How I transitioned to mostly manual, and why/when I use it

[fjrabon]

Auto is fine. Manual is fine. But you're not going to see any improvement in either unless you understand exposure.

The only reason why Greystar and Derrel, or myself and Jake337 get good results using whatever exposure mode we prefer is because we understand exposure and camera control. The rest is just process and preference. But manual exposure alone doesn't make you a better photographer and auto exposure doesn't make your pictures any better.

I've never really understood why exposure, in and of itself, is difficult. Especially if you're not using lights, and don't have to deal with how shutter speed differentially treats ambient v. flashed light.

What do people mean when they say 'understand exposure'? I really don't get how any old idiot can't just get a properly exposed photo.

Do people mean understand, artistically, what they want their exposure to be? Because that can be hard. But that doesn't seem to be what people mean by 'understanding exposure,' when they talk about it here.

how is it not just as simple as:

ISO - higher values make the picture brighter, lower values darker
Aperture - bigger numbers (putting aside the whole fraction v. whole number debate for a second) mean darker, lower numbers mean brighter
shutter - shorter shutters mean darker, longer shutters mean brighter

After that, you only need to understand the concept of a stop, which is pretty easy (though perhaps f/stops take a bit of memorizing, but are still relatively straight forward if you just remember the main ones, ie 1.4 -> 2 -> 2.8 -> 4 -> 5.6 -> 8 -> 11)

Flash complicates things a little bit, but when people here talk about 'understanding exposure' they are almost never talking about flash either.

Understanding the so-called exposure triangle is easy. It's just a ratio of three terms. Where exposure gets tricky is when you start metering, and what the meter is telling you relative to exposure. Is that skin tone going to be Zone V or Zone IV? Is that concrete Zone VI or Zone VII? How will this region be rendered if that region is placed into any given zone? The more you think about exposure control, the less the concept of "proper exposure" really makes sense.

I didn't read your OP, but I am curious - when you do manual exposure what meter mode are you using?

spot only for manual. ie basically sort of 'mouse over' the metering spot, get a grasp on the dynamic range of the shot and figure out where I want my exposures to land, what I want to be at what point on the in camera light meter. Or, I'll sometimes use a Sekonic light meter and think in terms of f/stops.

 

[tomso]

When I first got my dSLR, I put it in manual because that's how I learn. I can change each setting, one at a time, and see the results. I make mental (and physical) notes, I adjust, I adapt. I have a T3i so by no means was shooting in full manual quick or easy. It was a huge PITA and I missed a LOT of shots. But because I'm learning, I'm OK with that. I don't miss as many shots anymore. My pictures are (slowly) improving. I'm getting better at "seeing" a scene and having a good estimate of where my technical settings should be before I shoot (unless I'm using flash, as that's my current learning objective).

That being said, that's just how I learn. I use Av when shooting action now, but otherwise generally leave the other modes on my camera alone. Not because I think there's anything wrong with them, but because I'm more comfortable in Av or M. As for people who feel they have to get on their high horse for which mode they shoot in, I don't see the point. It's like attacking someone for using a fork in a Chinese restaurant. Sometimes it's a lot harder to eat with chopsticks and the fork is just a better tool for the job. You aren't a terrible person because of that.

 

[unpopular]

spot only for manual. ie basically sort of 'mouse over' the metering spot, get a grasp on the dynamic range of the shot and figure out where I want my exposures to land, what I want to be at what point on the in camera light meter. Or, I'll sometimes use a Sekonic light meter and think in terms of f/stops.

Well, then yeah. You have a good grasp on it by the sounds of it. A lot of people just will shoot manual, but then just do everything the camera would do in auto/evaluative mode, just line up triangle and zeros, and feel like a big badass because they shoot "manual". I'd say 75% of people who shoot manual are just doing that.

The only thing you *might* be missing is the idea of zone placement. I'm sure you understand the idea that any region can be rendered as any zone, but you may not be fully implementing the concept into your process.

