So I'm weening myself off automatic. Still use it in a pinch, but I'm taking pictures constantly going from shadow to light, trying to get the perfect exposure and field of depth as fast as possible.
This is the mental process I use for shooting in manual. I'm looking for constructive criticism to make it better.
1. I determine the white balance of the shot. Inside orange, shady blue, or sunlight yellow. I either set the white balance to counteract it, or decide to keep the natural tone of the shot.
The 'auto' white balance setting is the most prone to error.
The preset balance settings are ok.
For best white balance in JPEG mode use the "custom white balance" setting. You'll need a neutral gray card. You snap a photo of the card (in same lighting as subject) and establish that gray-card shot as the reference photo for white balance.
If you shoot in RAW, white balance is not applied to the image. But you can still take a photo of a gray card and use that in post processing to apply white balance corrections.
2. Now I set the iso all the way down. If possible I want to ignore it. In fact, I don't think of iso as being part of the 'trinity' of exposure. To me its an extra option.
There's a reason your camera has an ISO setting.
It's a good idea to think about the relationship between ISO and noise. But I'd rather have a noisy image than a blurry image because my shutter speed had to be too long for a hand-held shot in order to use a low ISO. I can fix the noise problem in post processing. There's not much I can do about the blurry shot because the shutter was too slow for hand-held shooting.
And sometimes even if the shutter is fast enough for hand-shooting, it may not be fast enough for action. If you need to increase the shutter speed to freeze action, you may need to increase the ISO setting.
HOWEVER, with all that aside, if you have no problems picking the aperture and shutter speed you want for the shot AND you don't have to boost ISO to do it, then you'll get less noise if you keep the ISO as low as possible.
3. I try to fill the frame with the shot. So I zoom if necessary and this gives me my focal length.
Avoid using zoom as an excuse to not move forward or backward.
Instead, think about the angle of view you want for the shot. If I want to create a sense of depth, I might deliberately use a lower focal length because it gives me the feeling I want in the image. If I want compression I'll use a longer focal length.
I also will use a longer focal length at low focal ratio just because I want the background blur -- that I wouldn't get at a shorter focal length. So while I could be close to a subject, I'll deliberately use a longer focal length and just walk back farther to frame the shot the way I want.
That aside... "filling the frame" is often a good idea (it's not the "only" idea though... don't get stuck on rules.) But filling the frame means the viewer will have more fabulous detail to see in the image. We don't often need the "whole" of an object to know what it is. If you're photographing food, I'd much rather see the detail in the food than the plate (we all know what a plate looks like) so I don't hesitate to compose close enough that I'm cropping out part of some objects in order to get a better view of other objects.
4. I decided what kind of depth of field I want and need. If I'm not sure if I can get a perfect shallow depth of field, I stop it down a bit
The second sentence is good advice. You might like the look of the blur and want to maximize it, but sometimes that comes at a risk of ruining the whole shot because a few critical areas that needed to be in focus were outside the DoF.
5. Now I put my shutter speed at a minimum to my focal length. So if I zoomed to 200mm I put my shutter speed at 1/200
This is another of those "it's a guideline... not a rule" things. The idea that the minimum shutter speed should be at least as fast as the inverse of the focal length assumes (a) you have a full-frame camera (otherwise you multiple the focal length by the crop factor and use the inverse of the product.) It also assumes (b) your lens does not have image stabilization (image stabilization in lenses will typically buy you 2 full stops of shutter speed... and maybe even as many as 4 stops depending on the lens. And also (c) it assumes you _know_ how to use good camera-holding posture to minimize movement and you are actually trying to be steady.
6. Now I think about how bright the light is in the environment and how wide my aperture. I speed up the shutter speed to darken it if its too bright.
I tend to think about the constraints I may have before I approach the shot. Does our vision for this photograph require a shallow depth of field? If it's a landscape, you might want a broad depth of field. Is the subject moving? If so I might need that faster shutter speed to freeze movement (or if I'm doing a "panning" technique I might want to pick the shutter speed specifically to create a sense of motion through blur.) This means you might rather change the aperture or the ISO. There's no single rule that always works... it depends on the shot.
