What mode do you use most?

[cwphoto]

Basically, that is part of the zone system - there is no fundamental difference between pegging highlights and using midgrey. And yes, you could do the exact same thing with exposure compensation on your camera in automated modes (how are you gonna measure the highlights BTW? Most possibly reflective, right?).

Only if you then lock that value using *. Otherwise, how are you going to ensure the camera is metering only the highlights/midtones in AE? You can't.

[cwphoto]

Again, taking a reflective reading and compensating for it's reflectiveness (wow, use that word in scrabble once!) is the key and it doesn't make any difference if you tell the camera about it or if you tell and calculate that difference yourself. Except in speed.

AE needs to be locked for that to work. Otherwise, a change in the subject's reflectance value will require you to compute a different amount of EC.

[mbong]

the first couple of messages is easy to understand but the more i read the more confuse I'm getting lolz...I've no idea about the AE, AC discussion but I'm using Aperture Priority and sometimes manual if I want to play around. Speed Priority...sometimes...may be about 5% out of 100%. Tried to play around with the exposure thing but still dont understand them. Something for me to learn.

[DanNG]

AE mode majority of the time, but slowly moving more and more to manual

[Tannin]

I don't know whether it's convenience or ignorance Tony, but you have totally missed the crucial point that AE with EC still involves AE, so you don't have control any more - the camera does. AE is not an absolute value, it is a variable - so how can you argue that it gives the same result as a constant (ME)? AE +/- a value is still a variable.

No, I have not missed that point, CW. Not at all. It is simplistic and quite misleading to elevate a manually selected exposure value to the status of a constant under all circumstances, while not according the same treatment to a metered exposure value.

If you think about it, calculation of correct exposure has two key input variables: (i) the amount of light falling on a scene, and (ii) the reflectivity of that scene. Neither bears any particular relationship to the other (i.e., they do not normally co-vary), and it is entirely arbitary to select either (a) or (b) as the "main" or "primary" component around which we should base all our calculations.

Let's work this through. There are four (and only four) possible combinations:

• (i) assume (a) constant light falling on a scene, and (b) constant subject reflectance. Both the manually selected value and the metered value remain the same relative to the scene in question - i.e., for this scene, both are constant values.
• (ii) assume (a) constant light falling on a scene, and (b) variable subject reflectance. The manually selected value remain the same relative to the scene in question and is thus a constant, while the metered value changes as the subject reflects different amounts of the light falling on it - in this instance it is a variable.
• (iii) assume (a) variable light falling on a scene, and (b) constant subject reflectance. The manually selected value varies relative to the scene but the metered value remains the same - i.e., the manually selected value is a variabe but the metered value is a constant.
• (iv) assume (a) variable light falling on a scene, and (b) variable subject reflectance. Now neither the manually selected value nor the metered value remain the same relative to the scene in question. Both are variables.

We can easily work this through with practical examples to verify:

• (i) You are outdoors, taking 100 photographs of sheep, all the same breed. It is a clear, sunny day. The sheep are all the same colour, the light won't change for hours yet: if you get one shot correctly exposed, you can continue with the same settings till the sun goes down. If you decide that you want to make things a bit brighter or a bit darker, roll your thumb a click or two in the appropriate direction. (Or your index finger if you are shooting Nikon.) What exposure mode are we using here? It doesn't matter! In either manual or Av, you have complete control. (The reason why you are taking 100 pictures of 100 near-identical sheep is a question for another day. )
• (ii) It is the next day. Now you are taking pictures of the farmer's goats. It's another perfect day, but the goats are all different colours! Some are jet black, others pearly white, others in-between. Now to get correct exposure you need to do one of two things: either base your exposure settings around the constant input value (the light falling on the scene) and ignore the variable input value (the colour of each goat), or base your exposure settings around the variable input value and adjust each shot to compensate. Here, because manual exposure is constant relative to the light source, it does indeed give you more control (or to be strictly correct, it makes it quite a lot simpler to maintain control). It is a lot easier (and probably more effective) to add a little more or less brightness to any given shot by adding a click or two of extra shutter speed or aperture than it is to first compensate for the variation in the metered value as the different coloured goats go by, and then add or subtract a bit more EC as well. Here, your claim that manual offers more control is tenable (or would be if we qualified it to mean "more convenient and simple control). This example, of course, is essentially the same circumstance as your example of the two football teams, and it should be no surprise to see that it leads to the same conclusion.
• (iii) The next day you have to shoot the pigs. These pigs are all the same colour (pink) but being excited about getting their pictures taken they keep running around, in and out of the shed and in and out from under the trees. Just to make life more difficult, clouds keep blowing across the sun, making you work sometimes in bright sunlight, sometimes not. Now the boot is on the other foot: manual exposure is not constant relative to the light source, it's varying constantly. Luckily, we have a modern camera with the usual automatic exposure modes, so we stick it in Av, confirm that the exposure it suggests for the first pink pig is correct (or add a little EC if not) and then carry on to shoot the other 99. All the pigs are the same shade of pink, so the metred exposure value remains constant relative to the subject, and you can easily adjust the brightness of any desired shot by adding a little +ive or -ive EC. In contrast, the manual value varies wildly as the light conditions change, and you have to work very hard to maintain control of your exposure.
• (iv) Now the farmer wants you to photograph his cattle. It's a mixed herd: the Aberdeen Angus are jet black, the Murray Greys are almost white, and the Jerseys and Friesians are multicoloured. They are nervous and keep moving around in and out of the shade while the sun keeps coming out and going back behind the clouds. Neither the metred value nor the manual value is constant relative to anything that matters. Both are variable, control is difficult to achieve, and you are going to have to work hard for your shots today.

