going Manual!!!!

airfrogusmc wrote in post #9240038
I only shoot in manual.

Pure laziness for casual shots is the only time I'll switch to Av.

M is when you take the photos. It's Great

For those that shoot manual what type of photos do you take? Wondering if this has a bearing on why folks use different methods.

Methodical wrote in post #9259059
For those that shoot manual what type of photos do you take? Wondering if this has a bearing on why folks use different methods.

Street / wedding / portraits / kids / family / anything. I've never been in a situation where I think "I better switch to Av" to get better exposures. M = consistency.

I'll use the green box once in a great while when I am rushed and just to do a quick documentation shot of something I need to send to a contractor or supplier. Otherwise its usually manual.

I shoot Av 95% of the time. Question for you manual shooters: How do you actually get proper exposure? Light meter? Trial/error? Do you look at the meter in the camera? Because if you look at the meter in the camera, are you not doing what the camera could do instantaneously anyway? For candid situations, trial/error or a light meter do not really seem ideal... so what is the secret?

Nate P. wrote in post #9259783
I shoot Av 95% of the time. Question for you manual shooters: How do you actually get proper exposure? Light meter? Trial/error? Do you look at the meter in the camera? Because if you look at the meter in the camera, are you not doing what the camera could do instantaneously anyway? For candid situations, trial/error or a light meter do not really seem ideal... so what is the secret?

I'm usually within 1/3 to 2/3 of a stop by guessing the exposure. One frame, chimp the histogram, and go. Also, if you keep it on spot metering, you can eyeball a patch of grass or a patch of skin, make your manual setting w/ adjustment, and go.

I do use a handheld incident meter but even if you rely on the camera's on-board meter to give you the exposure, just setting it in M will keep it consistent. The issue with Av is that it jumps around. Your images aren't consistent from one frame to the next. This drives me mad even with ETTL on the flash; you're constantly bumping or lowering the exposure in post from 1/3 to a whole stop because the flash or meter is jumping all over. Same with Av vs M... M is consistent from frame to frame; in reality the light level rarely changes as much as Av thinks it does.

Take any scene, really any scene, and point your camera around to different parts of it. The meter will jump around, right? Yet there really is only one 'correct' averaging exposure based on what you want to see from the image. By setting it in M, even if you use the camera's meter to do it, you will get that same exposure every frame no matter where you're aiming.

Thanks for the great explanation TheHoff.. I appreciate it and will apply this in the future.

-Wayne

Wilt wrote in post #8655624
This reminds me once of a co-worker, who told me that she told her boyfriend to go 'on manual'

HAHA This makes me think of my husband who asks "Do you shoot in the Raw?"

Oh sweetie....it's not sugar....

BTW I think TheHoff is dreamy

andrepaul wrote in post #6097487
Thanks for quick response. I think it might be the ISO that I'm always forgetting to change, just that I don't like going over 400.

Higher ISO only means more noise *IF* it also means less real (absolute) exposure. ISO 100 has far more noise than ISO 1600, with the same shutter speed and f-stop, with the 1600 at +2 and the 100 at -2!

Are you talking about adding or subtracting exposure compensation?

John Sheehy wrote in post #9899676
...ISO 100 has far more noise than ISO 1600, with the same shutter speed and f-stop, with the 1600 at +2 and the 100 at -2!

DaveSt wrote in post #8655477
For you "M" people out there, if you are shooting something like kids outdoors where the light conditions are constantly changing (more because of location than weather conditions) do you still stay in manual mode?

That depends on what is changing. If there are sunlit whites or saturated colors in all frames, but the balance of dark and light is changing, then you really can use the same exposure in all frames ("sunny f/16", or "sunny f/11" if shooting RAW). IOW, a white wall with black dots needs the same exposure as a black wall with white dots. If *everything* moves into the shade for some shots (whites in the shade), then you might want to open the aperture more, lower the shutter speed, or raise the ISO, to minimize noise (the latter only on some DSLRs, but including all current and recent Canons). If you are still shooting sunlit but the highlights are not white, you can increase the exposure some for ETTR benefit, but it is not essential, and you can use the same conversion for all images if you don't, for consistent images.

HappySnapper90 wrote in post #8662270
Manual mode is fine if if you have ample time to do the shot setting adjustments the camera would do for you if you were Av or Tv mode, or if you have lighting conditions that will not be changing.

If you need to take shots quickly and may be pointing your camera at locations that have different lighting, Av or Tv is better than manual.

Auto-ISO in manual mode is a much better option, in many cases. However, Canon has yet to implement it intelligently enough so that other modes can be ignored - Canon is very slow in the head.

Auto-ISO is disabled when flash is enabled (really stupid, as most people who would use auto-ISO would only be using flash for fill, and it should not be determining exposure). It has no manual escape (shutter speed increase) for scenes that are too bright, and it has no EC (or what would actually be an ISO bias). It does work very well within its limits, though. I take 95% of my telephoto shots on my 7D in manual mode with auto-ISO. I go without fill flash to use auto-ISO-M.

Canon's exposure modes and metering are primitive and pathetic. There are lots of very simple programming changes which could make their cameras far more usable to a variety of people with a variety of needs.

airfrogusmc wrote in post #9230613
The problem with shooting auto is the meter LIES and different colors and objects reflect light differently even if the light doesn't change so in auto modes the meter is causing the camera to change the exposure even if it shouldn't be changed If you're shooting manual you're not changing your exposure when the reflectance changes but you can in a real hurry if the light situation quickly changes and you know and do this from experience. Experience you would have never gotten if you always shot in auto modes.

The real problem there is the metering system; not automation per se. Automation is great if it does what you need it to do; it is only an issue when it does things arbitrarily, from the perspective of your needs. The camera should be metering different RAW color primaries separately. And, rather than having average metering, or "evaluative", which isn't a whole lot different, the camera should also have a mode of metering where your "EC" actually means a percentage of highlights allowed to clip. IOW, 0%, 0.001%, 0.003%, 0.01%, 0.03%, 1%, 3%, and 10%, instead of a range of negative and positive ECs.