 

[fjrabon]

Unpopular is right. Fifties or now, exposure problem is the same and ways to solve it are the same. Just now folks got in their hands overcomplicated supercomputers to shoot pictures and is getting lost in the maze of possible settings. Computers are not doing anything extraordinary, they do same thing as a guy with a spot meter, they just do it much faster. Matrix metering isn't anything new, it's used by photographers for as long as spot meters exists and that's dialing in compensation for a given light condition. Matrix metering is also supposed to make up for simple and very effective incident light metering, something, what even the best dslr cannot do.
If most of the folks so avidly shooting digital would learn on cameras from 50-ties having only spot meter to establish theirs exposures, there would be not so many questions.

Nikon's evaluative matrix metering is a little bit more complicated than that. It takes the image, compares it to data from a 30,000 image library, finds the most similar images using both color and brightness, and then tries to get the exposure on the scene of your picture as close to that as possible.

 

[fjrabon]

spot only for manual. ie basically sort of 'mouse over' the metering spot, get a grasp on the dynamic range of the shot and figure out where I want my exposures to land, what I want to be at what point on the in camera light meter. Or, I'll sometimes use a Sekonic light meter and think in terms of f/stops.

Well, then yeah. You have a good grasp on it by the sounds of it. A lot of people just will shoot manual, but then just do everything the camera would do in auto/evaluative mode, just line up triangle and zeros, and feel like a big badass because they shoot "manual". I'd say 75% of people who shoot manual are just doing that.

The only thing you *might* be missing is the idea of zone placement. I'm sure you understand the idea that any region can be rendered as any zone, but you may not be fully implementing the concept into your process.

I don't use zone terms very often in my head, but yeah, I use the concept of exposure zones. I'll sometimes talk about exposure zones when trying to explain a concept of how I'd expose something or how I'd light it. I sometimes struggle with exactly seeing if something is zone iV or V exactly, but that's sort of besides the point, I guess. The big issue is understanding how you relatively want the zones to fall in your image, and how best to do that. I'm sure as you've noticed, I tend to favor more contrast and thus the high and low zones, but that isn't anything to do with the zone method as much as artistic preference. I tend to avoid zone IX a lot as a sort of stylistic preference, and go from VIII to X with black point.

edit: haha, just re-read that and realized I flipped the numbers. I tend to avoid zone I and turn it into 0 with black point, haha.

 

[o hey tyler]

Wow Graystar. WOW.

Franklin, I liked your post and for a lot of new photographers looking into shooting manual, it should be quite useful. As for the combatants of your post, they're ridiculous. I didn't ever get the impression reading your post that you were somehow suggesting that manual mode was the "be all, end all" to photography.

 

[pixmedic]

ay dios mio....yet another good informative post flushed totally down the drain by a bunch of technical photography geniuses that have to argue over what "is" is and how they did NOT have sex with that woman.

 

[amolitor]

fjrabon, just let it go. Your post was fine, and Graystar now has his or herself emotionally invested in "winning" something or other which most of the rest of us can't even figure out what it is. Most of us have no trouble understanding what you mean, and don't care to try parsing out trivialities, and then deliberately misunderstanding them in order to argue about stuff.

You made some excellent remarks and contributed to the forum in a really useful way. Thanks! Well done! The pissing match that has arisen does not contribute in any useful way. Let it die!

 

[fjrabon]

Wow Graystar. WOW.

Franklin, I liked your post and for a lot of new photographers looking into shooting manual, it should be quite useful. As for the combatants of your post, they're ridiculous. I didn't ever get the impression reading your post that you were somehow suggesting that manual mode was the "be all, end all" to photography.

haha, the funniest thing about the whole response is that I've been lambasted before for talking about how much I like and shoot in A mode. And then I got criticized the other day for talking about how much I've been digging P mode for quick street shooting.

 

[fjrabon]

fjrabon, just let it go. Your post was fine, and Graystar now has his or herself emotionally invested in "winning" something or other which most of the rest of us can't even figure out what it is. Most of us have no trouble understanding what you mean, and don't care to try parsing out trivialities, and then deliberately misunderstanding them in order to argue about stuff.

You made some excellent remarks and contributed to the forum in a really useful way. Thanks! Well done! The pissing match that has arisen does not contribute in any useful way. Let it die!

haha, thanks amolitor. yeah, I guess I'm done with it, and I like Graystars posts a lot generally, and will continue to do so. He knows his stuff, which is why I kept trying to engage him, because I do respect him as a shooter and a poster.