OK, enough of silly examples ... or are they silly? It's not at all difficult to think of real-world circumstances which correspond to each of the four possible situations. I'll provide some common birding examples because they come readily to mind, but just about any kind of reasonably general photography should have matching ones. (i) birds in the open, such as waders (which are nearly all brownish-buff). (ii) Large waterbirds: egrets are pure white, swans are jet black. (I probably should use manual for these myself, but I tend to do it the hard way (Av & EC) out of habit - and also because it's quicker to grab some EC with my thumb still looking through the viewfinder than it is to lower the big telephoto lens, let go with my left hand to reach the mode selection button on the top left of the camera, click and dial for manual mode, then raise the lens again, hoping that the bird is still there.) (iii) Most woodland and forest birds (i.e., more than 50% of all the birds you'd want to photograph). Although they vary in colour quite a bit, most tend towards middle tones (very few passerines and near-passeries are pure black or white) and in any case, you tend to spend some considerable time working with a particular subject - it's hard enough getting close to one bird at a time, never mind three or four different ones! (iv) A thankfully rare situation when birding! You get the odd example, but in general the difficult-coloured birds are large and like to be out in the open where the light doesn't vary much.

Example: You're shooting a bride in consistent light with AE. Lot's of white around so you dial in some + EC. Now you re-frame slightly and the camera now offers you a different EV than before because the scene is slightly less/more high key due to the new composition. With AE you now have to re-adjust your EC to suit, whereas with ME you don't.

A clear example of circumstance (ii) above i.e., the one out four possible circumstances where manual does give more convenient control. Nevertheless, in practical terms it sounds like a bit of a non-issue to me. You already have to be using focus lock if you have the bride off-centre (or else be messing around selecting off-centre focus points or (worse!) using automatic focus point selection) and most (all?) modern cameras allow you to do focus lock and AE lock with a single button press. (At least all the Canon ones do; it's been a while since I shot Nikon but I bet they are the same in this regard.) Or else you are using manual focus, in which case (given the dreadful manual focus aids in modern viewfinders) you either have bags of time to set things up or else are a bit of a miracle-worker. (With that said, in practice I don't actually bother having the focus lock and the AE lock slaved together, I prefer to just change the EC if I don't like the numbers in the viewfinder. No real reason, just habit.)

-------------

Enough!

This has been an interesting discussion, CW, and although we may never agree about the correct way to define "control" in a photographic context, I am neverless getting an interesting and potentially useful insight into your working habits. It would be good practice for me to try a few of them out for myself at some stage.

[cwphoto]

No, I have not missed that point, CW. Not at all. It is simplistic and quite misleading to elevate a manually selected exposure value to the status of a constant under all circumstances, while not according the same treatment to a metered exposure value.

If you think about it, calculation of correct exposure has two key input variables: (i) the amount of light falling on a scene, and (ii) the reflectivity of that scene. Neither bears any particular relationship to the other (i.e., they do not normally co-vary), and it is entirely arbitary to select either (a) or (b) as the "main" or "primary" component around which we should base all our calculations.