Two more things...
I think about the lighting effect I'm going to get if I accept the lighting "as is". I might rather move my subject to better light instead of adjusting the camera. If my subject is backlit, I might need to compensate to avoid an underexposed subject because the camera metered for the backlighting. I might want fill flash (and if I'm outside, there's a strong chance I will want fill flash.)
And the meter might be fooled by subject tonality. Meters try to bring the shot to a middle-gray value. But if the shot is SUPPOSED to be mostly black, the meter will tend to over-expose. If the shot is SUPPOSED to be mostly white, the meter might try to under-expose.
7. Now, if I have my shutter speed at my minimum in accordance with my focal length... but its still too dark... I might open up my aperture a bit. If my aperture is open all the way or I need to get a large depth of field... I finally go to my iso.
Again, what you change will really depend on the needs of the specific shot. You can't necessarily assume that you should change the shutter speed first, the aperture second, and the ISO third. I might do it completely the other way around. Modern cameras are so good with ISO that many cameras really have no problem with ISO 3200 or even 6400. Even if some noise is noticeable, there are tools that can completely eliminate tiny amounts of noise.
This is pretty much the process I go through when I shoot. Once I get a good exposure, I generally try to only use my shutter speed to adjust for exposure. I also aim low. In other words, I much rather underexpose the image, than overexpose the image, because its a lot easier for me to fix shadows in camera raw than blown highlights. Even though I try to just ignore my iso I tend to use it a lot indoors. It amazes me how much dimmer indoor lighting is than outdoor lighting even though it seems similar to my eyes. Also, it amazes me how I can look at a shaded area under a tree and the grass out in the sun right next to it and see both clearly, while if I take a picture of one or the other I can only expose for one at a time. The dynamic range of my eyes is sooooo much better than my camera.
Actually, your eyes are lousy. It's your BRAIN the does the work. If you have Netflix, go watch a few episodes of "Brain Games"... you might be surprised at how much your "eyes" (really your brain) will out-and-out lie about what you are seeing. The fabulous dynamic range that you see with your "eyes" in constructed by your brain and effectively it's an HDR image. Even the detail you see in your vision is basically a brain-created panoramic.
In outdoor situations, use a flash.
If you are shooting a subject in the shade, but there's a background which is in full sun, then exposing for the subject in shade will cause a blown highlight in the background. Instead.... meter for the background light, then use a flash to bring up the light on your subject so that they aren't underexposed. If your subject is about a stop lower (2/3rds of a stop might be better) then they'll still look natural -- it will look like shade with sun in the background, but it won't be so dark that you think of the subject as being underexposed, nor will the background be so bright that it looks overexposed.
While seasoned photographers will suggest that the pop-up flash on a DSLR isn't really very useful, this is actually one situation where it is useful (as long as the subject isn't too far away -- because pop-up flashes are wimpy compared to an external shoe-mounted flash.)
Right now I'm trying to train my hand and mind to kind of go through this process as fast as possible and do it with as little thought as possible. Trying to get a natural feel for it.
That's actually an excellent idea. You want to know where the controls are on your camera and be able to adjust them without looking. All the exposure information is in your viewfinder, so you should also be able to adjust everything without taking your eye away from the viewfinder (in other words your hands are operating the buttons and dials, but you're not looking at them... you're looking at your subject.)
There are numerous brain exercise you can teach yourself to do to improve your photography... so far you've mostly described the mechanical process of adjusting exposure. But the same applies for lighting and also composition.
My biggest problem right now is that the force required to click my button tends to shake my camera surprisingly hard, and its really softening up my pictures when I'm kind of in the moment taking candid pictures.
That is surprising. It makes me wonder about your camera posture and consider that you might not have a particularly steady grip on your camera. You may wan to work on your posture and camera-holding technique.
So... whatcha guys think? What am I doing wrong? How can I do this better?
