How to Nail Exposure using Manual Mode

this episode is sponsored by Squarespace whether you need a domain website or online store make your next move with Squarespace [Music] [Music] my Instagram account is full of images like this and there are very deep shadows and I'm making sure and I've made a video about this in the past called protect your highlights that the brightest highlights and image are exposed correctly and everything else can fall very dark and a lot of my street photography is shot like this [Music] one of the biggest questions I get asked about this sort of photography is how are you exposing for that shot what sort of metering are you using specifically are you using aperture priority shutter priority auto ISO you in full auto exposure compensation where are you setting it or using spot metering or evaluative metering and the answer is I take all of that stuff out of the equation and I only shoot in manual mode now let me say right up front I don't think I'm better than anyone because I shoot in manual mode and I'm not some kind of snob that says you should always shoot in manual mode or you're not a real photographer because that's obviously rubbish if you shoot aperture priority or whatever you choose to use as a mode and it works for you absolutely carry on but I want to share in this video about why I choose to shoot in manual mode and why for the sort of photography whether it's studio photography or portraits outdoors or street photography for me shooting in manual mode I actually find it easier and I find it faster they get the exposure that I actually want in camera I still shoot aperture priority every now and again for events or when things are moving fast is definitely the way to go but for 95% of the photography I do I have the time to set the exposure exactly the way that I want to and because I'm a little bit of a control freak I want to take full control and not let the camera do any of the thinking for me and it took me a while to get there when I started out in photography I lived in aperture priority I just stuck the aperture as low as possible because that's what you do when you get lenses that have a nice shallow depth of field and I just shot everything aperture priority and I thought that was the way to do things and it was less an artistic decision if I'm honest on my part and it was more because I was afraid of shooting manual because I assumed it was so complicated I wouldn't be able to get a handle on it so I'm gonna demystify manual mode for those of you who might be a bit intimidated to go to manual and that's why you're sticking to metering modes it's really not that complicated and there's only a few things to think about and anyone who wants to go professional in the long run it's a great thing to do to know how to take full control of your camera balance the different elements to get exactly the exposure you want because I think you'll work faster and you'll be more consistent in the shots that you get so let's explain this okay so let's start out with the basics every camera is basically to differ elements and the one is going to be your lens and the other is going to be your body obviously this is a camera split in half sort of down the middle so this is the basically out of an old DSLR but mirrorless it's the same principle as well we now have three different elements that we can change within our camera to change our exposure the one is going to be ISO the other is going to be shutter speed and the last one is aperture okay and within these three elements this is how we can change the exposure using our manual mode ISO relates to our sensor over here this would have been film in the old days and this could be made more or less sensitive to light coming into the camera in the old days you would choose a higher AAS a number so if you wanted to shoot indoor events or something like a music gig at night you choose 1600 film speed if you're shooting in the bright sunlight you choose 100 so this is usually denoted by some kind of number from a hundred sort of through to 1600 obviously much higher now with modern cameras so this is our ISO in the middle here we've got a shutter speed this is usually a mirror on a DSLR that flips up to reveal the center for an amount of time and the amount of time it stays open obviously lets more light through to the sensor to be caught in the image so that amount of time that it's left open to let light in is called shutter speed shutter speeds usually denoted by a fraction unless you're shooting long shutter speeds so one over 4000 would be a fast shutter speed right through to say half a second would be quite a slow shutter speed that's the amount of time that slopes open to let light through in to be caught on the sensor and the last piece is our aperture aperture is denoted as as the as the little ring inside the actual lens which opens and closes to let light in that is determined the bigger that hole is this aperture obviously is open it lets more light in through as the mirror opens and to be caught on the sense that the smaller its open obviously it will let less light through and aperture is usually denoted by an F number so very very wide open a really big aperture would be something like 1.4 and say f-16 would be quite a small aperture and these are the only three elements we have to learn about to be able to balance our exposure manually okay so once you know the three elements that make up any exposure you know the basics of your exposure triangle and the three things are again ISO shutter speed and aperture okay once you know these it's just a case of balancing these out these three elements to get the correct exposure the light in the correct place in your image so let's say that we want to iso is going to run let's say from 100 to 6400 okay there's cameras obviously they go way past 6400 that's not the point this is just for illustration SiC so down this end this would be a darker exposure and at the top here this would be a lighter exposure bringing in more light for our shutter speed let's put our darker exposure down this end let's say one over eight thousandth of a second would be a very fast shutter speed that wouldn't bring in much lighten up at our bright end here let's say we had something like eight seconds okay like a landscape photographer leaving the shutter open for a long period of time brings in a lot of light they have to control but also