Question about shooting models.

[jjd228]

Everyone has been great here. Might be the last forum on the internet with no forum police and no holier than thou attitudes :thumbup:

To be blunt, I mainly shoot females in the style of suicidegirls.com. Lots of natural light, sometimes even outside, never in a studio, and never any studio lighting. A big majority of the shots are at 50mm with a big aperture, sometimes all the way up to 1.4. My question (or debate) has to do with shooting mode. I know quite a few SG staff photographers that only shoot in full manual mode. But my question is, why? Why not shoot in aperture mode and set the ISO to automatic? In my experience, due to the amount of light in these sets the camera almost always chooses an ISO of 100, and since it sets the shutter speed all I have to worry about is my aperture setting.

Can anyone give me a really good reason why I would want to use manual mode and fully control shutter speed, aperture, and ISO?

Thanks!

 

[amolitor]

For that sort of shooting? No reason at all. Av should work fine.

Manual is great as a kind of super exposure lock, when you need the exposure of a set of images to be consistent. It's also a perfectly reasonable alternative to Av or Tv when you need to use exposure compensation.

Natural light cheesecake shots? Av and forget it.

 

[snowbear]

Everyone has been great here. Might be the last forum on the internet with no forum police and no holier than thou attitudes :thumbup:

Stick around a while - a few will crawl out of the woodwork from time to time

Shoot whatever mode get you the effect you want - heck, you paid for Av so use it!

 

[tirediron]

Everyone has been great here. Might be the last forum on the internet with no forum police and no holier than thou attitudes :thumbup:

:raisedbrow: Huh... good to know!

 

[tirediron]

IMO, ISO is the one setting that should never be set to auto since it can 'get away' on you and you generally want to shoot at the lowest possible ISO. The main reason for shooting in fully manual is when using studio lighting. If you're not using lighting, then Av will be just fine.

 

[Derrel]

Everyone has been great here. Might be the last forum on the internet with no forum police and no holier than thou attitudes :thumbup:

To be blunt, I mainly shoot females in the style of suicidegirls.com. Lots of natural light, sometimes even outside, never in a studio, and never any studio lighting. A big majority of the shots are at 50mm with a big aperture, sometimes all the way up to 1.4. My question (or debate) has to do with shooting mode. I know quite a few SG staff photographers that only shoot in full manual mode. But my question is, why? Why not shoot in aperture mode and set the ISO to automatic? In my experience, due to the amount of light in these sets the camera almost always chooses an ISO of 100, and since it sets the shutter speed all I have to worry about is my aperture setting.

Can anyone give me a really good reason why I would want to use manual mode and fully control shutter speed, aperture, and ISO?

Thanks!

Well, you have actually thought about the questions, and the situations around which the questions were formulated, and you've come to some good conclusions on your own. I have used Aperture priority auto for much of my non-flash work for a long time, since it is so fast, and I am used to monitoring the shutter speed the meter is setting ever since I started shooting the Nikon FE-2 in the mid-1980's. Aperture Priority automatic with Nikon's traditional 12mm center circle inscribed on the viewscreen makes center-weighted metering pretty easy to use, and pretty successful; today, newer cameras have Matrix (Nikon-speak) metering options, or Evaluative metering or Multi-Segment metering, so aperture-priority auto in "lots of natural light" and "outside" is usually pretty easily controllable.

AUTO ISO has now become a VERY workable new tool, especially with the newest NIkons with their incredible higher ISO performance. I am starting to rely on it more and more for fast-paced candid shooting where I want a certain baseline shutter speed and f/stop; my new Nikon can run from ISO 100 to ISO 1600 with no real serious quality loss in decent lower light levels, so...I've started using AUTO ISO more and more. I program in the minimum shutter speed I want, based mostly on focal length, somewhere between 1/40 second and 1/125 second, and the camera can set the ISO as needed.

For me, the instant a single flash is brought into a scenario, the metering goes to MANUAL mode. Pretty much every,single time, for the last 30 years. "I" pick the f/stop and "I" set the shutter speed, and "I" set the ISO level and "I" set the flash power level or flash metering setting with flash.

 

[Designer]

Can anyone give me a really good reason why I would want to use manual mode and fully control shutter speed, aperture, and ISO?

Some people just like to have control over everything. It will come in handy if you want to go "outside the box".

 

[JClishe]

I use Av with a manual ISO quite frequently for natural light modeling shoots and I monitor shutter speeds to ensure it doesn't dip too low. For snapshots of the family I'm usually in Av / Auto ISO. As others have said, as soon as artificial lighting is introduced I switch to full manual.

 

[Big Mike]

But my question is, why? Why not shoot in aperture mode and set the ISO to automatic?

Because, when you shoot in any of the automatic modes, the camera re-meters the scene every time. And because the camera uses a reflected light meter, it's metering is dependent on the reflectivity (brightness) of the subject. So if your scene changes (maybe a different post) from one shot to the next...the camera's metering may change. So if you want to get proper and consistent exposures...you need to be constantly aware of your exposure compensation and how/where your camera is metering. This can be especially problematic if you're using spot metering etc.

With manual mode, on the other hand, you can meter the scene so that you have proper exposure (or the exposure that you choose) and the exposure settings will stay consistent, even if the position/pose of your scene changes. In other words, you can meter for the incident light and once you've done that, you no longer have to worry about the reflectivity of the scene and how it changes from shot to shot.

The point being that the camera's metering (being based on reflected light) is quite often wrong and requires you to compensate the exposure to get it right. And in an automatic mode, you need to be constantly aware of this and act on it. In manual mode, you can meter once (essentially working back to get the right exposure for the incident light, not reflected)...and then you don't have to worry about exposure, allowing you to concentrate on other things.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter at all, which mode you're in. F8, ISO 100 and 1/125 is the exact same photo in Manual or Aperture Priority.

 

[cptkid]

Simple answer. Cameras are stupid, people are a little less stupid.

 

[snowbear]

Simple answer. Cameras are stupid, people are a little less stupid.

Hmmm . . . I know some folks that would have to evolve to get up to the camera's level.

 

[IByte]

Everyone has been great here. Might be the last forum on the internet with no forum police and no holier than thou attitudes

There's a legend about a mod with a whip, that's always lurking for that unexpected troll.

When you hear crack of the whip, be somewhere else lol.

 

[kathyt]

I don't ever set my ISO to automatic, but if the lighting conditions are pretty stable I will use AV mode quite frequently. It just depends on what I am shooting. I think if you are getting the results you are happy with then shoot however you want, but I will caution you with ISO on auto.