Beginner's Guide to Manual Photography

Articles: Guides

Photography

Author:
Editor:
Sponsor:
Published:

Kurtis Kronk
Brian
N/A
Jul. 19, 2006

Article

Specifications

Images

User Reviews (0)

Comments (5)

<< Previous

Home >>

The Big Picture

Up to this point, I've discussed manual controls from the viewpoint of only using Shutter and Aperture priority modes. While that is fine for starters, now it is time to dive a little deeper and talk about the [full] Manual mode.

I'm not going to lie to you, Manual mode can be tough. You can, and will, screw up. The camera will not hold your hand like it does in all the other modes. However, with the advent of digital photography, you need not worry. If you make a mistake, there is a nifty image playback feature which will show you immediately just how bad of a mistake you made. After a few minutes of sobbing and self-loathing in the corner, you can simply adjust your settings and re-shoot. Repeat if necessary. And again, if needed. You get the point.

What makes things tricky in Manual mode is the fact that every adjustment you make will have a trade-off. Let me pose an example where I will present a reference set of camera settings (which we assume to be properly exposed), and then I'll describe the impact of adjusting one of the settings.

Reference setting: f/4.5, 1/40, ISO 100
Assumptions: Reference setting results in the proper exposure. f/2.8 is biggest and f/22 is smallest aperture. 30" is longest and 1/2000 is shortest shutter speed. 100 is lowest and 3200 is highest ISO.

If you were to simply change the aperture from f/4.5 to f/2.8, you would end up with an overexposed photograph with a shallower DOF. To compensate for the increased amount of light hitting the sensor, you will need to use a faster shutter speed or a lower ISO setting. Since ISO 100 is the lowest possible setting on our reference camera, we will have to rely on an adjustment to the shutter speed. Increasing the shutter speed to 1/80 will bring us back to a proper exposure, and of course it will also result in less motion blur and a lesser risk of camera-shake.

Now, if you were to adjust the shutter speed from 1/40 to 1/320 and leave everything else the same, you'd end up with a grossly underexposed shot because such a fast shutter speed will not just stop motion, but also decrease the amount of light that hits the sensor by a factor of 8. In this situation, you can compensate with either the aperture or the ISO (or a bit of both). One solution would be to keep the aperture at f/4.5 and up the ISO to 800, or another thing you could do is set the aperture to f/2.8 and the ISO to 400. f/4.5 and ISO 800 will result in a noisy image due to the high ISO, whereas f/2.8 will result in a more shallow DOF and a less noisy image than with ISO 800.

Keep in mind that I'm only brushing the surface, since this is an introductory article. There are many other factors involved in picking the right settings for the result you want, much of which is dependant upon your particular equipment. Cameras and lenses all have different properties, which in turn introduce even more trade-offs between various settings. For example, one particular lens might be extremely sharp at f/8 but increasingly softer at f/4 and below and f/16 and higher. One particular camera might have very low noise-levels even at moderately high ISO settings whereas another might be noisy even at ISO 200.

I hope that you'll walk away from this article more enlightened than confused. While I've tried to keep things simple, I also wanted to introduce concepts which I will discuss later and which are important to know if you want to pursue this craft. My biggest goal in writing this is to get you to really explore your camera and be creative. Don't just click the shutter, be the shutter!

<< Previous

Page 6 of 6

Home >>

Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: Common Manual Modes
Page 3: Shutter Speed
Page 4: Aperture
Page 5: ISO (sensitivity)
Page 6: The Big Picture

Subscribe to Photography [more info]

Add Comment

5 User Comments

1 - Posted by Kurtis on July 19, 2006 - 3:35 pm

Digg this article:
http://digg.com/hardware/Noob_s_guide_to_manual_ph...

2 - Posted by jcmarney on July 20, 2006 - 12:06 pm

Good Read- One comment though. The Sunlight f/16 rule isn't going to work for digital for many cases. Small digicams simply don't close down to f/16, and DSLR's will often start degrading in quality due to diffraction.
There is a good article to familiarize yourself with the effects of diffraction here: http://www.diglloyd.com/diglloyd/free/DigicamDiffr...

3 - Posted by Kurtis on July 20, 2006 - 12:32 pm

Good point. I personally never use the sunny 16 rule, but thought it might be a helpful reference for some.

4 - Posted by blackjet on July 24, 2006 - 7:31 am

hay kurtis, good article, enjoyed the read....now I just need a camera to try it all out!

5 - Posted by ty_hot on February 15, 2008 - 5:06 pm

Good article! Thanks!

Add Comment

To add a comment without being a member, you may omit the password field, but you must enter your name (or nickname) along with your comment. * Denotes required fields.