it'll slow the motion down which will look great okay and everything in between and obviously there's stuff outside these ranges every camera is different for aperture priority let's say f-22 right at the top is a very very small aperture opening wouldn't bring in much light and on this end let's say F 1.4 that's quite a wide aperture opening you can get lenses a good answer naught point 9 5 and other things but just for the sake of example now to create any exposure all I'm going to do is balance these three elements against each other so if I want more light I could bump my ISO up I could slow my shutter speed down or I could open up my aperture any of those three if I'm looking at my exposure saying it's too bright I could darken it down by closing down my aperture by speeding up my shutter speed or by dropping my eyes those are my three options and all you need to know to make a good exposure is what the trade-offs are for each of these sites so shutter speeds trade-off is movement okay and that just means that when you close down or speed up your shutter speed what it's going to do is affect how movement appears up here if you shot something with eight seconds shutter speed it's going to blur but if you shouldn't want eight thousandth of a second it's going to freeze your motion okay so you need to know when you are playing with your shutter speed the slower your shutter speed is going to blur motion and the faster your shutter speed is going to freeze that's the trade-off for shutter speed ISO your trade-off is going to be noise okay up here 6400 is going to give you a high amount of noise in your image down here it's going to give you a low amount of noise in your image at ISO 100 so if I introduce more ISO I might be bringing more digital noise into my image that is ISOs trade-off okay an aperture priority or your aperture is going to introduce depth of field okay depth of field speaks about how much of your image is actually going to be in focus you might want a very shallow slice a very shallow depth of field if you're shooting a portrait with just the front of the faces and focus on everything else is blurred or a landscape photographer might want a very deep depth of field to keep everything in focus the hallway shoot through the shot from foreground to background so up here at f-22 you're going to get a deeper depth of field then you would down at one point four which is going to give you a shallow depth of field so when we are deciding should I darken things down by closing down my aperture I'm gonna deepen my depth of field should I darken things down by speeding up my shutter speed I'm gonna freeze action there's gonna be less motion blur should I darken things down by lowering my ISO that's great because there's gonna be less noise in the image if I want to brighten things up with my aperture I'm going to shallow up my depth of field I need to be aware of that if I slow down my shutter speed to brighten things up I need to be aware that movement is going to start to blur more and if I open up my so to brighten things up I need to be aware that I might be introducing more noise and when you understand each of these three things are going to control your exposure and each have their trade-offs once you know what those trade-offs are you can start to make decisions because maybe you want to blur the movement maybe you want to shell out your depth of field and within all of this you're also going to get exactly the correct exposure that you want to achieve that might sound a little bit complicated but actually it leaves you with only two questions to ask yourself at any exposure you make number one is how do you want your depth of field to appear and that will be shallow or deep and that is going to obviously relate to your aperture and number two is going to be how do you want movement to appear do you want it to freeze or do you want movement to blur and the reason I say obviously this is shutter speed and the reason I say there's only two questions is because the third question would be how much noise do I want in my image and the question I mean that's not a question we always want as little noise as possible so I so should always be as low as possible that's always where you want to think so in terms of creative questions that you want to ask yourself how do you want movement to appear how deep or shallow do you want your depth of field to be these are the two questions you're going to use and they're going to inform how you balance those three elements to get the correct exposure okay let's use a quick example just to drive this home I've got my aperture my shutter speed and my ISO and let's take two different photographers okay the first is going to be a sports photographer and the second is going to be a portrait photographer and they are both shooting in manual mode okay so your sports photographers gonna ask himself those two questions what do I want my depth of field to be what do I want my shutter speed to be but shutter speed in his case is going to be way more important because motion is very important and he wants to freeze the action so he's shooting a soccer game football game and there's lots of stuff moving around he wants to freeze that action as happening he's going to select something like one over four thousandth of a second to freeze that action okay then he's gonna go wall let's put my ISO as low as I possibly can say it's a daytime game so he's gonna be able to get away with ISO 100 and his aperture is going to be say you know when he does everything in you checks his exposure it's looking good at f/4 now if he says to himself f4 is actually too shallower depth of field because she's shooting on a long lens and he needs to deepen that depth of field out if he decides to go to f/8 he's going to have to bump up his eye so to compensate because closing this aperture down is gonna let in less lights he needs to make his ISO more sensitive to compensate for that but he wants to keep that most important thing which is his movement frozen let's say a portrait photographer there in a studio they know that he's shooting on an 85 mils a and he wants F 2.8 is going to be the depth of field that he wants he knows but the most important thing is depth of field first that's the most important question for this guy so 2.8 on an 85 mile is gonna give him the depth of field that he wants now he's going to have to work out his exposure