Working in manual mode is a skill every photographer should master to take better creative and technical control of their images. If that is something you struggle with, this great video will get you up and running in just a few minutes.
Coming to you from Perea Photography, this helpful video will show you how to use manual mode to take a greater degree of control over your images. Many of us start in automatic or semi-automatic modes, and while these can certainly be useful (and a lot of pros still use semi-automatic modes for some of their work), knowing how and when to use manual mode can give you a lot more creative control in addition to being able to mitigate technical issues with your images brought about by scenes that might fool your camera or cause it to prioritize the wrong exposure parameter. Once you learn how to use manual mode and feel comfortable with it, you do not have to use it 100% of the time; in fact, there are situations in which a semi-automatic mode will actually give you a better chance to get the shot, but knowing how to use manual mode will give you a significant tool in your arsenal. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Perea.
This video would not have helped my wife, kids or most of my friends to shot manual. It would only confuse them.
Shooting manual requires a lot of understanding and experience...
Do we really need another lesson in manual exposure as if there aren't enough already available?
And why are many articles and videos done as if it is a mysterious skill that is difficult to master? Though not this one. Some us are holdovers from the film days. We didn't have rear screens and EVFs to see our image. We didn't have histograms, zebra stripes etc. to aid us. Sometimes we didn't have a light meter in the camera. We didn't have youtube videos. You asked somebody to explain it to you or you read a book. If we used print film, we had the complication of the effect of printing that affected how the image looked. If the kid at the one hour lab printed the images too dark or light, we might think our exposures were off.
It isn't that difficult. Heck. If you are shooting in aperture or shutter priority and using exposure compensation, you are shooting in manual mode. You've set an ISO. You've set an aperture or shutter speed and you setting the other one with compensation. Well look at you. You've solved the "mystery" of manual mode.
Thanks Alex. And Mike.