Advice for Manual Mode

That's right. Why to pay big bucks for sophisticated camera and struggle with manual shooting. There is already smartness of other people built in that camera for benefit of the owner.

 

I rarely shoot manual as Av & Tv modes used with exposure compensation, allow me to control the important aspects of my images quickly & acurately. There have been occasions where thats not going to work (mainly in very low light) & manual mode has been required. I've rarely found cases where subject movement & DOF where both in need of exact control, one of my cameras has a sensitivity mode (like auto iso in manual but with finer control of the ISO) I've not used it.

However I have found it a useful excercise to go out & just use manual over my lunch hour (I used a manual focus lens too). Much of which was without using the cameras meter as the subjects I chose allowed a second shot after accessing the histogram. - It's useful to see how close you can estimate the lighting, and helps reinforce the relactionship between speed & aperture.

 

Nothing wrong with that, at all. My favorite camera only shoots manual and doesn't have a meter.

 

ISO "control" of digital camera doesn't change sensitivity of the sensor. It is always the lowest value you can "set" the camera to. Shooting digital by guessing the exposure is a nice game but only that, resembles method of sunny 16, but sensor doesn't have the latitude of film plus you do not control the process of image formation in any degree. The only point might be in exercising quick evaluation of histogram and execute second shot as a correction. With limits to. In manual mode digital camera gives you traditional stops which go at best in 1/3 of a stop increments. Precision of camera in auto, and that was already before digi-world arrived, controls exposure to 1/1000 of a stop, without even notifing the photographer. No way manual mode can come that close.

 

While "technically" true, this is kind of a meaningless statement in application.

Unlike film, (and I am stealing this directly from Nikon's website because they state it better than I can), digital cameras convert the light that falls on the image sensor into electrical signals for processing. ISO sensitivity is raised by amplifying the signal. Doubling ISO sensitivity doubles the electrical signal, halving the amount of light that needs to fall on the image sensor to achieve optimal exposure.

SO... while the sensor elements on the camera remain the same, the amount of electrical energy flowing through the sensor EFFECTIVELY changes the overall sensitivity. It is the increase in signal caused by increased electron flow, not the actual structure of the sensor, that changes... but for all practical purposes the end result somewhat duplicates increasing the sensitivity of an emulsion.

 

Hm, I need here clarification, amplification of the gathered signal happens in the sensor ? Or after, in image processing unit ?

 

Especially when they a Leicas

 

Mine's a Fuji 6x8 "Texas Leica"

 

I'm looking at one of those or a Mamiya 7

 

Get the Mamiya 6, or the Mamiya 7...something light, modern, stylish, and meant for shooting hand-held. The Fuji 6x8 system is soooooooooooo big and,well...you know...

 

It's big, it's a bit heavy, and it's a system that takes AMAZING images... the lenses are EXACTLY perfect for the camera, the whole design is built around lens/camera symmetry.

Also, they are a thousand bucks cheaper, so there's that.

 

Like taking a dump truck to the local bistro...but it's PERFECT for hauling gravel, fill dirt, and even scrap iron.