Episode Eight: Why aperture priority is best and how to do it

hello today we're going to be talking about shooting modes and in particular i'm going to argue the case for shooting in aperture priority to get the very best out of your wildlife photography now right up front i should say of course there are other shooting modes and i do know other photographers who prefer some of the other shooting modes we're going to run through all of those in a few minutes but personally i've been shooting an aperture priority most of the time all my working life and most of my professional wildlife photographer friends also shoot in aperture priority now it does seem counter-intuitive i know because you know as wildlife photographers we're often shooting subjects that are moving very fast we're having to react really quickly and we're using quite long lenses often hand holding them so we need to counteract camera shake and that all means fast shutter speeds but i do believe very strongly that shutter speed priority is not the way to go as i'll explain in a moment now if you don't know about iso and apertures and shutter speeds don't worry have a look on my website there's a free downloadable information sheet explains it all in very simple terms have a look at that and then watch the video [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so in simple terms there are five different ways of exposing your images automatic manual auto iso shutter priority and aperture priority all other things being equal if you do them right any one of these will give you the correct exposure near enough anyway but there are some very important differences between them okay so let's look at automatic mode first this is where you put the camera in charge and let the camera make all the decisions automatic mode works reasonably well it works fine if you want all your pictures to look nothing like you intended on being facetious it works fine in terms of exposure but it has two inherent problems first of all it's by no means foolproof even though the camera's on auto and you think it should know best it does sometimes get it wrong and in fact in tricky lighting conditions it often gets it wrong but more important than that it gives you no control and that's hopeless if you want to improve your photography and be creative i think the bottom line is don't shoot in automatic if you want to take your photography seriously so how about shooting in manual mode well there are plenty of fanatics out there who will argue that manual mode is the only way to go they take a pride in shooting in manual they seem to think it's somehow more worthy i don't agree i do occasionally shoot manual but only when i'm shooting macro or using camera traps or doing some complicated flash setup but most of the time definitely not as i said most of the time as wildlife photographers we need to react quickly to changing circumstances and quite simply shooting in manual slows you down there just isn't enough time to estimate the correct exposure and set everything yourself the chances are especially if the lighting conditions keep flipping from bright to overcast and the animal the subject keeps moving you're going to miss the shot you know by the time you've picked the right aperture and the shutter speed and the iso and check the exposures correct and adjusted it and fiddled around your poor subject will have died of old age as a general rule the less you have to fiddle with and worry about the better then you can concentrate on the more important things like getting the focus spot on or the perfect composition so moving on another alternative is to shoot with auto iso you can use auto iso in manual mode or aperture priority or shutter priority mode but it makes sense to use it in manual so in other words you select the aperture you want and the shutter speed you want and then you let the camera automatically choose the iso to get the exposure spot on and it will inevitably change during shoot according to the light so the iso is the only variable left to the camera this can be a very useful technique you know especially if you want to keep a particular shutter speed in a particular aperture and say your subject is moving between bright sunlight and dark shadow say through an open woodland or something the camera will keep up by changing the iso accordingly so when it gets much brighter when it's in the sunshine the iso will drop when it gets much darker when the subject's in the shadow the iso will increase and the exposure will still be perfect the problem of course is that when the camera picks a particularly high iso there's likely to be a lot of noise in your pictures now most cameras do allow you to set an upper limit to the iso but by limiting the camera you can get badly exposed images if there isn't enough light and the maximum iso isn't enough then your images will be too dark i should say that more and more people are shooting with auto iso these days because many modern cameras are so fantastic at shooting at high isos and producing amazingly little noise and there's also great software out there these days that can get rid of any noise in an image really effectively so how about shooting in shutter priority mode which a lot of wildlife photographers do and that's where they pick the shutter speed and the iso and then the camera picks the aperture to balance the exposure now as i said at the beginning it's very easy to understand the simple logic for shooting in shutter priority as wildlife photographers we tend to use long lenses which we often have to hand hold and we're shooting subjects that move fast we've got to react quickly as well so our top priority is often achieving a fast shutter speed we want to freeze the action and avoid camera shake here's the important thing because shutter priority mode falls at the very first hurdle quite simply because it's almost impossible to guess the fastest possible shutter speed given the iso you've picked the lighting conditions and everything else so for example suppose i'm photographing i don't know birds in flight here in the garden i've got a 2.8 lens and it's overcast it's moderately bright so i'm going to guess that maybe the fastest shutter speed at 2.8 is going to be a thousandth of a second so i'm going to turn it on a thousandth of a second and it's showing an aperture of f 5.6 so in other words it's not using the maximum amount of light i can get into this lens which is f 2.8 so i'll guess again i can make it a faster shutter speed so i'm going to guess this time four thousandth of a second and yeah i could see it go right past f 2.8 it was a slower shutter speed so 4000 of a second is gonna under expose the images even at f 2.8 so i'll try again 3 000 finally 2 500 of a second seems to be where it works with f 2.8 now the top is i've been guessing and i've wasted even if i could do that really quickly to judge what's the fastest speed i can get it's i'm gonna have to check that again and again as the sun disappears and appears from behind the clouds so in summary shooting in shutter priority mode when you're guessing you'll inevitably face one of two problems you won't be shooting at the fastest speed possible you could go even faster or you'll be under exposing because the aperture can only go so wide i should admit that i do occasionally shoot shutter priority mode and that's when i want to slow the shutter speed right down to shoot creative blur [Music] well i hope you're still with me because now we come to my favorite aperture priority in which you set the iso and the aperture and the camera selects the shutter speed now this is the light bulb moment because if you think about it you have complete control over the shutter speed by selecting the aperture and all you have to do if you want the fastest shutter speed possible is to open your lens up to the widest aperture so if i'm using a 2.8 lens i'll open it to 2.8 if i'm using my lovely 600 mil lens which is f4 i'll open it to f4 and by doing that i let the maximum amount of light into the lens so it's brightest and that means it will pick the fastest possible shutter speed and if a cloud for example suddenly goes over the sun it's very bright tonight if the cloud goes over the sun then the camera will adjust the shutter speed accordingly but it will still be the fastest shutter speed under those conditions and that's the key thing that no guessing involved at all all you have to do is to keep an eye on the shutter speed if it gets too slow for whatever you're photographing you push the iso up accordingly and it will increase the shutter speed the other great advantage is you're not over getting the iso so if you push the iso too high of course you get lots of noise but you don't have to push it unnecessarily high because you know you're always going to get the fastest shutter speed and there's more because in aperture priority you have complete control over the depth of field so for example if you want a nice color wash blurry background you want a shallow depth of field you pick your widest aperture immediately in the camera and the camera will not change it is fixed the only thing is changing will be the shutter speed alternatively of course your priority may suddenly switch from a beautiful out of focus background to a greater depth of field to get more of your subject and its surroundings in focus so you're already controlling the aperture all you have to do is close it down as much as you need how easy is that so aperture priority is a really great way to hand over some of the responsibility for exposure control to the camera and yet retain complete control over aperture and shutter speed it enables you to dial in the fastest possible shutter speed really quickly without any guesswork at all and still have fine control over the depth of field and of course that frees you up for more important things like composition that's it very simple very effective see you next time you

Channel: BBC Wildlife Magazine

Views: 49,871

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Id: C3qngbXlCas

Length: 11min 21sec (681 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 03 2021