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Out of curiosity, how long does it take you to set the camera up with all the manual settings? I’m a little puzzled how to accomplish this with speed/action photography. I tend to revert and cheat with the speed or auto setting. When trying to set everything up, I run out of time and miss the image. What do “real” photographers do about this scenario?
It has everything to do with genre!
I will very often take 15 minutes or more to set up a shot. I’ve spent hours in one general location finding the best spots to shoot, and then quickly moving from one spot to the next spot to the next–and then back to the first–during the few minutes that the sun is low on the horizon. For a landscape photographer, fps doesn’t mean much to me, and M is my closest companion.
It’s a totally different story when the subject is a moving element. You are doing it right. You are shooting like the pros when you jump into Tv, Av or even P. I use Av and keep the aperture as wide as possible when shooting action, letting the shutter speed fluctuate from 1/200th to 1/2000th depending on what the light is like where I am point the camera.
A pro knows his camera well enough to know when to use the automatic settings as much to his advantage as the manual ones.
Also, depending on the uniformity of the light, sometimes it is good to set the camera in manual, as the camera’s light meter can be easily thrown off. It comes to evaluating your situation, and making the choice that fits your photography best.
That’s right, dhancock. I purposely switched over to Manual shooting this hallway in the Abby of St. Benoit du Lac because of the dramatic light contrast from the windows. It was constantly throwing my light meter off. Sometimes, the frame I composed would include more light from the windows thus telling the camera to meter for a shot that appeared underexposed. Other times, the frame I composed would include less light from the windows thus giving the exposure I was looking for. Because the dramatic light contrast was consistent throughout the hallway, I went ahead and switched it over to Manual so I wouldn’t have to worry about getting underexposed images. I set the Aperture and Shutterspeed to what I thought produced a proper exposure and just kept them there for the entire stroll down the hallway . . . and back . . . and down again. 🙂
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I do a lot of macro photography, mainly still life, so I have lot’s of time to spend on setting up the exposure correctly. : ) As it’s still life, I often use a tripod, thereby doing away with the necessity for a “fast shutter speed”.
The most important thing in macro is the aperture (assuming you’re on a tripod). Therefore, I set the mode to ‘Manual’ and adjust the aperture to whatever is needed, then I watch the exposure reader while adjusting the shutter speed to get a correct exposure. I then take a test shot and check for blown highlights in Playback mode.
Of course when you’re working with “still life” and wind at the same time, that changes the variables quite a bit! Now all of a sudden the shutter speed is most important! Having perfect focus and DOF does no good if your subject is a blurry mess from wind-induced movement! You’ll find with macro photography that you often need a faster shutter speed than you might think! I have been tricked into thinking that I hadn’t focused correctly, when, in fact, it was motion blur that was the cause of the slightly blurry picture!
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