Practical comments regarding shooting in manual

[rlemert]

Several people here have, at one time or another, mentioned that they always shoot in full manual mode. I'm wondering what they really mean by this, because I'm having a hard time with everyone having calibrated eyeballs that let them set ISO, shutter, and aperture all from scratch.

Here's how I think you do it.

ISO is probably set at the start of your shoot based on ambient conditions - I can see how one could generate some rules of thumb for this as they gain experience. Once set, ISO is left alone for the rest of the shoot unless conditions and/or locations change.

For shutter speed and aperture, though, I'm suspecting that what you're really doing is a 'guided' manual. In other words you're using your camera's built in metering to guide you to an appropriate combination of these parameters for current conditions. If you want to control DoF, for example, you might set a target aperture and then adjust the shutter based on what the meter says. For action shots, you might reverse the priorities.

If this is how you do it, what advantage does this approach offer over either aperture priority or shutter priority?

If this is not what you do, then how do you do it?

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

Exactly.

 

[CCericola]

Hand held light meter. I come from film so we had 100, 160, 400, and 800 speed film. So as far as iso, I set it depending on location. In film days we had different speeds of film in separate camera backs preloaded and ready to go ( we shot medium format ) The hand held light meter made it a bit easy because you wouldn't have to stop to change the iso on the camera. Because of this I ignored the internal light meter.

 

[adrianakyan]

i keep my ISO TO 200.. My ss for kids(b/c i shoot kids) 125 or up f-stop if is more than 1 pp i get it at 5.(can be less)but I'am not a pro. i am new here here is my work.
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[marmots]

the meter isn't always set to exactly what you want, even with different metering modes. i often try to set my shutter speed etc., and fire a test shot or two, before i shoot a bunch of the same thing in a similar area, for example if i'm at the zoo i typically use the same settings all around until conditions change, then i reset ,and test again. for example if im shooting all of the outdoor animals at a distance i will use roughly the same settings, but if i go into say the reptile room i will change my settings

however all of this changes depending on the situation, for example if doing a specific shoot with controlled lighting you may use the same settings, or you may use a different setting for every shot

 

[Toad00]

I went to the facebook page, The kids are soooo cute. The lighting is great. adrainakyan. I would love to see more. I was having problems trying to figure out my settings and I always found it more like a hit and miss, you get a range and then it is like tuning your instrument and have to try an couple of times. But you always find something awesome.

 

[Derrel]

Old,old,old joke: "What's the exposure for Tri-X?" Answer: "f/5.6 at one two-hundred fiftieth."

Another one: what's a good low-light exposure? "f/2 at a thirtieth of a second".

An old guideline called the Sunny Sixteen Rule notes that for a properly exposed, front-lighted subject, the exposure throughout most of North America and most of Europe is the ISO as the shutter speed, with the lens at f/16. For backlighting, open up 2.5 to 3.5 stops.

If you are as you write, "I'm having a hard time with everyone having calibrated eyeballs that let them set ISO, shutter, and aperture all from scratch." then you simply have not been around serious photographers long enough. When I shot almost nothing BUT Tri-X, mostly at ASA 320 to 400, I could estimate exposure to within one f/stop about 95% of the time. That's what happens when you use a camera like the Nikon FM, which has a 1/5 to 1/2 stop, 3-LED match-diode light meter...you SET the estimated exposure FIRST, then bring the camera up to your eye, and use the light meter to REFINE your estimate.

The "old school" of photography had two basic ways of learning exposure. THe FIRST method was to learn what the right f/stop was at 1/250 second. EVERY photo was made at 1/250 second.

The second method was to learn the Sunny 16 rule, and then, think of darker and darker and darker lighting conditions as "open up stops" or "Plus X values". i.e.---Sunny 16 is for North America/Europe, front lighting, but on BRIGHT SAND OR SNOW, that goes down to f/22, and in full,blinding sun on bright sand or snow, the speed also goes up one notch! But, back to Sunny 16 (ISO=SHutter, Lens = f/16): clouds come out, open up one stop. More clouds, open up a second stop. Backlighting + 2.5 to ,+3.5 stops. Heavy overcast 4 stops. Open shade, 5 stops.Deep, open shade 6 stops. Today, "shooting in manual" does not mean that one must "know the exposure", but it means the camera is set to manual exposure correction mode...I shot for three years before I had a camera with a reliable built-in light meter.

