Why You Don't Need to Shoot in Manual Mode

hey guys what's up welcome back to the channel my name is sean dalton i am a travel and lifestyle photographer and i make videos to teach you guys how to become the best photographer that you can be so for those of you that are new here welcome to the channel for those of you that have been here before you've seen me before you might notice that i'm in a new place i would just move into a brand new villa here in bali well it's not brand new but it's new for us we had to move out of the last one and honestly this one is pretty sick and actually the room that I'm staying in is full of old antique cameras the owner of the house collects them and honestly it's pretty cool to wake up in a room that's full of antique cameras so anyways today we're gonna be talking about something I've been wanting to talk about for a while and that is why I don't think you should be shooting in full manual mode all the time and on the flip side of that why you also should never be shooting in full auto mode there's a lot to talk about within that we're gonna get into that real soon here but before we do that I just want to let you guys know you can head to my website and download a free orange and teal preset pack not just one preset I'm giving away six free presets for both Lightroom mobile and desktop so you can use them wherever you want so you guys can find a link to that in the description and check that out but we're done aside let's start talking about manual mode and why I don't think you should be shooting in manual mode all the time so first things first what is manual mode menu mode is essentially a mode on our camera designated by a little M that allows us to control all three settings within the exposure triangle those three settings are shutter speed aperture and ISO and the reason why that is is important for us the reason why we want to shoot in manual mode is because all three of those things shutter speed aperture and ISO they all have a unique effect on your image as well they're not just affecting the amount of light that gets into the camera affecting your exposure but they're also doing something unique that that gives your photo on a very specific look for example shutter speed will regulate the amount of motion you can freeze and your photos so with a fast shutter speed you can freeze motion with the slow shutter speed you can blur motion aperture is going to control the depth of field in your image so basically how blurry the background is beyond your main subject and ISO is going to add digital noise into your photo which honestly it doesn't look very good all you should know is that all three of these things affect the exposure triangle they also have their own unique effect on the image so when we're shooting in manual mode we can adjust all three of these settings and that really gives us full creative control over the camera it removes the camera as a barrier and allows us to capture whatever kind of image we have in our mind that's why I always say you should learn manual mode is because you really should have a good understanding of all three of these factors however manual mode isn't always practical and honestly I don't shoot in manual mode very often anymore because I found that when I'm shooting in a high paced situation where I'm moving around and shooting a lot in a lot of different lighting environments shooting a manual just isn't practical and I found that I'm missing shots so what's the alternative then what's the alternative to full manual mode well I can tell you that it's definitely not full auto mode you're basically throwing away all your creative control and I never ever recommend shooting in auto mode because of that region so if you're not going to be shooting an auto mode well then what mode are you going to be shooting in well there's two the I always recommend shooting in and that is aperture priority and shutter priority so let's start with aperture priority aperture priority is designated by an A or an AV under camera depending on what you camera manufacturer you have and it basically allows us to choose the aperture of the camera and the camera is going to choose the shutter speed in the ISO why is that great aperture is often the only setting that I'm really concerned about if I'm not shooting motion and I'm not shooting at night honestly the aperture is gonna have the biggest impact on my image because it's going to dictate the depth of field in my image for example if I'm shooting a cup of coffee and I want to make sure everything behind that cup of coffee is blurry well I want to make sure my aperture is wide open F 1.4 F 1.8 a really small number because that's going to allow me to get nice and blurry bokeh in the background behind my main subject whereas if I were shooting at F 12 or f-16 the whole frame is going to be in focus the background is going to be in focus the coffee is going to be in focus and I just don't want that look andwe're shutter speed I can shoot that image at 1/4 thousand of a second or I can shoot that image at thirty seconds it's going to look the same it's not going to change the way the image looks aperture is so that's why I always recommend shooting in aperture priority mode but there is something to know when you're shooting in aperture priority mode and say for example you're shooting in low-light your camera might slow your shutter speed down a little bit too much you can actually go into your camera settings and set the minimum shutter speed that your camera will go to I like to set mine I like one one two hundred and fiftieth of a second because then you know no matter if my hands are shaking or there's a little bit of movement that camera is gonna be able to freeze that motion out and it's not gonna be blurry because my hands are shaking if it's super dark I might go down to one sixtieth of a second but I don't really usually go below that because if I'm shooting handheld you don't want to go below that because then your images are gonna be blurry shooting an aperture priority allows us to focus more on capturing good lighting and shooting a good composition and less about which camera settings we need to adjust because often times aperture is going to have the biggest impact on our photo like I said and that's really the only one that we should be worrying about now if you're shooting images an aperture priority and you find out they're too bright or too dark then you can use