Let's work this through. There are four (and only four) possible combinations:

• (i) assume (a) constant light falling on a scene, and (b) constant subject reflectance. Both the manually selected value and the metered value remain the same relative to the scene in question - i.e., for this scene, both are constant values.
• (ii) assume (a) constant light falling on a scene, and (b) variable subject reflectance. The manually selected value remain the same relative to the scene in question and is thus a constant, while the metered value changes as the subject reflects different amounts of the light falling on it - in this instance it is a variable.
• (iii) assume (a) variable light falling on a scene, and (b) constant subject reflectance. The manually selected value varies relative to the scene but the metered value remains the same - i.e., the manually selected value is a variabe but the metered value is a constant.
• (iv) assume (a) variable light falling on a scene, and (b) variable subject reflectance. Now neither the manually selected value nor the metered value remain the same relative to the scene in question. Both are variables.

We can easily work this through with practical examples to verify:

• (i) You are outdoors, taking 100 photographs of sheep, all the same breed. It is a clear, sunny day. The sheep are all the same colour, the light won't change for hours yet: if you get one shot correctly exposed, you can continue with the same settings till the sun goes down. If you decide that you want to make things a bit brighter or a bit darker, roll your thumb a click or two in the appropriate direction. (Or your index finger if you are shooting Nikon.) What exposure mode are we using here? It doesn't matter! In either manual or Av, you have complete control. (The reason why you are taking 100 pictures of 100 near-identical sheep is a question for another day. )
• (ii) It is the next day. Now you are taking pictures of the farmer's goats. It's another perfect day, but the goats are all different colours! Some are jet black, others pearly white, others in-between. Now to get correct exposure you need to do one of two things: either base your exposure settings around the constant input value (the light falling on the scene) and ignore the variable input value (the colour of each goat), or base your exposure settings around the variable input value and adjust each shot to compensate. Here, because manual exposure is constant relative to the light source, it does indeed give you more control (or to be strictly correct, it makes it quite a lot simpler to maintain control). It is a lot easier (and probably more effective) to add a little more or less brightness to any given shot by adding a click or two of extra shutter speed or aperture than it is to first compensate for the variation in the metered value as the different coloured goats go by, and then add or subtract a bit more EC as well. Here, your claim that manual offers more control is tenable (or would be if we qualified it to mean "more convenient and simple control). This example, of course, is essentially the same circumstance as your example of the two football teams, and it should be no surprise to see that it leads to the same conclusion.
• (iii) The next day you have to shoot the pigs. These pigs are all the same colour (pink) but being excited about getting their pictures taken they keep running around, in and out of the shed and in and out from under the trees. Just to make life more difficult, clouds keep blowing across the sun, making you work sometimes in bright sunlight, sometimes not. Now the boot is on the other foot: manual exposure is not constant relative to the light source, it's varying constantly. Luckily, we have a modern camera with the usual automatic exposure modes, so we stick it in Av, confirm that the exposure it suggests for the first pink pig is correct (or add a little EC if not) and then carry on to shoot the other 99. All the pigs are the same shade of pink, so the metred exposure value remains constant relative to the subject, and you can easily adjust the brightness of any desired shot by adding a little +ive or -ive EC. In contrast, the manual value varies wildly as the light conditions change, and you have to work very hard to maintain control of your exposure.
• (iv) Now the farmer wants you to photograph his cattle. It's a mixed herd: the Aberdeen Angus are jet black, the Murray Greys are almost white, and the Jerseys and Friesians are multicoloured. They are nervous and keep moving around in and out of the shade while the sun keeps coming out and going back behind the clouds. Neither the metred value nor the manual value is constant relative to anything that matters. Both are variable, control is difficult to achieve, and you are going to have to work hard for your shots today.

OK, enough of silly examples ... or are they silly? It's not at all difficult to think of real-world circumstances which correspond to each of the four possible situations. I'll provide some common birding examples because they come readily to mind, but just about any kind of reasonably general photography should have matching ones. (i) birds in the open, such as waders (which are nearly all brownish-buff). (ii) Large waterbirds: egrets are pure white, swans are jet black. (I probably should use manual for these myself, but I tend to do it the hard way (Av & EC) out of habit - and also because it's quicker to grab some EC with my thumb still looking through the viewfinder than it is to lower the big telephoto lens, let go with my left hand to reach the mode selection button on the top left of the camera, click and dial for manual mode, then raise the lens again, hoping that the bird is still there.) (iii) Most woodland and forest birds (i.e., more than 50% of all the birds you'd want to photograph). Although they vary in colour quite a bit, most tend towards middle tones (very few passerines and near-passeries are pure black or white) and in any case, you tend to spend some considerable time working with a particular subject - it's hard enough getting close to one bird at a time, never mind three or four different ones! (iv) A thankfully rare situation when birding! You get the odd example, but in general the difficult-coloured birds are large and like to be out in the open where the light doesn't vary much.