so in a studio let's say that he's on ISO 100 because he's got a strobe light so he can get his ISO down as low as possible keep the noise out but that's going to give him for example let's say one tenth of a second shutter speed now let's say that one over tenth of a second is introducing some shake in the cameras hand holding the subject moving around slightly introducing slight amount of blur and the thing isn't as sharp as it should be so now how does he get this to a better shutter speed that's gonna freeze that action a little bit more and not give him a blurry image or with with handshake so let's say he takes it to 1 over 100 of a second he needs to now bump his ISO up to compensate because he's given himself a faster shutter speed he needs to increase his ISO to make it more sensitive to capture the light that's been lost by the fact that this shutter speed is firing faster and his most important element here is his depth of field that's where he starts that's the question he's going to answer for himself and any photographer if they are balancing these three elements with each they're starting with those two questions what do I want my movement to look like what do I want my depth of field to be keep the ISO as low as possible can answer any question to work out any equation what their settings should be [Music] so that's the technical stuff the xposed a triangle and everything else let me show you how I actually shoot when I'm on the street so there's a nice little slice of light over here with some dappled light coming in from the leaves and a little bit of an angle off the wall there so if I'm looking at this I know I want to expose for the brightest highlights in the Sun so I'm gonna start with my ISO of the exposure triangle because on a bright day like today there's no reason to have any noise so I'm gonna set my ISO at 100 that's locked in that's probably not going to change and the reason I set that first is because that won't change that's the thing that I'm gonna change the least throughout the day the next thing I'm going to look at because I then have to ask those two questions what's more important is it depth of field or is it movement and for me on the streets movement is more important I want to freeze movement so I know from experimenting a bit that I need to be at one over one thousandth of a second or faster so that's the next thing I'm going to lock in is one over 1000 in terms of my shutter speed now I've only got one thing to play with so while I'm walking around there's only really one element I'm playing with it is that that third element of the exposure triangle and that's my aperture so as I'm looking at this highlight here I'm going to expose it correctly so that there's nothing blown out on it and looking at my aperture I'm at f5 so now I know I can shoot this shot I can shoot up here where there's like a building and there's bright light coming off the wall down the alley over here I could shoot over at the back here I know no matter where I move because the Sun is hitting all these as Sun is a constant power at the moment it's not changing drastically that my exposure for my highlight is going to be correct no matter where I look just to show you how predictable it is when you're walking around a bright sunny day there's even a rule called the Sun e16 rule which is just for days like this and all that says is that if I sit my f-stop my aperture at f-16 then all I need to do is set my ISO and my shutter speed at corresponding numbers so if I set my ISO at ISO 100 my shutter speed needs to be 1 over 100 if I set my ISO at 400 I need to set my shutter speed at 1 over 400 and if I do that on any sunny day anywhere around the world your bright highlights will be exposed correctly personally I don't want to use the sunny 16 rule because like I said I want to freeze the action I want one over one thousandth of a second for my shutter speed and I don't want ISO 1000 there's no reason to do that in terms of getting the right exposure in the camera there's a few different ways you can do it some people like to use that little meter at the bottom to tell you whether it's under or overexposed but if you look at this scene now because there's like a slice of light and there's a lot of shadow around it my camera is going to probably tell me that I'm underexposed and even if a music spot metering I have to be very very accurate where I put that spot for it to tell me what I need to see so I tend to use my histogram instead and on my histogram I'm just making sure that there's no hard line on the right hand side of my histogram to make sure that my supposed correctly and the nice thing about using a mirrorless camera is that I can actually live preview my exposure it shows me what I've got on the screen or through the viewfinder because there's an electronic viewfinder I could see exactly what exposure I'm getting and I know the camera well enough to know when it looks right so that's how I'm judging it if you use a DSLR the simple thing to do a nice to do all the time is literally just to take a test shot and then see where exposure is dial maybe you know a couple of stops down half a stop down whatever it take the shot again are you in the right place and then you know you're good to go so as you're walking around you're taking that shot exposing for your highlights and you know once you're locked in you're good for highlights but if you walk down an alleyway say and the lights changed or a cloud comes over and you need to adjust or someone walks through the spot with a black shirt and then a white shirt you need to adjust for those reasons you're going to get to the stage if you use your settings correctly on your camera and you know how to dial your settings in manually that it's almost automatic it's just little clicks and twists so on the camera I've got set up this is my shutter speed dial on the front I've got my aperture dial and my thumb on the back which is what I'm using the most for street photography and then my ISO dial here and I find that when I'm walking around I can walk around a corner see it's a little bit darker my thumb is already just clicked third of a stop two-thirds of a stop just to brighten things up before I've even thought about it and because I'm using it all the time like that I'm getting to know exactly what I want the camera to do and doing it almost automatically so because I know my ISO is