Beginner Where to start

[WelshNoob]

just one of a myriad of articles from Pro's and otherwise

http://www.naturephotographysimplified.com/tips-and-tutorials/manual-mode-vs-auto-mode-7-reasons-why-professional-photographers-always-use-it/

That article says professionals ALWAYS use manual mode. It's not a very good argument as it's completely and utterly untrue. The most photographers I see, with the most expensive bodies and lenses, every single time I turn on the news are the photographers covering news stories. These are professional photographers, if you conducted a poll, how many of these would say they use full manual 100% of the time?

 

[StewartR]

Actually there's an interesting point re learning hidden in the above:
If you shoot Manual, and your shots are incorrectly exposed when reviewing on the PC, you have no way of knowing what the light was like, so your baseline isn't set. If you're thinking exposure compensation in a semi auto mode, you can experiment with that and see what effect +1 stop or -1 stop looks like.

I don't see much point in taking one shot as you can't tell much from that but if you take more than one shot you can see and learn something. For example take one shot with the cursor smack in the middle of the exposure scale and then take more shots changing the aperture, shutter or ISO as you go and so causing the cursor to move to the right / left hand side in turn. Also, changing the value of one thing and then changing the value of the others to keep the cursor in the same position may help to understand the exposure triangle.

Yes, sure, but Phil is still right about Manual not necessarily being the best way to do this.

Imagine you take three shots with different exposures and look at them afterwards to see which was best. If you shoot in Manual, the Exif data says:
* f/8, 1/100th, Manual mode
* f/8, 1/200th, Manual mode
* f/8, 1/400th, Manual mode
Whereas if you shoot in Aperture Priority mode, you get exactly the same three photos, but now the Exif data says:
* f/8, 1/100th, AP mode, EC +1 stop
* f/8, 1/200th, AP mode, no EC
* f/8, 1/400th, AP mode, EC -1 stop

Surely the second of these is a more helpful learning tool.

 

[XA2inmypocket]

In a way I'm glad that my camera is totally manual only without a light meter. Therefore I never have this dilemma of which program mode to select . It sounds painful. I'd never understand how to operate all of these different automatic choices. I just use the exposure triangle and Sunny F16. Please note the emoticon:

 

[DerekL]

You could always set up auto exposure bracketing to be sure of getting the exposure right or just to see the difference between exposure settings.
Or like me you can go to the dark side and make a HDR out of them.

On another note I tend to stick to aperture priority as I feel in the vast majority of situations the exposure would be the same as manually setting it. After all if I paid the best part of a grand for all this technology I
might as well use it.

 

[pjm1]

I have put some shots in my gallery - some were taken on auto some on aperture priority.

http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/gallery/authors/mich56.71868/

Hi Michalene... look what you've started!

I'm going to leave the whole Manual vs non-manual debate - it's being covered quite well from all sides.

What I will suggest as a fellow beginner is something I found helpful for me in terms of exposure: get a piece of software which will "auto exposure adjust" your photos (I use Lightroom but there are free alternatives). I'm not for a minute suggesting you use it all the time, but I found it a great way to show me that I was fairly consistently underexposing my shots, for example. I was wondering why portraits were looking so unflattering and apart from the lighting setups not being ideal, it was the lack of light which was the biggest failing for me.

One thing to do is to calibrate you own eyes...

 

[shaylou]

Hi Michalene... look what you've started!

I'm going to leave the whole Manual vs non-manual debate - it's being covered quite well from all sides.

What I will suggest as a fellow beginner is something I found helpful for me in terms of exposure: get a piece of software which will "auto exposure adjust" your photos (I use Lightroom but there are free alternatives). I'm not for a minute suggesting you use it all the time, but I found it a great way to show me that I was fairly consistently underexposing my shots, for example. I was wondering why portraits were looking so unflattering and apart from the lighting setups not being ideal, it was the lack of light which was the biggest failing for me.

One thing to do is to calibrate you own eyes...

Correct me if I'm wrong but can't you just use the exposure meter for this?

 

[pjm1]

Correct me if I'm wrong but can't you just use the exposure meter for this?

Of course... but what about when it's wrong? What about when you have a white background or a black background? I didn't actually realise that my eye was "underexposing" (when I either dialled in exp comp or post processed) my shots. It was only when I put them through the software and suddenly realised "this looks so much better!" that it dawned on me. Had I just relied on the exposure meter I would have simply knocked the EV back down again in post. I personally needed the external guide which said, "no, even for this scene which is 60% white, it is underexposed by 1.3 stops". We all know that camera meters are only any good on "average" scenes. IMO there's no substitute for using your own internal light meter (your eyes!) but they have to be calibrated too!

