My concern is when shooting in an area where the light is changing , a wedding for example.(changing the white balance as needed of course) While outside ISO 100 is ok , then inside the hall from spot to spot it changes and the time to figure out the right exposure sometimes cause me to loose the shot.(manual mode)
Plus I find my self mostly shooing handheld (sheer convenience)
I guess my real problem is finding a "quick" way to get the proper exposure, or "bracketing" but I feel like thats cheating (no offense to anyone who loves to bracket)
There's nothing wrong with using an automatic mode -- if I was shooting a wedding I'd probably have my camera in aperature priority for portraits and program mode inside where I was using a flash.
What I want people to learn here is what the camera is doing for them in the various modes. There's a huge difference between choosing to use an automatic mode because of what it will under specific conditions vs. buying a camera and leaving it in "Auto" or "Program" mode *all* the time.
My lovely wife took my hot air ballooning today for the first time, and I took along a camera I'm testing (Olympus E-P1). I just finished quickly cropping, adjusting and colour correcting these: http://bit.ly/3jULsY
Full manual might take a bit of practice -- have you tried using an Aperture priority mode where you set the Aperture and the camera selects the shutter speed?
Keep in mind that your camera's light meter isn't telepathic -- it assumes that the average of a scene is neutral grey. If a large proportion of your images is very dark or very light it will usually result in an incorrect exposure.
Only one photo (so far) this week. I was out yesterday afternoon and spent some time trying to find the right settings to make an image of a moving vehicle that showed speed. I have uploaded Parkway Bus to my Flickr stream.... http://www.flickr.com/photos/pileadave/
That was shot with a Canon G5 and an 8" telescope. The moon is bright enough that if you have a steady enough hand you can shoot simply by holding the camera up to the eyepiece. IIRC, that was 1/30 sec.
Here's one taken with a Nikon D70. This is a bit of an exposure challenge because on one side there is the mostly-eclipsed moon (Lunar eclipse, Nov 2003), but part of the moon is fully lit.
Here's one (taken from the 2003 eclipse) that is not properly exposed, and as a result a real mess was made of this photo. This demonstrates the challenge of photographing the moon - an object which has a very high range of brightness.
One of the reasons that rainbows are difficult is that they usually occur in conditions with a huge dynamic range. You have deep shadows and bright sky and that exceeds the range of sensors or film. One approach is to spot meter the actual rainbow. Or, if you're willing to invest some time, High Dynamic Range (HDR) techniques can create stunning results. We probably won't have time to get into HDR in this course, but there's lots on the web. In summary, you take a number of photos at the same aperture changing only the shutter speed (tripod required) and combine them in post.
My concern is when shooting in an area where the light is changing , a wedding for example.(changing the white balance as needed of course) While outside ISO 100 is ok , then inside the hall from spot to spot it changes and the time to figure out the right exposure sometimes cause me to loose the shot.(manual mode)
Plus I find my self mostly shooing handheld (sheer convenience)
I guess my real problem is finding a "quick" way to get the proper exposure, or "bracketing" but I feel like thats cheating (no offense to anyone who loves to bracket)
Adrian
There's nothing wrong with using an automatic mode -- if I was shooting a wedding I'd probably have my camera in aperature priority for portraits and program mode inside where I was using a flash.
What I want people to learn here is what the camera is doing for them in the various modes. There's a huge difference between choosing to use an automatic mode because of what it will under specific conditions vs. buying a camera and leaving it in "Auto" or "Program" mode *all* the time.
My lovely wife took my hot air ballooning today for the first time, and I took along a camera I'm testing (Olympus E-P1). I just finished quickly cropping, adjusting and colour correcting these: http://bit.ly/3jULsY
Thanks Eric
I guess i fall into the mindset that if i'm using "program" the picture will somehow be less impressive??!!
Woo Hoo - I found the manual settings on the camera but I am not sure I know what I am doing with them yet.
Kelly
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28587560@N0/sets/72157622481816839/
Correct link
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28587560@N03/
Full manual might take a bit of practice -- have you tried using an Aperture priority mode where you set the Aperture and the camera selects the shutter speed?
Keep in mind that your camera's light meter isn't telepathic -- it assumes that the average of a scene is neutral grey. If a large proportion of your images is very dark or very light it will usually result in an incorrect exposure.
Only one photo (so far) this week. I was out yesterday afternoon and spent some time trying to find the right settings to make an image of a moving vehicle that showed speed. I have uploaded Parkway Bus to my Flickr stream.... http://www.flickr.com/photos/pileadave/
David
That's always fun :) I assume you were panning with the bus and looking for a blurred background? Did you end up somewhere around 1/30s?
This one could have been better, I think, if I had more knowledge and more time to futz about with the camera:
http://dcowan38.smugmug.com/Nature/Rainbows/4578072_5y6eZ#269875420_6BtRr-A-LB
I try to shoot rainbows whenever I can, but getting aperture and exposure correct for them is not something I've been good at so far.
This one is a bit better from exposure, but is a compositional nightmare:
http://dcowan38.smugmug.com/Nature/Rainbows/4578072_5y6eZ#526577803_8eiit-A-LB
Here's one that I think came out just about perfect:
http://dcowan38.smugmug.com/Nature/Astrophotography/Moon-April-2001/4577813_yLs2t#269857782_Yuedw-A-LB
That was shot with a Canon G5 and an 8" telescope. The moon is bright enough that if you have a steady enough hand you can shoot simply by holding the camera up to the eyepiece. IIRC, that was 1/30 sec.
Here's one taken with a Nikon D70. This is a bit of an exposure challenge because on one side there is the mostly-eclipsed moon (Lunar eclipse, Nov 2003), but part of the moon is fully lit.
http://dcowan38.smugmug.com/Nature/Astrophotography/Lunar-Eclipse-8-Nov-2003/4577718_6hxXH#269851982_sXzBC-A-LB
Here's one (taken from the 2003 eclipse) that is not properly exposed, and as a result a real mess was made of this photo. This demonstrates the challenge of photographing the moon - an object which has a very high range of brightness.
http://www.squidzone.ca/UT/08Nov03eclps07_RT8.jpg
One of the reasons that rainbows are difficult is that they usually occur in conditions with a huge dynamic range. You have deep shadows and bright sky and that exceeds the range of sensors or film. One approach is to spot meter the actual rainbow. Or, if you're willing to invest some time, High Dynamic Range (HDR) techniques can create stunning results. We probably won't have time to get into HDR in this course, but there's lots on the web. In summary, you take a number of photos at the same aperture changing only the shutter speed (tripod required) and combine them in post.
Sorry guys... no pictures from me this week. The flu has been present here in my house so I was unable to get out and make pictures.
Sorry to hear that the flu found you...although trying to capture just how crappy someone with the flu feels would be a good photo exercise!