Doing it the old fashioned way

[tim]

Today was my first attempted doing things the old fashioned way - full manual, light meter, and a prime lens. I bloody well loved it. I have better consistency than I ever did on Av, better composition because I didn't have to worry about exposure, and I was more relaxed. I didn't nail every exposure, but I did better than usual. The light changed every 2 minutes or so, but since the meter was in my pocket it took about 5 seconds to take a reading and dial it in. Inside under consistant lighting, shooting manual was a delight. No worries about metering a netural area, just shoot and know the exposure will be good - so you can concentrate on other things.

Of course I still shot a little on Av when things were changing to rapidly to meter, and I used my 70-200 IS and other lenses as necessary - no point being an idiot about these things. Use the technology when it's needed.

Also - wireless ETTL - now i'm more used to it I love it. The CP-E3 battery pack's a godsend, but now I want another 550EX and CP-E3 as a backlight.

So my verdict - I love full manual and primes! Not recommended for the wedding newbie, but once you have the basics under control and get out of the panic zone.... you get to take control over your photos :)

[Close to My Heart]

Hi Tim: I am happy to hear how excited you are about being confident in the full manual settings during such a fast past day of photography. I am new to the forum, and fairly new to photography in general. I have only been in business for a year. I tend to get overly excited when what I have learned goes right. :lol: I would love to see some of the pictures that you took during the wedding.

Jen

[BLINN]

That is really great new Tim.

[tim]

Close to my hear, have a look here (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?p=1327690) :) I'd also had a couple of drinks before I posted this thread ;) I'll be shooting mostly manual from now on though :)

[condyk]

Excellent chum. It's like losing your virginity going full manual ... erm, I think? Life will never be the same again and you just get better and better at it ... shooting that is :o

[tim]

lol, thanks condy :)

[JaertX]

I'm a wedding photog newbie and I want so badly to go all primes...just scared to.

This guy uses mostly primes and does amazing work: www.jeffascough.com

I'm going to pull the trigger on gearing up for a few small weddings. I'm getting the 5D to use as my primary and keep my 20D as a backup. I'd like to just get the 24mmL, the 135mmL and the 200mmL, but I'm probably going to chicken out and go ahead and buy the 24-70 and 70-200 to start....the primes can wait, I suppose. The pro who is mentoring me shoots zooms only. (Nikon, so she doesn't really have much advice when it comes to specific gear questions)

So it's cool to hear of someone actually doing it! Congrats! something for me to look forward to.

[JaertX]

oh...and the website I linked to...he's a Canon guy. Well, that and Leica.

[tim]

It's quite liberating!

[Toogy]

Hey Tim, sorry to go a little off-topic, but what kind of wireless ETTL system are you running? This is something I have thought about using, but not sure what would work good.
Are you able to use the wireless outside? or only inside?

[tim]

I use a 580EX on my 20D as master, a 550EX as slave. The 550EX sometimes shoots into an umbrella, sometimes it shoots into some other bounce medium (see first shot in "one from today" thread in this forum). So far i've only used it much indoors, though i've used it over the distance of a few meters at a wedding outside ones, and it worked fine. In that case the head of the 580EX was pointed directly at the 550EX's receiver, so it was a best case scenario.

[LuisE]

Tim, How do you use your light meter outdoors where the light change every minute. I mean, Do you expose for the hightlights and then use your Speedlite for filling the shadows?? . I also have tha Sekonic , but only used for studio. I have found that in outdoors the lightmeter give me almost the same measure that I get with my 20D. Hope you understand my questions. I also try to shot everything in Manual. Also the last question : Do you have the NPFinder (Non parallax spot Viewfinder) for your Sekonic?? I understand this is for spot metering.

Thanks,
LuisE

[tim]

The light doesn't change every minute. I meter, keep my eye on my histogram, and if it doesn't look right I pull the meter out of my back pocket and take another reading. I find it a lot quicker and easier than using partial metering and being careful with my exposure for each shot. I use incident metering.

Nope don't have that attachment.

[Curtis N]

no point being an idiot about these things. Use the technology when it's needed.Well-put!

[tim]

I've gone through about 2/3 of the photos from the wedding now, and the shots in manual are far more consistent. That probably says something about my metering technique (Av, partial) as well as the situation (fast paced with lots of bright light sources), but i'm definitely sticking with full manual 80% or more of the time from now on.

[BLINN]

Are metering from where you are standing or metering at the subject?

[sapearl]

Tim, sounds like I should keep a close watch on this thread as I merge the 5D into my workflow.