 

[pixmedic]

if we give Graystar an extra 50 internet points, can he say he "won" and this can all just end?

 

[o hey tyler]

if we give Graystar an extra 50 internet points, can he say he "won" and this can all just end?

No?

 

[table1349]

Wow........

Here was my transition.
1971 - bought a Nikon F2 and a couple of lenses. Only one mode, want to guess which one it was? Learned how to use that thing inside and out and learned as many tricks of the trade as possible. Kept that and a few other F2's in various configurations until I finally bought a DSLR. That when I learned about them other modes.

Now I use what ever mode works the best for what I am doing.


Oh, as far as learning to drive, well you city fellers may have learned all that start with the rules of the road, written test etc. etc. etc. crap. Where I come from I was driving a car or a pickup sitting on my granddads lap at 8 or 9. Driving tractors at 10 as well as driving the pickup around on the farm. At 12 I was sitting in the drivers seat with my granddad sitting next to me driving on country roads and into town. By the time I was 14 and could get my restricted permit I had been driving for 7 or 8 years. I was learning the rules of the road as I was learning to drive. At 14 all I had to do to get my restricted permit was show that I knew the rules of the road and at 16 I was free to drive any where, any time.

 

[unpopular]

I'm sure as you've noticed, I tend to favor more contrast and thus the high and low zones, but that isn't anything to do with the zone method as much as artistic preference. I tend to avoid zone IX a lot as a sort of stylistic preference, and go from VIII to X with black point.

Well, it kind of is. If you want high contrast, you're not going to place the upper hilights down at zone VII or the shadows up at zone III. The zone system is all about previsualization, and determining how the image will be processed at time of exposure, rather than just kind of guestimating or assuming a one-size fits all. It's really a method of tying exposure and processing into a "contiguous photography". So when thinking about the zone system, processing shouldn't be an unfortunate inconvenience, but rather a part of photography as vital as exposure itself.

With the zone system in film, you meter the shadows and the hilights and adjust exposure and development time accordingly in a way such that the shadows would be placed in the desired zone by exposure, and hilights placed in the desired zone by development. If the metered placement of the hilights relative to the shadows were too far apart to cause clipping, you'd cut development time, too close to cause flatness you'd extend development time. Ideally in a precise, determined way according to the development time/dmax curve.

Part of the problem with digital is that there is no consensus of how metering should be undertaken. It used to be for negatives, you'd expose for the shadows. This was because it was felt that the hilights could retain more detail by building up density, and in the case of b/w film, you could always pull density by adjusting development time. With color slide film the opposite was true, with no density in the finished slide in the hilights, it was better to meter the hilights and let the shadows build up. But when digital came along there was this kind of lacuna surrounding how to meter. People just kind of ignore the problem.

I believe that this is a major issue, actually. How do you meter in digital? Using a greycard works, but even here there are limitations beyond the obvious. When I first started tackling the issue I knew about ETTR and figured to meter for the shadows and pull the hilights. That worked fine until i actually got out there and started thinking "but if pushing a "little to the right is good, why not push more to the right". The arbitrariness also bothered me. How much do I ETTR? +0.3EV? +1.0EV? Then i started thinking "well, if I'm pushing the hilights right up to latitude, why not just meter for the hilights the way I did with slides?". And that's where I am now. Meter for the hilights, and let the shadows fall wherever they end up. If I want lots of contrast, just make them darker; I can always throw any shadows I don't want. If I want lower contrast, just leave the shadows closer to how they were. In any case, I know that my raw file will contain the maximum dynamic range I can get or want to get as sometimes it's useful to clip the hilights.

As great as that was, I never felt it had the unification that the zone system offered. Still processing digital files felt like a separate task from exposure. I did develop a way to accurately adjust shadows according and relative to the exposure, and I have dubbed it the "Unified System" and is based very substantially from the Zone System. In practice, however, because digital is has instant feedback, it's really too cumbersome to use. But it does work and works very similarly to Adams' Zone System.

 

[o hey tyler]

The problem is posts like the OP tend to convince the poor beginners (remember...this was posted in the beginners' forum) that they NEED to learn manual mode.

There isn't a problem with a post like this. You're the problem.