A Primer on Shooting in Manual Mode: Aperture, Shutter Speed, and ISO [video]

Re:A Primer on Shooting in Manual Mode: Aperture, Shutter Sp... by geerlingguy on Wednesday August 14, 2019 @03:26PM (#20699031)

There are so many times when I shoot with Manual mode. I'm not a professional, but I would consider myself a skilled photographer, and have used multiple brands and systems.

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.

It's not often, but I'd say I switch to M at least once on almost every on-location shoot, whether natural or artificial light.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:A Primer on Shooting in Manual Mode: Aperture, Shutter Sp... by voidmain0001 on Wednesday August 14, 2019 @04:22PM (#20699539)

Agreed. Manual mode is a necessity. I was just shooting night skies and had to use manual focus and manual mode to get the photo. My Canon 6D doesn't have the imaging magic that comes with modern smartphones like my Samsung Galaxy S8 that can take a rapid fire succession of photos that my Canon 6D could only dream of, but the 6D is a boss at getting low light photos of high quality, or being able to take the photo I see at the time I want it. It's always ready, and will always take the photo.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:A Primer on Shooting in Manual Mode: Aperture, Shutter Sp... by geerlingguy on Wednesday August 14, 2019 @04:29PM (#20699609)

Definitely. I take most candid pictures with my phone nowadays... but if I have any kind of money tied to the photography, it's a DSLR (or soon maybe one of the higher-end mirrorless).

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

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:A Primer on Shooting in Manual Mode: Aperture, Shutter Sp... by mschuster91 on Wednesday August 14, 2019 @03:49PM (#20699263)

For scenario #1 I'm so happy the A7S2 has a dedicated EV correction wheel plus it can do really fast exposure bracket photography.

Built-in HDR is also decent - no match for manual work in PS/LR, but usable.

[ Parent | on HN ]