gonna be locked off I don't want noise and my shutter speed is gonna stay same because I want to freeze motion but my aperture is going to be what changes and apertures we said affects depth of field so I always need to keep it in mind when I'm changing that that there is going to be an effect when I change my aperture and I've got a little app that really helps with that so the apps called do F stands for depth of field and it's gonna help you calculate what your depth of field is going to be because depth of field is just an equation between your sensor size and your focal length your aperture and your distance the subject so we can lock all those in so I've already set what my camera is in the app then I'm gonna set that I'm on 35 mil cuz that's the lens I'm using for the street photography I'm doing today I know that my aperture is f5 because that's what I said it has so now I can see that if I'm shooting someone at 4 meters then I know that everything from zuv to 0.75 meters right their way through is going to be in focus if I shoot someone at 2 meters I can see that actually I need to be a lot more careful because now just before 2 meters I'm already out of focus and Beyond 2 and a half I'm out so I can see that while I'm changing my aperture this is how it's affecting my depth of field with this focal length on this sensor so I can be flicking away changing to get the correct exposure but I just need to be aware that then the closer my subject is to me then I need to be more aware whether in focus or out focus if if I was to bump this up to something like f/8 for example you can see that then I got a lot more latitude if I'm shooting someone at 2 meters now I'm way after 3 meters I'm still in focus if there are 3 meters I'm already got tons of room to shoot so I just need to be aware that as I change aperture it's going to change my depth of field so there's nothing wrong with shooting aperture priority or shutter priority or auto ISO or full auto any of those automatic modes if it works for you carry on doing it but the reason I don't is because I want to know exactly what my camera is doing and sometimes I don't trust the metering in cameras you got a few options with your meter you can evaluative metering which is taking the exposure at the average of the whole frame which isn't going to be useful if you're trying to get just a slice of light exposed correctly you could Center weight but you'll have the same problem or you could spot meter which is taking that very very center point putting it exactly on what you want to expose for and pressing so that it exposes recompose taking the shot but the problem with that is you have to be so accurate about where that point is hitting to make sure you get the correct exposure and if you're trying to grab that every time it's really difficult you could get it right once and then exposure lock so that it locks it in your camera but because you're doing an automatic motor using an automatic mode you don't actually know what your other elements are doing if you're an aperture priority and you're at f/4 you don't know what your shutter speeds doing every time because you're letting the camera decide you don't know what your ISO is doing because you're letting your camera decide I see a lot of people shooting these automatic modes and using exposure comp dials to bump it up or down but the problem is you're not paying attention necessarily to what those are the settings are and if you are just shoot in manual mode because you'll be there in two seconds you know what your ISO is you know what your shutter speed is what its trade-offs are you know what your aperture is and what its trade-offs are and personally as a control freak I just like knowing what everything's doing and get no surprises when I get back and look at the shot later [Music] so I hope this gives you some courage to go out there and more often to put your camera in manual mode and take back control the other part of this is I genuinely enjoy shooting in manual mode more than any other mode and I think about it for myself like driving a car personally I don't think I will ever buy an automatic car and the reason for that is me personally I like to change gears I like clutch control I like being a more mechanical part of getting to where I'm going in the experience of driving I find it fun and yes when I started off driving I had to think about changing gears a lot and you know clutch control of what gear was in and what did I need to go to with what was coming up ahead of me but some way very very early on I stopped thinking about the actual process of doing that and just got on with the experience of driving and now I change gears and I haven't even realized I've done it so that's my challenge to you if you don't already try shooting more in manual mode you decide what your aperture is which a shutter speed is what your ISO is and if you work at it I promise you you'll be comfortable with changing your own settings in no time at all I'm pretty sure it will expand the possibilities for your photography as well because in every image you're going to be making decisions about how deep or shallow you want your depth of field to be you're going to be working out exactly what you want movement to look like in your shots you're gonna be nailing your exposures so you're going to define a style much quicker by making these individual decisions not to mention you're going to feel much more confident as a photographer and if you're like me you're going to enjoy the process more as well thanks again to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode if you need a new website or a domain they really are a fantastic option especially if you're a creative a friend of mine is starting a new yoga practice and he got hold of me to take some images for it which we did and he took them away and then built himself a website on Squarespace and I loved seeing my images in a good piece of design and I asked him about the experience of putting the website together and he said it was so simple just choosing the right template loading up the images putting in the text in no time at all he's had something that he's really really proud to show potential new customers start your free trial today at squarespace.com and go to Squarespace comm forward slash Sean Tucker to get 10% of your first purchase [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Sean Tucker

