TCampbell
Been spending a lot of time on here!
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Hi there.
I have a strange question...
I am somewhat new to DSLR photography. I know my camera terms and how my camera works, but I am just struggling to feel the confidence in using anything other than Auto...
Reason being is due to time.
But that sounds like you really _don't_ know the ins and outs of how the camera works. Perhaps, when you're not shooting something where you're under pressure, you should take your camera and go shooting and *force* yourself to think through each shot. Ask yourself if you should give priority to aperture vs. shutter for the shot which aperture or shutter would work best, and make sure you're easily able to find the complementary exposure settings to make your primary setting and still render a good exposure.
Correction... that would be "normally-lit" church. ;-)I do a lot of kids parties and wedding in a particularly awkwardly-lit church.
What's unusual is to walk into a church with fabulous lighting. Almost every church is much much less than ideal for photography.
That sounds great. It sounds like you're good at picking the "decisive moment" to shoot.I am known for getting the best facial shots and emotions and just basically getting perfectly timed shots that other photographers miss by a second.
The thought of missing a shot because I am trying to sort out my ExComp etc just freaks me out.
As an example. In the church where I shoot, there is a huge stained glass window up in the front of the church and depending on where I'm aimed at for the couple, the difference in light is crazy. Then if I turn to view the congregation or the front of the couple, the room is extremely dark. So if I'm going back and forth, changing my settings is just so time consuming, and I'll be staring at my little screen more than taking pics. If time were not an issue, I could set up the shot with no problem... but these are moments that cannot be put on hold.
Ahhh... there's a secret to this. When I did weddings, I didn't actually meter the shot, then set the exposure, then take the shot. It's much much faster than that. I was shooting with a camera that didn't have any form of auto-mode (Hasselblad 500 CM)... it was an entirely manual film camera. We know, even before shooting, what the exposure settings need to be. We even know the focus based on the intended framing we plan to use. The camera is actually pre-focused and the exposure settings are already dialed in. We walk up, frame the subject -- we might need to touch-up the focus or exposure slightly, and then take the shot. But it all happens very quickly.
The main point to stress here is that the shooting is primary proactive and not reactive.
But keep in mind that as a pro wedding photographer, there's a point where you've done so many weddings, that you know the shots by rote. This is where the practice comes in... drill yourself.
Without looking at your meter, "guess" at what you think the right exposure will be. Then meter it and correct yourself. Do this and over and over and in enough situations and you'll get to a point where you're actually pretty good at guessing at what the exposure is going to be. I'm not saying you don't check the meter... my point is that you pre-set the camera before you even walk up to take the shot. Then the only thing you have to do is dial in the correction and that can be done rather quickly.
I think everyone should learn and be comfortable shooting entirely in manual... but that said I actually use most of the modes on the camera and I don't just stick to manual. I might look at a dimly lit church and decide that based on my subject and depth of field needs, that I can get away with f/2.8 which will collect as much light as possible and still get a single subject distance in tack-sharp focus (but blur the background). Since it's a church, I'm probably going to have the ISO cranked up a bit if I'm doing natural light photography... so maybe it's somewhere between 3200 and 6400 (not a problem for a modern full-frame camera). So now the _only_ thing I need to dial in is the shutter speed and I might have a good guess that it'll be somewhere around, say... 1/60th (again... I might be wrong, and need to change it. But I can change that very quickly.)
For even faster peformance, I might use Av mode, set my ISO to whatever I want (say 4000), set my aperture to f/2.8, and then let the camera pick the shutter speed for me.
Maybe someone will tell me I don't know my camera settings well enough. Maybe I am just doomed to shoot in auto forever... but like I said, although I know my camera, I am not fast at calculating DOF in my head and figuring out the best ISO:Fstop:Shutter value for that particular shot when the moment is only a second long.
How the heck do pro's do it? Do the pro's mentally know their DOF ranges with the different lenses they use at different F stops etc? Do they turn on and off the manual focus for high speed moving subjects (no flash). Do they just have trigger happy fingers and hope for the best? (chuckling at the daggers being thrown at me with that comment lol)
I'm just feeling a bit daunted, cause I really want to be the best in my field, but I feel like there is a piece of the puzzle missing for me to open that next door.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Claire
As mentioned above, the pros have shot these shots so very many times that it becomes habitual and they can guess the correct (or pretty darned close to the correct) exposure settings before even lifting the camera to their eye.
I don't memorize the DoF table... but I know the character of the focal ratio and focal lengths. I know that with a normal to long focal length that I wont get much background blur at f/8 (it'll be more like soft focus than blur), a tiny bit softer at f/5.6, but f/4 will be pleasantly blurred, f/2.8 will be strongly blurred, and f/2 will be so gosh-darned sweet and creamy as to induce diabetes just by looking at the photo (don't shoot at f/2 if you have a heart condition!) ;-)
You need to practice, but don't just practice by shooting randomly... practice with a goal of learning to just one aspect at time. Practice learning the relationship of f-stop to background blur... imagine in your head how much blur you'd like (if any) and then set the appropriate f-stop you think you need to use to achieve that goal. Take the shot. Then see if you got the result you wanted. Keep doing that for a variety of wide and narrow depth of field targets. Keep your focal length constant (e.g. shoot everything at 50mm). Then start to vary the focal length (but keep the f-stop constant... say, f/2.8 or f/4 for every shot) and you'll notice that there's a relationship with the focal lengths (and subject distances) as well.
You can do the same thing for shutter speeds... decide when you want to "freeze" action vs. "imply motion" (let it blur).
Do the same for lighting... as mentioned above, "guess" what exposure you'll probably need and try it then adjust as necessary.
Notice, for example, that while I wasn't in YOUR church, I'm guessing settings such as ISO 6400, f/2.8 and 1/60th... that's because after enough weddings, you start to get a feel for what you can expect. If I'd actually seen the church in question I'd have a pretty good idea if it was brighter than normal, or normal, or darker than normal (all of which will tend to be on the dark-ish side. It's exceedingly rare that a church is nicely lit for photographic purposes.)