I've used an old Sekonic (non-flash) 398 hand held light meter for almost 30 thirty years. In incident mode it's great for getting an excellent meter reading, with the dome in place, from the position of the subject. And as long as you're in consistently lit locations - as in doing formal group photos - the light will remain consistent and constant. I then set my flash to kick in one stop less than the ambient lit, and get beautiful shots. My challenge now is transferring this concept over to the automation of the 580ex.

The light doesn't change every minute. I meter, keep my eye on my histogram, and if it doesn't look right I pull the meter out of my back pocket and take another reading. I find it a lot quicker and easier than using partial metering and being careful with my exposure for each shot. I use incident metering.

Nope don't have that attachment.

[kawter2]

Great tim!! I'm telling you... you will feel confined for a few weddings/shoots but you will LOVE it when it becomes second nature... IMO you will only use AV or P in a "punt/hail Mary" type situation.. Next thing is to ditch that incident meter and use your in camera meter.

[tim]

Next thing is to ditch that incident meter and use your in camera meter.

Erm... that's what i'm trying to avoid! I find the incident meter much easier than the in-camera meter.

[Mark_48]

Is your next step in the "old fashioned way" going to be film ?:) :) :)
Using a light meter and manual settings does certainly give one a better understanding of how things interact on a camera rather than just setting a dial to "P" and shooting away.

[Arnie1]

Erm... that's what i'm trying to avoid! I find the incident meter much easier than the in-camera meter.


Tim....I just can't see it! With modern camera metering, spot metering and exposure lock why do you need to use a hand held meter??? (apart from it looks good as far as the B@G are concerned)

In my job as an Art Director I get to spend a lot of time on location automotive shoots, the two best car photographers I use (A Californian and a German) use old Nikon SLR's to meter!

Arnie

[neil_r]

Manual focus next week :-)

[sapearl]

Hey now, Ansel did some of his finest work using that little Weston incident meter ;)

Great tim!! I'm telling you... you will feel confined for a few weddings/shoots but you will LOVE it when it becomes second nature... IMO you will only use AV or P in a "punt/hail Mary" type situation.. Next thing is to ditch that incident meter and use your in camera meter.

[Arnie1]

I got a Box Brownie I may part with:oops:

[sapearl]

I can't speak for product shoots - not my area of expertise - but when I do outdoor bridal shoots using medium format and film, I typically choose areas of open shade where the light is uniform. I take one incident reading at the position of the bride and everything is set. For MY situation there, where the light doesn't change, this is very fast for me as well as foolproof.

Certainly there are other situations though which will lend themselves better and more efficiently to in-camera metering.

Tim....I just can't see it! With modern camera metering, spot metering and exposure lock why do you need to use a hand held meter??? (apart from it looks good as far as the B@G are concerned)

In my job as an Art Director I get to spend a lot of time on location automotive shoots, the two best car photographers I use (A Californian and a German) use old Nikon SLR's to meter!

Arnie

[Arnie1]

do outdoor bridal shoots using medium format and film

But aren't we talking modern digital equipment here??? Sure if I was still shooting film I'd consider it as a safety - but that's why we have screens on the back of our cameras and histograms to check.

Meter the area you want to expose for, exposure lock....job done. Must be quicker than using an incident meter.

[sapearl]

Arnie, you could be very well correct. I'm just not that experienced yet with dSLR's, only having just purchased my first one. I'm one of the those oldie-newbies ;) , and I don't yet really know what I don't know.

The thing I'm finding out though with my modest experience is that you can't ENTIRELY trust that screen image. Oh, it's certainly an excellent guide and I love the concept of having an immediate 2.5" polaroid of the shot. My biggest concern is always proper fleshtone exposure. An incident reading with histogram can give you an excellent idea of the overall scene's exposure value, but it may not be quite on target for faces.

But in all fairness to your viewpoint, I did shoot a wedding this past Saturday night in which I used the 5D to take (non-flash) closeup shots of the B&G giving speeches. They were lit by the videographer's lights. When I used SPOT metering the results were very good. I could have gotten similar exposure results using my hand held incident meter, but it just wasn't practical and would have been cumbersome to say the least.

But aren't we talking modern digital equipment here??? Sure if I was still shooting film I'd consider it as a safety - but that's why we have screens on the back of our cameras and histograms to check.

Meter the area you want to expose for, exposure lock....job done. Must be quicker than using an incident meter.

[BLINN]

kawter2, I agree I have been trying to tell these people the same thing You just have to beaware of what you are metering on. Still what works for one does not always work for the other. Just taking your meter out of you pocket and getting the exposure readings isn't always going to do it, you have to meter at the subject. Tim do you walk up the subject everytime you go to meter the lighting?

[Yella Fella]

quick question to fire at Tim... you say you use a light meter to measure well the light, and your not using M mode on your cam, what do you leave the metering mode as on the 20D? Or can you turn it off? Still a bit clueless... missed out on my lesson when they talked about metering...

whats a good light meter, what do you recommend?

