Aperture Priority AE or Shutter Priority AE

inneist · Sep 10, 2006

JDS, does you FZ carry a scene mode? I have it, but after I tried different scene shootings, I don't see much difference than if I shoot in auto mode. Also there's one option of the scene mode, "panning", do you have any experience with it? Does it help shooting motions?

ksmattfish · Sep 10, 2006

JDS said:
I don't think it cares if you're using the flash or not.

Using the flash should help balance the light levels some, and the background might not blow out as much, although without manually controlling the flash power it's just a tricky scene for auto-exposure modes to deal with.

ISHUTTER · Sep 10, 2006

This is a great thread!I have jumped in to the "manual" settings on my Canon now and i am soaking up all the info I can.One thing I have been doing is shooting in the "auto" settings and when I find pictures that I feel turned out exceptionally well,I look at the info for that particular picture(shutter speed,aperture stting,etc..) and get an idea for what worked well for a particular shot/situation.Then i manually adjust my camera to those settings and see how it looks.I think practice and lots of it is the key.

inneist · Sep 12, 2006

Finally I got a chance to try the shutter mode and the results just were surprising to me.

http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=59232

I have another related question to ask. In some shooting situation, say, clothes, a white shirt and a black vest, it tends to confuse the camera if set in Auto mode. Do you think it will help, at least theoretically, if I shoot in Aperture Priority mode to circumvent this problem? Thanks for following this thread. I'm very happy to gain more knowledge from this forum.

Digital Matt · Sep 12, 2006

Neither semi-automatic mode will help in that situation. What will help, is if you understand how your meter works, and then set the exposure manually. The meter is trying to turn things into 18% grey, which is an average for the scene. If you point the meter at something black, it will give you a setting to make that black object gray, so you need to underexpose from the metered setting by 2 stops. For white, you need to overexpose by 2 stops.

inneist · Sep 13, 2006

Hi, Matt,

Thanks for your reply. The Manual mode works a bit odd on my camera, but I tried anyhow. Is that 2-stop suggestion a rule of thumb? Because my own experience taught me the same lesson.

On my last question, I assumed the white shirt and black vest are of similar distance from the camera. What about if those two dissonant elements situate some distance from each other? Is pointing the meter at something same thing as putting that thing in focus? Sorry for this theoretical pose and no practice.

inneist · Sep 13, 2006

Edit: Is pointing the meter at something the same as putting that thing in focus?

p.s. One picture in question, do you think it has this "confusion of exposure" problem?

Digital Matt · Sep 13, 2006

It all depends on what your metering pattern is. Set it to center weighted average, or spot (if you have), and then the meter is linked to the center focus point. This is helpful for determing the intensity of light in different areas of your scene.