it is a semi-manual mode is because you are still going to rely on/tweak what camera thinks you should do ). To achieve the technically best results ( not artistic, but just technical ), you should remember:
1. Tell the camera what to measure - if you are not looking at producing phone-like snapshots, switch the metering mode to spot metering or its equivalent. Use the crosshair/dot to point at the spot you want to come out correctly exposed. Just by doing this single little thing you would absolutely improve the automatic exposure. Compared to what you can achieve by switching the point on camera is pretty amazing.
2. Look at what the camera tells you its settings are and use that as the base.
3. Unless you really know what you doing you ALWAYS want to shoot at the lowest ISO, which is why letting a camera set the ISO is pretty much never a good idea. What looks fine on a phone or on a camera display will look pretty icky on a large screen or printed. Most of the cameras now have ability to lock the max ISO. Use it. You should never go above ISO 800 without unlocking it.
4. The rule of the thumb is that shutter speed above 1/60 probably will introduce blur if the subjects are moving. If you are just starting you should keep the shutter at 1/60s of above.
So:
Look at what the camera tells you about the exposure. If it is too low, first drop the ISO to the minimum your camera can do. Still too low? Start decreasing your shutter speed to 1/60s. Still too low? Start opening your lens by increasing the <number> on the f/<number> ( there are side effects in this and eventually you would recognize that for some scenes you want to stop at not the lowest <number> but for the exposure part it is not really relevant ). Still too low? Start increasing the ISO until you hit what the camera thinks is a good exposure.
Now the critical part: ( because the camera even now will probably be not quite right ). Take a shot. Go to histogram. Make sure that the histogram's breakdown matches your view of the scene. If it does, great! If it does not ( histogram of the image indicates scene is dark but the scene is light or reverse ) tweak the exposure ( using the same order or reverse depending on if you want to increase or decrease the exposure ) until the histogram of the next photo makes sense.
https://digital-photography-school.com/how-to-read-and-use-h...
P.S. Remember, human eye gets a lot more light in compared to the lens that you are using. If you want to get a ballpark idea of how much light gets into a lens, squint
Instead, shoot on aperture mode. Adjust to your desired depth of field according to the ambient light. Use ISO setting to adjust further for light. Finally, when you see the camera is under/over exposing, use the built in exposure compensation slider to adjust for lighter or darker pictures. Pay attention to and trust your exposure histogram.
Now you can very quickly (I can't stress how important quickness is) adjust for the perfect picture. And when the action changes, you'll know quickly which of the three knobs you need to turn.
Leave manual mode for the studio.