Day Five … M is for Manual Mode

M mode stands for Manual which means the camera is expecting you to select and set the three exposure settings (Aperture, Shutter Speed & ISO). I’m sure if you are a first time camera owners this mode is very intimidating and if you just select it and started clicking away you may get a few good photos but you will also unfortunately plenty of under or over exposed photo (they are really only good for deletion, so hopefully they were not of an important occasion). The key is don’t panic, manual mode can be very powerful but requires some practice.

If you are happy with the concept that the correct exposure will be somewhere inside the Exposure Triangle, it is pretty easy to find a good exposure even without a light meter. If its a normally sunny day and you are shooting outside, firstly selection M (manual) on the mode dial, next set the Aperture to f8 (usually its a control dial on the front top right of your camera) and the Shutter speed to 100 (1/100th. sec) (usually the control dial on the top back right handside of the camera) and ISO to 200. The ISO is usually setting via the menu and/or a shortcut key on the thumbwheel style dial on the back of the camera. How do I know these settings? Well these are my favourite starting settings I’m taken a lot of photos with these. Other photographers might have different favourite settings to start.

Now press the shutter and  take the photo. Look on the back of the camera (assuming you have an LCD screen), does it seem a bit bright (Over Exposed) or dark (Under Exposed). If its over exposed like first photo appears, you need to let less light in. This could be achieved by using a higher fstop like F9 or F11, I used f9, or by using a faster speed 1/200, or as I choose in this case using a lower sensitivity (ISO 100).  Maybe this is a bit underexposed now. I’m still shooting just jpeg if I was shooting in RAW these difference would not matter I would be easily able to adjust the exposure in post processing. If the image is to dark you need more light and do the reverse adjustments to the settings. Change the setting(s) and take a second photo. Usually with a little practice you will nail the exposure by the second or third attempt and you can just discard the exposure tests, on a digital camera they cost nothing.

I was a bit shocked with my new Olympus OM-D E M10iii which actually recommended that my manual is exposure was not spot on and suggest F9 1/100 at ISO 100! Some other newer cameras will also highlight a suggestion or blink a setting that it would like to change. Smart little buggers they are.

Once you have practised this a little, preferable outside. You can move inside or into the shadows, but start with settings that would give your exposure more light to the sensor such as F6 or ISO 400. This is all great practise and should quickly let you find your preferred starting settings in manual. However there is an easier way, either take an Aperture priority or S Shutter priority test shot first and look at the settings the camera has chosen and start there.

The real power of manual mode, comes with a lot of practise and personal experience of really seeing the different intensity and quality of light. You will soon know the type of scenes you like to photograph and how you like them to look in the final print. There are dozen & dozens of ways shooting manual can help you get better photos, Such as “protecting” highlights or shadows (avoid “clipping” or “blow out”) restricting the exposure just to the subject … lots of creative ways. Too many to even to begin to discuss here. All I wanted to get across is don’t be scared of manual mode.

Day Four …cont. introducing the Exposure Triangle

If you are a new camera owner, you and have been following this series of blog posts by now you have realise that I’ve moved into the advance area of setting modes, without asking your to remember the exposure triangle or complex formula. You won’t totally escape, but it is just a brief overview here, and no test afterwards. This stuff is actually quiet straight forward, and it is much easier to understand when you apply it. I like this little infograph from Peta pixel because it includes a basic graphic representation of what happens with each setting.

Somewhere inside that triangle should be the perfect exposure for your scene but where?  Setting the mode to A or S lets the camera change one or both the other sides of the triangle and aims for that best exposure. Tomorrow we will explore M mode which simply means you will have to make all these exposure settings yourself.

The other thing you probably noticed is there is no I (for ISO) on the mode dial. I’m pretty certain this a throw back to the film days when the ISO was dependant on the film in your camera and you got to set that when the film was loaded but that was that and the ISO setting stayed until you changed film. Each type of film and its development process produce different sensitivities to light for that combination. The ISO was written on the outside of the film packet.  If you wanted a different sensitivity you had to buy a different film. These days on digital cameras the ISO can be changed electronically to let the sensor be more or less sensitive to light. In some cameras you get to change it to a single value, more recently most cameras let you set it to Auto within a given range and this lets the camera also flex the sensitivity.