[kawter2]

Hey now, Ansel did some of his finest work using that little Weston incident meter ;)


Yah but to my knowledge, Ansel's subjects were 5 miles wide, he also had about 4 hours to set up each shot.. Just a liiiiiiitle different ;)

[neil_r]

Yah but to my knowledge, Ansel's subjects were 5 miles wide, he also had about 4 hours to set up each shot.. Just a liiiiiiitle different ;)

Not given some of the weather I have seen his photographs taken in ;)

[sapearl]

Nah.... the Teton range is actually 40 miles and he had workshop students to do some of the grunt work :lol: . I suppose sliiiiiiiightly different.....

Yah but to my knowledge, Ansel's subjects were 5 miles wide, he also had about 4 hours to set up each shot.. Just a liiiiiiitle different ;)

[tim]

Tim....I just can't see it! With modern camera metering, spot metering and exposure lock why do you need to use a hand held meter??? (apart from it looks good as far as the B@G are concerned)

In my job as an Art Director I get to spend a lot of time on location automotive shoots, the two best car photographers I use (A Californian and a German) use old Nikon SLR's to meter!

Arnie

20D has partial metering not spot. You also need to use exposure compensation if the subject isn't 18% grey. Add to that in fast pased situations like weddings, where the light doesn't change often but the subject and composition do, metering your exposure for each shot takes FAR more effort than metering once. An incident meter is also more accurate, i've found. I described what I did before in my first post, manual exposure definitely works for me. Not manual focus, my eyes aren't good enough with that tiny viewfinder.

quick question to fire at Tim... you say you use a light meter to measure well the light, and your not using M mode on your cam, what do you leave the metering mode as on the 20D? Or can you turn it off? Still a bit clueless... missed out on my lesson when they talked about metering...

whats a good light meter, what do you recommend?

I'm using M mode on my camera, I don't have it meter anything. I use the Sekonic L-358 meter, it works very well and is very popular with the people in the lighting forum. It's not too expensive either - but neither is it overly cheap.

[symes]

20D has partial metering not spot. You also need to use exposure compensation if the subject isn't 18% grey. Add to that in fast pased situations like weddings, where the light doesn't change often but the subject and composition do, metering your exposure for each shot takes FAR more effort than metering once.

Ths is the key...

I started using full manual for sports for the same reason...AV wants to change my shutter speed all the time and the metering is horrible in the camera when your focus is on one tiny spot but want consistant exposure..same thing goes for using TV when you want a consistant AV regardless of what partial metering tells you.

In the end taking a reading with a light meter allows you to quickly and easily set up your shots for the correct exposure without depending on any in camera metering...it is liberating...

Cheers,

[Arnie1]

Tim, I'll blow the dust off my Sekonic and give it a try, but I'm still trying to see where its going to beat metering for the area I want correctly exposed and exposure locking with the camera.


20D has partial metering not spot. You also need to use exposure compensation if the subject isn't 18% grey. Add to that in fast pased situations like weddings, where the light doesn't change often but the subject and composition do, metering your exposure for each shot takes FAR more effort than metering once. An incident meter is also more accurate, i've found. I described what I did before in my first post, manual exposure definitely works for me. Not manual focus, my eyes aren't good enough with that tiny viewfinder.



I'm using M mode on my camera, I don't have it meter anything. I use the Sekonic L-358 meter, it works very well and is very popular with the people in the lighting forum. It's not too expensive either - but neither is it overly cheap.

[VanceW]

Just to join the Tim camp-o-metering. :D
http://users4.ev1.net/%7Etxcowboy/IMAGES/Hopkins00072.JPG

Metered before the wedding with Sekonic L358, and got f5.6 at 1/60 ISO 800. Set the
10D up for that, with the 70-200mm f4.0/L.

The rest of the time, during the ceremony, I just composed and shot.

[sapearl]

That was pretty much the point I was trying to make before. IF you know you're in a consistent, uniformly lit environment - and that is the key, uniform - once you meter, the light is not going to really change. It will be the same throughout the scene. You don't have to worry about what the camera may or may not be trying to tell you. You can then concentrate on the people and what they are doing, rather than being concerned with camera technology.

Just to join the Tim camp-o-metering. :D


Metered before the wedding with Sekonic L358, and got f5.6 at 1/60 ISO 800. Set the
10D up for that, with the 70-200mm f4.0/L.

The rest of the time, during the ceremony, I just composed and shot.

[tim]

Tim, I'll blow the dust off my Sekonic and give it a try, but I'm still trying to see where its going to beat metering for the area I want correctly exposed and exposure locking with the camera.

Try it and see, during some fast paced shooting.