A clear example of circumstance (ii) above i.e., the one out four possible circumstances where manual does give more convenient control. Nevertheless, in practical terms it sounds like a bit of a non-issue to me. You already have to be using focus lock if you have the bride off-centre (or else be messing around selecting off-centre focus points or (worse!) using automatic focus point selection) and most (all?) modern cameras allow you to do focus lock and AE lock with a single button press. (At least all the Canon ones do; it's been a while since I shot Nikon but I bet they are the same in this regard.) Or else you are using manual focus, in which case (given the dreadful manual focus aids in modern viewfinders) you either have bags of time to set things up or else are a bit of a miracle-worker. (With that said, in practice I don't actually bother having the focus lock and the AE lock slaved together, I prefer to just change the EC if I don't like the numbers in the viewfinder. No real reason, just habit.)

-------------

Enough!

This has been an interesting discussion, CW, and although we may never agree about the correct way to define "control" in a photographic context, I am neverless getting an interesting and potentially useful insight into your working habits. It would be good practice for me to try a few of them out for myself at some stage.

The part in bold is probably the real point under argument, and the rest I mostly concur with. So agreed, time to move on.

You're not a farmer are you?

[Tannin]

What me? Run Angus and Murray Grey in the same paddock?

[hepiL]

For me it's the aperture priority or manual if using my old speedlight. Custom white balance is a must

[AmyK]

My reason for mentioning that is in my class pretty much everybody shoots manual mode but always just putting the meter in the middle. I always wondered why because in the end that is just going by the meter which the camera can do a lot faster than a person turning the dials. I asked a couple of people why they bothered and they all basically seem to have the idea that shooting in manual at all times is just what experienced photographers do and that any semi-auto modes are bad.

Maybe we have totally missed something, I will be interested to see why everybody sticks to manual.

We get told that at school as well during photography...it frustrates me!

Basically the teacher said at the beginning of the year, if you can't use manual, you fail.



Anyway enough of my ranting.


I use AV for portraits and sport, and then use Manual for everything else. Or Auto, if I'm out with friends, and can't be bothered changing the settings LOL!

[Steve Axford]

We get told that at school as well during photography...it frustrates me!

Basically the teacher said at the beginning of the year, if you can't use manual, you fail.



Anyway enough of my ranting.


I use AV for portraits and sport, and then use Manual for everything else. Or Auto, if I'm out with friends, and can't be bothered changing the settings LOL!

Ah, now I get it. I did wonder why so many people were saying they used manual. I use manual if the light source is very hard for the camera to read - ie the internal meter isn't a lot of use. If the internal meter is reading correctly then I use exposure compensation and Av. But .... nobody taught me what I should do (probably wouldn't have listened if they had - is that the right smiley? - who cares - it looks good)

[Anthony Phillips]

Manual 95% of the time

Av the rest

[The_Scroop]

I'm always in Av for daytime shooting and always M for night.

I have it pretty easy with my camera. I set the ISO to automatic with a max of 6400. Then set the shutter to a minimum of 1/80. I can then let the camera do all the work, all I need to worry about is setting the appropriate aperture and the camera will take a perfectly exposed shot in all conditions. If i need to, I can perfect the exposure with ev compensation.

[rhonda]

I tend to use AV mostly. Often I will get a reading in AV or TV depending on what I'm after then change to manual using the settings.

[kernsy]

I mostly use either manual or shutter priority because for riding shots that i take i need to get the shot at the exact point they are in the air or doing something (if that makes sense).

[lazarus219]

It does but how does that affect your choice of exposure mode?

[roburg]

I probably use shutter priority most by volume in terms of number of photos taken (mostly wildlife shots with fast shutter and auto ISO), but M (for panoramas and some landscapes) or Av (most everything else) wouild be used more in terms of how often they are being used. Does this make sense??

[Miaow]

Usually P (and then shift) and Manual if I want somethng specific. Occasionally I'll use Av or Tv though I tend to go straight to Manual.

[Shane.R]

Started in manual and stuck in manual..works for me.

[Greg Sorenson]

manual most of the time. I keep it pretty simple. I do a lot of long exposures so in low light i use bulb, esp for lightning shots.

[Julie]

Manual and some AP depending on the situation at the time. I switch to AP before putting the cam in my bag, just incase a quick shot is needed and I don't have time to set manual.