I'm Committing to Shoot Full Manual for the Dew Tour, Tips?

[Rekd]

I shoot motorsports. A lot.

I've always shot in Shutter Priority to either show motion or stop it. I think I'm getting good with it.

I'm heading to Las Vegas in 2 days for the last leg of the 2010 Dew Tour and I've decided I'm going to go full manual.

Its going to be outdoors, prolly sunny and hot like a mo-fo, so I'm thinking I'll start at ISO 100, f/16ish and vary the shutter as needed. Once set, will I want to adjust it as I move around, and what do I use to gauge when and how much?

I've never used the light meter, but I can see the exposure scale moving as lighting changes. Is there a way to set it before shooting? I've heard people talk about metering a card or something else that's close to the subject's color then using that. What does this mean, (or what should I look for in my manual, I'm not just looking for a hand-out )

Thanks for any tips and advice. I'm hoping this will take me to the next level.:thumbup:

 

[IgsEMT]

....Metering a card....

Grey Card <---click here. probably one of the cheapest and perhaps best accessories you can get for your camera.
It'll allow you to do few things: set WB and give your more accurate colors and allows you to use it for metering - > click here

 

[Robin Usagani]

I always use Aperture priority when I shoot cars with plenty of light... unless I want to do panning action with blurred background then I use Shutter priority.

 

[Josh66]

Outdoors, you should be able to meter off of a grey card and pretty much leave it there - only changing settings to compensate for changes in aperture/shutter speed. Do check it every hour or so (maybe more) though, due to the changing light as the day goes on.

 

[Proteus617]

I dislike cameras with program modes and DSLRs in particular. Having said that, shooting action sports from a distance with classic gear is damn close to impossible. I take a bow to the pros who did it for a living. Try it sometime and you'll realize why matrix metering and program modes were a major improvement in camera evolution. The grey card is a great idea, as is learning to get more comfortable with manual. For action on the Dew Tour, set you camera on SP and leave it there.

 

[Rekd]

I dislike cameras with program modes and DSLRs in particular. Having said that, shooting action sports from a distance with classic gear is damn close to impossible. I take a bow to the pros who did it for a living. Try it sometime and you'll realize why matrix metering and program modes were a major improvement in camera evolution. The grey card is a great idea, as is learning to get more comfortable with manual. For action on the Dew Tour, set you camera on SP and leave it there.

If you'll read back to the original post, I've been shooting SP for quite a while, and done fairly well for myself with it.

I'm just committing to try to shoot manual to see if I'm getting as good as I think I am.

 

[Destin]

Why would you do it for an event you only get on crack at though? Go try it at a local race track, or a high school football game to make sure you've got it down before trying it at the dew tour.

Are you just going as a fan, or are you an official photog for it?

 

[Derrel]

I hate shooting at f/16...it makes every bit of sensor dust look like a grain of pepper on the images...

 

[GeneralBenson]

Well, according to the Sunny16 rule, if you're at f/16 and iso100, then you'll be getting a shutter speed of roughly 1/100th. I would think that is probably too slow for that sort of thing. Any particular reason you want to be shooting at f/16? I would think you would want to be shooting at f/4-f/5.6, and just let the shutter speed be what it will be. Or if you do want that much DOF for some reason, bump the ISO to 400-800 so you can keep you shutter speeds up high.

 

[Derrel]

I'm not really sure what the whole Manual versus automatic chest-thumping and fist-pumping on the interwebs is all about...I used to shoot two or three paid sports assignments per week...at times Aperture-priority automatic exposure is the far better choice than manual exposure control. This is usually in situations where the athlete/subject is going to be moving through rapidly-changing lighting conditions, such as the sunlight/shade/sunlight situation that exists at the vast,vast majority of American outdoor stadiums, in which the athletes will go from sunlight, to shade, and back to sun light in an 11-second period, or when football players will run from the sunlighted areas, into the shade, and then back into the sun lighted areas, moving through the stadium's shadow zone as the play unfolds. And so on.

Shutter Priority automatic is something I seldom use, but then, I do not shoot motor sports...for panning at slower speeds, I like Shutter Priority automatic, and in fact, about the only time I ever shoot in Shutter Priority is when I am going to be panning, and I want a *specific effect* in terms of how long the motion will be recorded for. Canon calls this Tv for Time Value...to me it's not very useful,most of the time, since Aperture Priority (Av in Canon-speak) determines that one always gets the appropriate shutter speed for the lens aperture in use...and when you want the absolute-fastest shutter speed, the lens is always, always wide-open, at f/2, or f/2.8...

I keep seeing these people who seem so proud to state that they "only, ever" shoot in Manual mode, and I think it's similar to those who always boast that they eat their steaks **only** rare,and love their oysters **only on the half shell**...kind of a ridiculous level of macho chest-thumping...

 

[Robin Usagani]

Im with Derrel. I use 95% Aperture Priority and I change ISO and EC quite a bit. I do a lot of car panning and thats when I use shutter priority.