a feature called exposure compensation all cameras have this this basically allows you to tell your camera if you want your image to be overexposed or underexposed so your camera is doing all these little mathematical equations trying to figure out what a proper exposure is but it's not always gonna be right so oftentimes I'm shooting at minus one stop on aperture priority which means my images are going to be one stop darker than what the camera thinks a good exposure is so if you don't know what that means this is one stop of light in an image so you can see on the left this is a normally exposed image and then although on the right this is the same image but just minus one stops so that's what one stop of light looks like and I do this because I always want to make sure that my highlights are properly exposed you can always pull up details in the shadows and editing but it's hard to pull out details kind of highlights if the highlights are blown out so I always underexposed my images a little bit okay but what if your shooting motion what are you shooting sports or shooting cars you're shooting something that's moving a lot well aperture priority is probably not going to work for you because in those situations shutter speed is more and than aperture shutter speed allows us to freeze or blur motion and sports photographers anybody that's treating a movement they really need to have a lot of control over their shutter speed so in these situations you won't shoot in aperture priority you're shooting shutter priority and shutter priority is the same thing as aperture priority except where you choose your aperture in aperture priority you're choosing your shutter speed in shutter priority so you choose the shutter speed and the camera chooses the other two settings it chooses the aperture it chooses the ISO I don't think this is a good setting for most situations but if you are shooting movement then this is really a setting that is super super useful for example if you're shooting cars and they're moving really fast and you want to make sure those cars are frozen in motion you want to shoot at a shutter speed of like one two thousand five hundredth of a second whereas if you want to do like a tracking shot and you want to make sure that that car is in focus and everything around it is blurry then you'll want to shoot at like 140th of a second so shutter speed is really important in those situations but just know that when you're shooting in shutter priority you can't control your depth of field because you can't control your aperture so that is something to think about you're gonna get that trade-off there you're not gonna be able to control your aperture but you are gonna be able to make sure that your shots are nice and crisp one thing to note is both an aperture and shutter priority you can still choose your ISO if you want to so you can say your ISO to like 100 or 200 and then basically the camera will just adjust one setting instead of two for example if I'm shooting an aperture priority I can set my ISO to 100 and then my camera is just going to choose my shutter speed that's it and that's good because you don't want your camera to shoot your ISO up when it doesn't need to and it usually it won't it's not going to do that cameras are pretty smart but if it is doing that you can just set your ISO and then the camera will set the shutter speed you can do that in shutter priority as well you can set the ISO and the camera will only select the aperture so in short while manual mode is useful there's other modes on the camera that will allow you to be much more efficient in shooting and will allow you to really focus more on the situation on posing your models on a perfect composition instead of just sitting there fiddling with your settings especially if you're not well-versed in the settings yet you're still kind of learning but you really want to capture these shots aperture priority and shutter party are really good modes to do that okay so I've talked about aperture and shutter priority now you might be thinking yourself Shawn why do we need to learn manual mode then if you're just telling us to shoot an aperture priority and shutter priority all the time well honestly menu mode is still super useful and I still use it in a lot of situations for example in low-light situations you really need to make sure your camera settings are super dialed in so when I'm shooting in low-light I'm often shooting in manual mode if I'm shooting a portrait shoot and everything is kind of slow it's moving slowly often tributed manual mode too because I want to make sure my settings are perfectly dialed in for those situations but if I'm out on the street or if I'm shooting lifestyle I will probably shoot an aperture priority because it just allows me to be much more efficient and focus on my scene as a whole instead of sitting there fiddling with my camera settings also like I said earlier everyone should learn manual mode because you really should have a really good understanding of all of those different settings and how they affect your image shutter speed aperture and ISO because not only like I said are they affecting your exposure but they also have their own unique affect on your image and that is really really important to know as a photographer with that said guys that's about it if you guys like this video please give it a thumbs up and let me know in the comments below what are you often shooting in are you shooting in manual mode are you shooting in aperture priority shutter priority what is your favorite mode on your camera and also don't forget to go to our website and download my free orange and teal preset pack I think you guys are gonna like that it's super useful and installation is super easy so you have any questions let me know thanks for watching guys and I will see you in the next one

Channel: Sean Dalton

Views: 81,582

Keywords: manual mode, aperture priority mode, aperture priority vs shutter priority, aperture priority tutorial, aperture priority vs manual, manual mode photography, camera modes explained, camera modes, best camera mode for photography, sean dalton, photography for beginners tutorial, dslr tutorial for beginners, mirrorless camera tutorial, basic mirrorless camera tutorial, dslr tutorial manual mode, dslr tutorial for beginners sony, canon camera modes explained, exposure triangle

Id: gHZcghEstVI

Length: 10min 51sec (651 seconds)

Published: Wed May 27 2020