There is a downside to higher ISO, in darker scenes which seem to demand higher ISO (and thus sensitivity) the darker shadows become subject to more noise (seen as a grain or an unpleasant spottiness). So staying with lower ISOs (setting your auto range 100 to 400) will probably be a good move when you are starting out, and you are not trying to take photos in dark rooms or alley ways. You can see am example of this noise in the shadow, of the flying duck photo in the earlier post, and look in the shadows behind the duck. You might have to click on the image to enlarge it. The noise is there because I had hit the maximum aperture of the kit lens I was using f4,6 and the low light meant the camera had to select ISO 5000 to get sufficient light at 1/2000th second. Normally I would have used a noise filter which would probably smooth this out nicely, but I am showing images straight from the camera (ok the duck photo where cropped) but otherwise not post processed

Day Three … A is also for Aperture Priority

I’m leaving the new camera owners to play around with their camera and find what it is capable off. Also the big surprise with my new Olympus OMD E M10iii was how good the jpeg was straight out of the camera (I noticed this because I wanted to just look at the images straight out of the camera and not processed in any way when I post examples in here). Purest might argue that the camera is actually doing some important post processing, and I can only agree with that. This only reinforces the idea that not recommending new camera owners only shoot raw and use manual mode, because it is likely  to leave them with discouraging results. Instead if you are a new camera owner, I think you are much better to stay playing in jpeg and have fun with your camera. The results will be good and you will still be able to improve as you understand your cameras strength (and perhaps weakness).

Unfortunately I couldn’t wait, to follow my own advice, I’m jumping ahead and switching over to the traditional modes, starting with Aperture Priority. On my new Olympus this is marked by a single A on the mode dial. On a Canon camera it is Av. I’m probably letting a secret out of the bag but a lot of photographers, the majority of those I know, (there is even a current survey over on Digital Photography School that also supports this) shoot in this A mode. In this mode you must select the Aperture (which controls how much light is let into the camera, and probably the ISO (the sensitivity of the sensor to that light) and the camera will work out the shutter speed to get an average exposure. This is the mode I usually use, and my excuse is I got into this habit back when I bought the original Pentax Spotmatic film camera many decades ago. It was a technical marvel at the time because you could set the aperture and then use the built in light meter (not a common feature at the time) to balance a needle horizontally in the screen by moving the shutter speed dial. It was magic and it got good results. Ok the shutter speed dial is gone on most cameras and the camera does the balancing itself without showing a big needle in the middle of the screen but it works much the same way.

The big advantage of using Aperture priority is its simple to use and pretty logical. In normal light you can pretty well always use a middle f-stop like f8, in darker situation you may want to open up and got to a lower fstop like f5.6 or lower. Let more light in when its darker, its logical.  With this basic knowledge and your camera in Aperture priority and you will normally be able to get a decent exposure in a wide variety of lighting conditions. Its not fail safe, there can be a downside if the camera chooses a very slow shutter speed (less that say 1/30 second) you may find a hand held camera is inevitably moved a little and your exposure gets a little blurred. Most modern cameras have some built in logic to avoid this and might blink the shutter speed in the viewfinder to highlight that the exposure is getting too slow and out of a safe range. Alternatively the camera may allow ISO to be adjusted within a nominated range by increasing the sensitivity (a higher ISO) in order to keep the shutter speed as fast (quick) as needed.

There can also be a creative advantage (or hinderance) in being able to choosing the Aperture, and that relates to how closely the camera focuses on your subject. In simple terms a tiny hole (like a pin hole camera or say f22) lets the lens focus on a wide range of distances onto the sensor. The bigger the size of the aperture the lower the range the lens can get in focus either side of whatever you choose to focus on. This phenomena is called Depth of Field. As the fstop gets smaller (the aperture is opened wider) and the depth of field gets narrower. Portrait photographer for example often use the feature to get the subject’s face in focus but blur the background to remove fussy distracting detail.  Alternative a Landscape photographer might want everything in focus so they will usually use a narrow aperture, f11 is a good starting point. There are many ways to use this sharpness or blurring creatively. The smaller the fstop of your lens the more power you get too blur but usually the more expensive the lens.

In the three photos above you can see this depth of field control at work. In all cases I focussed on the blade tip of my safety knife (also know as a Box cutter in the USA) which is opposite the 20cm (approx 8”) mark on my metal ruler. At f11 (a smaller aperture hole) you can easily read the markers out to 31cm (12”) mark before the marks and numbers start to become blurred. With the aperture set to f8 the scale starts to blur between 26 & 27 cm (between 10” & 11”) mark. At f5.6 the blurring starts at the 25cm (10”) mark. The important thing also to notice is that my pink plastic safety cutter is pretty much the same exposure in the three images because the camera automatically changed the shutter speed (and in my case also the ISO) to achieve this.