The adult human mind can learn many complicated things. Exposure has been "codified" for almost 100 years in tables and charts and on rotating calculator dials and what were called "Extinction Meters". It is surprising how accurate the old calculator type dial meters actually are! Fred Picker has an exposure system charted out and available on the web, and some guy invented a nice round calculator with the "X-Factor" back in the late 1970's. Seems like Moonlight Night is + 21 X up from Sunny 16, IMMSMC.

 

[kundalini]

I started out with a manual camera, so it's something I'm fairly comfortable with. The higher end Nikons are quite intuitive by having the aperture setting on the front sub-command wheel and the shutter speed on the back command wheel while in manual shooting mode. Changing settings is instant. I'll use a hand held light meter to set exposure and also shoot a grey card for critical shots. If I don't use the hand held meter, I'll usually use spot or center-weighted to meter and shoot ~2/3 stop over zeroed.


BTW, I live about 20 miles east of Raleigh.

 

[djacobox372]

Shooting in "true" manual is an excellent exercise for any photographer. I have a number of film cameras that have no meter, and I've learned to judge exposure to within about one stop. It's not nearly as hard as you think, in fact it's easy--photographers have lived without meters for about half the history of photography.

 

[Kerbouchard]

Several people here have, at one time or another, mentioned that they always shoot in full manual mode. I'm wondering what they really mean by this, because I'm having a hard time with everyone having calibrated eyeballs that let them set ISO, shutter, and aperture all from scratch.

Here's how I think you do it.

ISO is probably set at the start of your shoot based on ambient conditions - I can see how one could generate some rules of thumb for this as they gain experience. Once set, ISO is left alone for the rest of the shoot unless conditions and/or locations change.

For shutter speed and aperture, though, I'm suspecting that what you're really doing is a 'guided' manual. In other words you're using your camera's built in metering to guide you to an appropriate combination of these parameters for current conditions. If you want to control DoF, for example, you might set a target aperture and then adjust the shutter based on what the meter says. For action shots, you might reverse the priorities.

If this is how you do it, what advantage does this approach offer over either aperture priority or shutter priority?

If this is not what you do, then how do you do it?

You pretty much got it. As far as advantages, there are several, but it isn't until you learn how the meter works that the advantages will become apparent.

Here are the Cliffs Notes. When the engineers who built your camera were designing it, they didn't assume you would be shooting every shot in a dark reception room. They also didn't assume you would be taking pictures in a blinding snow storm. They assumed you would take average photos of average things. Well, sometime back, they worked up an average scene as to about 18% grey. That 18% grey is the standard that the meter is using to make it's assumptions.

Now, knowing that, we can do a simple experiment. We can take a series of 3 different pictures with identical lighting with the camera in an automated mode. One will be a black piece of paper, one will be a grey piece of paper, and one will be a white piece of paper. If we fill the frame with each piece of paper, our meter will turn out 3 pictures that are just about identical(they will all be grey). In order to get the black to be black, we have to underexpose it according to the meter(or use negative exposure compensation letting the camera know that our subject is much darker than normal). If we want white to be white, we have to overexpose it(or positive exposure comp).

So, anytime our lighting is constant but our subject is changing, manual is actually easier to shoot with. Once you are dialed in, you can shoot with those settings until the conditions change. Now, if our lighting is constantly changing, but our subject is constant, it makes more sense to use an automated mode with exposure compensation dialed in. In wedding photography, I am pretty much always in manual, and that's primarily because of how big a difference there is between the brides dress and the grooms tux. In an automated mode, exposure can vary wildly depending on who is in the frame at the time.

Another reason I will generally be in manaul is because if I am using flash, it is very difficult not to shoot in manual. If I am using a studio strobe, I will set the power once and be done with it unless I have to move it. If my camera is changing settings the entire time, the shoot will be wildly inconsistent. If I am using a hot shoe flash, often I do use TTL metering(an automated mode), and having the camera and the flash both trying to automate my exposure can give me unexpected results.

Basically, each mode has a purpose and an advanced shooter will pick the best mode for the type of shooting they are doing...not just stick with one because it's the 'cool' thing to do.(Actually, thinking about it, I can't think of any reason I would ever use shutter priority or program mode, but there is definite value in both Manual and Aperture Priority.)