Beginner's Guide to Manual Photography

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Photography

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Kurtis Kronk
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Jul. 19, 2006

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Introduction

I've always considered myself to be a pretty creative person, though I'll be the first to admit that I'm certainly not an artist. My drawings were never ~~great~~ good, my graphic design skills left much to be desired, and I think I may have even managed to destroy one or two paint-by-numbers as a child! It wasn't until I set out to improve the quality of my product shots for TheTechLounge a couple of years ago that the shutter bug really got hold of me. The challenge of setting up a very cheap studio in conjunction with figuring out manual camera settings was like my first date with photography, and I've never looked back. With that in mind, I saw this topic as the perfect jumping-off-point for many more photography-related articles I'll be working on in the future.

Some might ask why you would want or need to modify camera settings manually when the camera can do it for you 'just fine.' It is certainly possible to get a nice photo just snapping away in automatic mode, but more often than not what you'll end up with is a snapshot rather than an expressive photograph. It's all in the eye of the beholder, really, but if you want to consistently end up with photographs instead of snapshots, you'll need to grab the wheel and take control. For example, your camera may decide that it wants to use flash when a much nicer photo would result from natural available light. You can get the same overall exposure with many different settings, and the feel of an image will change noticeably with each different one. But I'm getting way ahead of myself!

The purpose of this article will be to lay out some of the most basic (and important) manual settings which can be found on most cameras. While this is hardly an exhaustive list of manual settings, bare in mind that this is an introduction to manual settings. The things I'll be focusing on are Shutter Speed, Aperture, and ISO (sensitivity).

Disclaimer: I would like to point out that the degree to which your photographs can be taken 'manually' will vary depending upon your camera. Some small point-n-shoot cameras may have a 'manual' mode which offers very limited control of the camera and in all honesty shouldn't really be called manual mode. The larger (and usually more expensive) cameras will tend to give you more creative control.

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

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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!

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