 

[shaylou]

Of course... but what about when it's wrong? What about when you have a white background or a black background? I didn't actually realise that my eye was "underexposing" (when I either dialled in exp comp or post processed) my shots. It was only when I put them through the software and suddenly realised "this looks so much better!" that it dawned on me. Had I just relied on the exposure meter I would have simply knocked the EV back down again in post. I personally needed the external guide which said, "no, even for this scene which is 60% white, it is underexposed by 1.3 stops". We all know that camera meters are only any good on "average" scenes. IMO there's no substitute for using your own internal light meter (your eyes!) but they have to be calibrated too!

"What about when you have a white background or a black background"?

Easy, once again use your metering system to help you. Have you heard of Center weighted or spot metering? This is something you camera can use in that situation and is very easy to set. I push one button and turn a dial one click and done. The center weighted measures the metering on what is in center of the frame leaving out the outside that might be white or black and throwing off the exposure. Spot metering is basically the same thing but it literally picks a small spot in which to meter from.

Both of these are part of the metering system on most cameras. Understanding the cameras metering system leads to happy shooting

I want to point out that I completely realize that there are times that metering system doesn't catch what you want but understanding all of its power will also teach you to understand its limits. Your description of the situation leads me to believe that the issue exposing could easily be handled in camera via the metering system. But that's just my opinion.

 

[Ken3966]

I tried to get a good photo of the supermoon the other day, and must have taken over 100 shots trying to get the best picture. As digital pictures are effectively free once you own the camera, until you decide to print one, taking a lot of pictures with different settings seems to be the best way to find the perfect shot to me.
I often use Aperture priority these days now I am more familiar with the camera, as I find that gives me the best semi-auto control. I decide what depth of field I am looking for, and set the apperture, the camera suggests the shutter speed needed and I can vary this if I wish with the compensation dial, or even tweak the iso if needed. I consider myself a relative beginner at all this as although I have had cameras for years, and even an SLR (Olympus OM10 back inth 1980s), I seem to have always let the camaera make most of the decisions. My previous camera, a Canon G9 had all these options for aperture priority etc and I don't think the dial ever came of the auto setting in 5 years. However since buying a GX7 this year and playing with vintage lenses where you have to use aperture priority, I seem to have suddenly got it, and use this mode most of the time even with the Panasonic autofocus and very expensive lenses.

Going the fully manual mode seems pointless,. it reminds me of the 1960's when my dad had to use an exposure meter and then set the camera from this! Take 36 shots on a roll of film and often only 5 or 6 were really worth the cost of printing when you got them back a few days or weeks later. We buy expensive cameras so they can help us get the best shot, and the cameras ability to measure exposure and set the shot up for you is a great help. Composing a manual shot takes a lot of time to get right and by then the photo opportunity may well be gone.

I was in the lake district recently on a trip boat and a huge Hercules appeared suddenly and flew down the lake at low level. I had just enough time to select auto on the dial and point the camera roughly in the direction of the plane as it went overhead and roughly frame it with the zoom in a couple of seconds and I achieved with one shot a reasonable underside view of the aircraft banking overhead, with the plane just about occupying the whole frame. I could never have done that in any partly or fully manual mode camera within the time available.

On my camera it shows on the picture you have just taken, any areas that are over-exposed, so if the scene you want is still available I can immediately dial in some adjustment and take the shot again until I get it the way I want. Sometimes some over-exposure is essential to bring out the detail in the darker areas?

 

[pjm1]

Shayne, I think we're talking at completely cross purposes! Sorry if my ramblings aren't helping (I doubt they were). I'm saying no matter what the user or camera sets as "right exposure", if the user then looks at it on screen in post (let's not go into whether the screen is calibrated!) then that user needs to be able to see it "correctly". I'll use myself as an example: for whatever reason, I looked at images on screen for a good few months and thought "that is overexposed, I need to nudge it down". Now, no matter whether I set the exposure, or the camera, when I looked at it onscreen, I felt properly exposed images needed a nudge down.

It was only when people told me they were underexposed and... critically... I started using LR's "Auto tone" function as a bit a test, I realised my eye was off.

So that's why I'm suggesting that as well as learning to use the camera properly, relatively novice users might also benefit from some mechanism to guide them re: properly exposed end images. Whether that's submitting them here and receiving feedback or using a program, it's not a bad idea to have something.