Moving off "auto"

Grandpa Ron · Jan 15, 2020

While a lot of my photos are shot on the auto setting allowing me to stand, stoop, or otherwise wiggle in the position for cropping the shot on the viewfinder, occasionally I like, or need, to try those other camera adjustments I paid good money for.

While trying to photograph some star constellations, the moon light, clouds and sky glow were plotting against me. So I tried taking some sky glow photos.

I though this one was particularly nice.

Off a tripod on the front porch.
As shot.
Manual focus
f 5.6
30 sec.
6400 ISO

Derrel · Jan 15, 2020

Looks good.

PJM · Jan 15, 2020

Yes, quite nice.

edsland · Jan 15, 2020

Very nice

TWX · Jan 15, 2020

What time of day or night was this? It looks like late afternoon approaching dusk to me, but the settings you describe don't seem to fit with that.

ac12 · Jan 15, 2020

I use Auto ONCE, never again.
Try P mode. It is similar to Auto but with a few key exceptions, focus being the #1 issue.
The problem with Auto is that the AF uses "closest subject" logic. I have NO control over what the camera focuses on.
Situation: A party pic with the guests on the other side of the table.
Problem: The camera focused on the food on the table, not the guests on the other side of the table.

TWX · Jan 15, 2020

ac12 said:
I use Auto ONCE, never again.
Try P mode. It is similar to Auto but with a few key exceptions, focus being the #1 issue.
The problem with Auto is that the AF uses "closest subject" logic. I have NO control over what the camera focuses on.
Situation: A party pic with the guests on the other side of the table.
Problem: The camera focused on the food on the table, not the guests on the other side of the table.

Unfortunately even Program Mode will do that on my 77D unless I constrain the camera to a limited number of autofocus points in DSLR mode. It's better in live-view as Canon's latest programming does a good job of finding people and faces to autofocus-on, but it's still imperfect. I've found my two year old's often-frazzled hair can be enough to block the camera from quickly finding her face.

zulu42 · Jan 15, 2020

I've found, on my Nikons, that using auto white balance for night shots will turn a black sky to that purply blue. What was your WB setting?

TWX · Jan 15, 2020

zulu42 said:
I've found, on my Nikons, that using auto white balance for night shots will turn a black sky to that purply blue.

Oooh, the Absinthe- and Digitalis-effect. Normally you have to pay extra for that if you want to see like Van Gogh.

Jeff15 · Jan 15, 2020

Lovely sky.......

Sharpshooterr · Jan 15, 2020

Auto......, GONE!!!
SS

Grandpa Ron · Jan 16, 2020

The porch photo was shot about 1:00 am. It a absolutely amazing what high ISO and time can capture.

When we were in Iceland seeking the Northern Lights, all that was visible to the naked eye was a gray cloud with a slight touch of pink. However 30 seconds with an ISO of 6400 allowed the accumulation enough photons to capture the green light.

So to this candid campfire scene of 18th century re-enactors, shot at 2 seconds at ISO 6400.

As stated, my objective was to get folk thinking beyond "auto".

Yes, I do love the convenience of auto and I will admit that it is good but not perfect. I too have had a few wrong focal points or apertures, but that is why one should be willing to tinker with the manual settings. It opens up a lot of opportunities and a bad shot is why they have the delete button.

TWX · Jan 16, 2020

So something that I've been thinking about, using Program-mode or full Auto-mode when lighting conditions are good and when one wishes to shoot with a middle-of-the-road aperture will probably result in images of similar quality to more manual control. After all, in those good conditions, the photographer might well end up manually setting up the camera the same way that the software in the camera would.

As an example, this was taken many years ago when I was not manually controlling the camera:

Canon EOS Rebel XS, 29mm f/9.9(?) 1/160th second ISO 1600, mild crop

We were in a tent but the lighting was good enough that the camera captured an image on automatic that did a decent job with the setting, the people, and the fire they were juggling. Presumably if I did some extra editing (jpeg, I wasn't shooting raw back then) I could make the photo even better with little work. The camera chose a speed that froze the people but didn't make the flame look bad.

This I took the same year on the same camera with the same lens, also automatic settings:

Canon EOS Rebel XS, 18mm f/4.0 1/60th second, ISO400, mild crop

The camera did its best in very poor light, used the onboard flash (as just about all of the pictures I took of people posing at our Transporter Console did) and it's functional but not a particularly great shot. If I had to do it over again I would have taken a lot more time to figure out camera settings that either didn't require the flash, or where manual control plus some kind of extra lighting (be it flash or other) would have helped. Several of the photos from that event turned out quite a bit worse, where either I had problems with having people on both sides of the prop in-focus at the same time, or where the brighter, bolder colors of the prop are washed-out based on what the people were wearing combined with the black curtaining in the background.

I'm sure as a free souvenir photo it was fine, but I know I could do better in challenging conditions now even with that older camera.