After becoming happy with Auto mode, I believe a new camera owner should next get the courage to try A mode (Aperture Priority). Moving to A will let resulting photos stay nicely exposed and occasionally you could start to pull off really good creative shots by  experimenting with and controlling depth of field. However don’t race out and buy an expensive fast lens (with a low f-stop number) just to become a bokeh master right now. Experiment with the lens(es) you have (a lot of kit lens will be f4 or f5.6, but they’ll be just fine to start).

The Shadow Portrait Method, free light meter for digital cameras.

Looking back through my photos I notice I have a lot of “shadow self-portraits”, those shots where you take a picture of your shadow. However there is method in my madness. With a digital camera it is possible to get a reasonable idea of the correct exposure even without a light meter. Just point your camera at your shadow on the ground. Looking at the image on the back of your camera, can sometimes be difficult, because of the glare and strong reflection but even so you will usually be able to tell where the detail is in the image. If all you see is a very strong silhouette of the shadow and some detail in the ground you may be underexposed and you should do one or a combination of the following,open the aperture by perhaps an F stop, move to a lower f number, decease the shutter speed or raise the ISO a little, Alternatively you could increase The EV Value (exposure compensation). When detail is spread across the shadows and sunlit ground your exposure will probably be ok for an subject also illuminated by the same light (except if you are wanting to point at the sun or the sky!) If the sunlit ground looks washed out and the shadow not so strong and/or the shadow has the best detail you are on the overexposed side. So in this case you might close the aperture, move to a higher f number, decrease the shutter speed or lower the ISO a little. In this case you you want choose a negative EV. If you don’t trust the screen because of glare, the histograms for shadow portraits generally have two distinct bumps. If the bumps are over on the left there's a risk of under exposure, over on the right your probably find your photos are overexposed. Once your changed your setting taken another shadow portrait to check

Underexposed Shadow Detail Lost	Exposure OK	Over exposedLosing detail on the sunlit sand

Next time you are out on a sunny day, set your camera to M (for Manual) and point it down and at your shadow. Then start experimenting with a few or one of the above options. You should find you can find the correct exposure with as few a three or four test shots.

What happened to the Aperture Ring?

My first SLR camera was a Pentax Spotmatic, which was a pretty revolutionary camera at the time, I got mine in 1969, because it had a built in lightmeter. You set the aperture with the lens ring and then you could rotate the shutter speed dial until the arm on the lightmeter visible on the right hand side of the through the lens viewfinder, was centered. If the speeds where too slow or two fast you could adjust the apeture ring. It was very easy to use and worked really well. I love it. A later camera body, also a Pentax,introduced me to aperture priority on a large mode dial. It allowed you to select an aperture and the camera itself choosing the shutter speed. More magic, particularly if you wanted control over depth of field.Over the past decade, or so, the separate appeture ring has disappeared off most lens. I suspect a lot of people haven’t even notice! Before we figure out what can be done without the aperture ring we should first look at -

What is Aperture?

Aperture is a measure of the size of the opening within the lens that controls the amount of light that reaches the film or sensor. It is usually given is a strange sounding unit f-stop

f-stop = focal length * diameter of opening

The strange sequence of numbers it is quoted in f/1.4 (f/2) f2,8 (f/4) f/5.6 (f8) f/11 (f/16) f/22 might make more sense when you realize that all are approximate multiples of √2(the square root of 2) and the amount of light reaching the sensor is proportional to the area of light on the sensor (ie πr²) Thus each f-stop is equivalent to doubling or halving the light. The bracketed numbers in the sequence above are the half stops.The lower F-stops let in more light and give you a faster shutter speed for your best exposure. Its as simple as that.
In most camera the size of the opening is controlled by a bit of clever mechanism, usually called the diaphragm, where a set of thin blades are pivoted, connected around the a ring shape and sprung in such a way that as the ring is rotated the blades expose a larger or smaller gap in the center.  This was the reason why the aperture control was on the lens (just at or behind the convergence point of the lens, Today most DSLR lenses have the same style of blade diaphragm but the control for setting the diaphragm opening is on the camera body, perhaps in a menu, perhaps as a separate wheel or disc. So you should find you are able to control the aperture setting even if your lens doesn’t have a ring to adjust it.
The Aperture setting is also one of the main factors in determining depth of field. the smaller the opening through which the light passes the greater the range of objects in your scene that will be crisply in focus on the sensor. This is why many camerphones with tiny lenses seem to have almost infinite focus. Whereas the larger openings (lower f-stop) will reduce the range of focus to a narrow band. Portrait photographers often use this to blur out distraction backgrounds but have the face just in focus