Views: 760,038

Keywords: manual mode, exposing, exposure, nailing exposure, exposing for highlights, using manual mode, exposure triangle, taking control, photography, street photography, metering modes, aperture, shutter speed, iso, deep shadows, depth of field, freezing movement in photography, blurring movement, taking control of your camera, learning manual mode, understanding your camera, photography tutorial

Id: LUtlZ3sahz8

Length: 25min 57sec (1557 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 16 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/mstoiber]

This is the most practical and immediately useful explanation of exposure I've seen to make the jump to manual mode. Sean Tucker absolutely nailed it and gives you a nice "framework" where you ask yourself two simple questions before taking a photograph and that's all you need:

1. Do you want depth of field to be shallow or deep? (set aperture accordingly)
2. Do you want motion to be blurred or frozen? (set shutter speed accordingly)

Then set the ISO as low as possible and boom, you're using manual mode!

[u/StudiousHagrid]

Great video. Really justifies manual mode for me, bringing it down to 2 questions simplifies the whole process. Also is it just me or is his voice mesmerizing as heck!

[u/apawst8]

With today's technology, I think manual mode is overrated. It was a much bigger deal when you had a roll of film and had to keep the camera at that ISO the whole time. It was still a big deal when the early digital cameras couldn't get much use out of ISO 800 or higher.

But now, with a large range of usable ISOs and instant feedback from the photo, I rarely use manual mode. If I know I want a particular shutter speed, I use shutter priority. If I know I want a particular depth of field, I use aperture priority.

The biggest use cases (for me) is manual flash, when you have to use manual mode. And when you don't want the camera to be fooled by certain objects in the frame (such as a really bright background that you don't care if it gets blown out).

[u/dingledangles]

It's interesting to have such a fundamental and technical topic demonstrated by Sean as his videos tend towards the more artist/aesthetic/conceptual side of photography, even when it comes to tutorials.

All-in-all, a really good demo although some beginners may benefit from seeing actual examples of the different ends of the exposure triangle.

[u/Stephencovar]

This is a fantastic video. He simplified manual mode in a way that anyone would understand.

[u/CarVac]

I would shoot manual more if there were a way to lock exposure as you adjusted aperture or shutter speed, the way a Hasselblad V lens does.

Otherwise, every time I change the aperture I need to make a change to shutter speed as well.

[u/tvcats]

Isn't this basically exposure triangle? Adorama have a good series on this.

[u/Lastingimage88]

Does anyone know what exact APP that is for the DOF calculator?

[u/Area51Resident]

How about just buying a light meter. Measuring incident light (when you can) will always yield a more accurate exposure setting than reflected meter. You need to base your exposure off the light hitting the subject, not the brightness of the subject.

Any incident reading meter will do the job. I have a Gossen digital and an old Sekonic with a selenium cell. The Sekonic will give me a proper base exposure values for the exposure triangle, no batteries required and the dial makes it easy to change ISO, aperture, or shutter speed and see the how I should set the camera.

Film or digital the same concept applies.