 

[Infidel]

Shutter Priority automatic is something I seldom use, but then, I do not shoot motor sports...for panning at slower speeds, I like Shutter Priority automatic, and in fact, about the only time I ever shoot in Shutter Priority is when I am going to be panning, and I want a *specific effect* in terms of how long the motion will be recorded for. Canon calls this Tv for Time Value...to me it's not very useful,most of the time, since Aperture Priority (Av in Canon-speak) determines that one always gets the appropriate shutter speed for the lens aperture in use...and when you want the absolute-fastest shutter speed, the lens is always, always wide-open, at f/2, or f/2.8...

I think cameras having both aperture and shutter priority modes falls into the "because they can" category. They're two sides of the same coin. I tend to just leave mine in aperture priority (unless I'm using a lens that requires manual mode for the camera to even function) and when deemed necessary, adjust aperture to get the shutter speed I need/want. With my hobbyist equipment, the range of useful aperture settings is far exceeded by the range of possible shutter speeds...in other words, so what if I can shoot anywhere from a 30s exposure down to 1/3200s...how often can the aperture range of my lens compensate accordingly (at least at the extremes) and still yield acceptable results? It's just easier for me to let the camera adjust the parameter with more degrees of freedom.

I keep seeing these people who seem so proud to state that they "only, ever" shoot in Manual mode, and I think it's similar to those who always boast that they eat their steaks **only** rare,and love their oysters **only on the half shell**...kind of a ridiculous level of macho chest-thumping...

I only used manual mode and a 50mm f/2 when I was learning on my K1000. I was envious of the macho types with aperture priority, autofocus and motorized film advance. They could shoot much faster and more accurately than me.

 

[Rekd]

Why would you do it for an event you only get on crack at though? Go try it at a local race track, or a high school football game to make sure you've got it down before trying it at the dew tour.

Are you just going as a fan, or are you an official photog for it?

I'll be there 3 days as working media and will have plenty of time there to try manual before we get to the meat of the program. I've been manually shooting the kids riding quads in the back yard for a couple days to practice. I've got like six or seven 150+ year old oak trees back there that they ride under, so the lighting is changing quite a bit. From the looks of the media map almost the entire event will be in the sun so I should be ok.

If I get to the hotel Friday night and the picts came out like crap I'll prolly go back to shutter priority for the finals and the FMX stuff on Sat and Sun.

 

[Rekd]

Well, according to the Sunny16 rule, if you're at f/16 and iso100, then you'll be getting a shutter speed of roughly 1/100th. I would think that is probably too slow for that sort of thing. Any particular reason you want to be shooting at f/16? I would think you would want to be shooting at f/4-f/5.6, and just let the shutter speed be what it will be. Or if you do want that much DOF for some reason, bump the ISO to 400-800 so you can keep you shutter speeds up high.

1/100th will be too slow. I wasn't aware that f/16 would create that kind of noise or shutter speed. (I would have found out quickly about the shutter speed though).

Thanks for the heads up. f/4 eh? I'll give it a shot.

 

[Rekd]

I'm not really sure what the whole Manual versus automatic chest-thumping and fist-pumping on the interwebs is all about...I used to shoot two or three paid sports assignments per week...at times Aperture-priority automatic exposure is the far better choice than manual exposure control. This is usually in situations where the athlete/subject is going to be moving through rapidly-changing lighting conditions, such as the sunlight/shade/sunlight situation that exists at the vast,vast majority of American outdoor stadiums, in which the athletes will go from sunlight, to shade, and back to sun light in an 11-second period, or when football players will run from the sunlighted areas, into the shade, and then back into the sun lighted areas, moving through the stadium's shadow zone as the play unfolds. And so on.

Shutter Priority automatic is something I seldom use, but then, I do not shoot motor sports...for panning at slower speeds, I like Shutter Priority automatic, and in fact, about the only time I ever shoot in Shutter Priority is when I am going to be panning, and I want a *specific effect* in terms of how long the motion will be recorded for. Canon calls this Tv for Time Value...to me it's not very useful,most of the time, since Aperture Priority (Av in Canon-speak) determines that one always gets the appropriate shutter speed for the lens aperture in use...and when you want the absolute-fastest shutter speed, the lens is always, always wide-open, at f/2, or f/2.8...

I keep seeing these people who seem so proud to state that they "only, ever" shoot in Manual mode, and I think it's similar to those who always boast that they eat their steaks **only** rare,and love their oysters **only on the half shell**...kind of a ridiculous level of macho chest-thumping...

As you may recall, I recently started a thread asking of the manual sports shooters were the shiznit or not. I don't understand the chest thumping either, but I do want to learn how to shoot full manual, even if I choose not to use it all the time.

Since I shoot almost exclusively action sports my main focus is either stopping action or showing it with motion blur, so shutter priority seems like a no-brainer to me if you're going to use semi-manual modes.