Is using the camera in manual that difficult.

[Sirius Glass]

Starting with a manual camera is easy, even easier than falling off a motorcycle.

 

[Alan Klein]

You learn exposure as you go along. Content is the hard stuff.

 

[blansky]

Bottom line is: if you don't understand and can't use manual easily, you don't understand photography.

 

[David Allen]

David, I suspect that if the photographers in both of your stories had swapped cameras Photographer A would have always got the shot and Photographer B would not.

Quite possibly!

Actually, in the first story Photographer B was a very competent amateur photographer and one of the leading lights of the camera club (there is a bit of a clue in this, as in many other photographic societies', name). His problem was that he knew enough to tell himself he needed to compensate for so many highlights in the scene but, at the same time, was in awe of his new acquisition.

To be fair, this was most probably brought on by the massive publicity campaign launched by Canon in the photographic press during 1978 whereby they pounded out facts such as "electronically controlled programmed autoexposure mode with exposure compensation" and "the A-1 is the first ever camera with a micro-processor (in 1978 the word 'micro-processor' meant something like space technology and was, after all, some 11 years before the Mac IIcx revolutionised desktop publishing) programmed to automatically select exposure based on light meter input".

However, the point remains that, if you know what you are doing, automation is not needed and can be a hindrance.

Bests,

David
www.dsallen.de

 

[M Stat]

The photographer should be automatic, not the camera.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Bottom line is: if you don't understand and can use manual easily, you don't understand photography.

+1

 

[ME Super]

I'm a 'manual camera' snob but I will admit that when I go out shooting with my 7 year old, I set his Nikon N75 to "P" and autofocus and just about every negative is printable. This is a far cry from my first rolls in grade school where only a few images would be printable.

+1. My son's Pentax ZX-70 is usually set to P. Soon I will show him the wonders of Av and Tv modes. When I helped him pick out his camera, I made sure it had a way to override the ISO so film could be pushed or pulled and non-DX coded cartridges could be used.I myself use mainly Av mode but usually have an idea about which aperture or shutter speed I want and most of the time the camera picks the other one right. If I'm doing something special like infrared, then it's manual all the way. The meter doesn't see through the IR filter very well so I meter manually TTL without filter and then screw on filter, apply the filter factor, and away I go. With the Rollei IR400s, this means set the ISO to 25, manually focus, set aperture and shutter based on what the TTL meter tells me, screw on the filter, and take the picture.

 

[Bill Burk]

One problem is that a lot of people are "taught" to pick up SLRs that have meters and simply line up the needle to the middle and away they go. That was my introduction to photography.

Mine as well, though I studied and learned all I could in those days, I relied too much on that needle. It cost me a part of the experience, the part that I enjoy most now. Most of my pictures came out well because the cameras are properly designed and I was using them correctly.

But now I take the batteries out of the cameras, and I use a separate meter. When I do experiment with the in-camera meter, I struggle to trust the exposure (Is the camera adapted for Alkaline cells? Does the averaging needle agree when I meter my palm and open up one stop?)

So my bottom line here is that it is harder for me to use Automatic, or even Match-Needle metering, and I prefer manual with separate meter.

 

[markbarendt]

Really? I think using camera in manual takes more of muscle power than brain power but not much at all either one. A beginner should be able to go out and shoot after about 1/2 hour learning the basic. Understanding how a modern camera with all the bells and whilstles does its things does requires more brain power.

Chan I'm sure it is easy for you. It has become easy for me too and I'm a huge fan of getting good exposures and understanding how the whole system works, it is a big part of the fun of my hobby. Still and yet, manually setting the camera requires more effort.

It doesn't take even 30 minutes though for a beginner to get ready to take decent photos, just grab a disposable camera while getting groceries and start taking pictures of the world around you, it's as simple as letting the EI float as needed. Like Kodak said, "You press the button... we do the rest."

It has taken years of thought and study and discussions and refinement to get my head around exposure/developing/printing enough to be able to explain the concepts simply and correctly (in most cases) to a beginner and to be able to use them effectively to refine my work.

It took countless hours of playing with all the metering modes on my various and sundry cameras and with incident meters to be able to use each well, with precision, to find their limits with each film, to understand the exceptions, and to be able to apply what I learned with a touch of art and or abandon depending on the need of the moment, and then to print the negatives respectably.

Still and yet, even with all my practice, setting camera exposure in real time in the middle of a shoot, is still a real distraction for me. It is a bit like a cell phone ringing in my pocket while I'm trying to compose a shot and I don't want distractions when I'm shooting.

To mitigate these distractions if I'm using a manual camera like my 4x5 or RB, I do my best to make all the decisions about exposure before I start shooting. Typically pick three settings; backlit, cross lit, front lit.

When I'm out with my F5 or F100 there is a flash on top of it a large percent of the time, keeping up with all the variables involved there manually becomes truly unmanageable, luckily the Nikon system does a darn nice job of it automatically. Again I set the basic priorities before I start shooting but I do have little tricks that I use to get the camera's automation to choose the exposure and focus settings I want, those tricks free me from thinking, doing the math, and spinning dials.

 

[markbarendt]

You learn exposure as you go along. Content is the hard stuff.

Bottom line is: if you don't understand and can use manual easily, you don't understand photography.

Yes and yes.

 

[Truzi]

It's easy. The only hard part is learning how the three settings (ISO, f-stop, shutter) interact, and that is not difficult. Using a meter is also easy. Of course, that is the basic part. Being able to tailor the exposure for what you want or specific conditions may take some work - but to merely do manually what the camera is doing automatically is easy, and you will get results at least as good, if not better (barring mistakes). Once you have that part down (mimicking what the camera does), you can move on to getting better exposures than the automatic mode might for a given situation.

Unless you have something that is entirely automatic, you are already 2/3 the way to manual.

Think of it this way, if your camera has aperture or shutter priority, you are already doing most of it manually. You are already setting the ISO (unless the camera reads DX coding), and either aperture size or shutter speed. The camera is only doing one part of the exposure triangle mentioned in previous posts.

 

[wy2l]

It's easy - use the FAST system: Focus, Aperture, Shutter, Think! And remember to press the shutter release...

 

[Gerald C Koch]

In actuality I found that using my Nikon in one of the programmed modes to be rather bothersome. It's a PITA to change between modes when in the field so I usually leave it in manual mode.

I was in a photo store (remember them?) and there was an elderly gentlemen talking to the clerk. It was rather obvious that his family had given him an expensive 35 mm camera for Christmas. The instruction manual was the size and thickness of a paper-back novel. He was having trouble with all the various automatic modes. This guy was basically an Instamatic camera person and I had the feeling that the expensive camera was destined to be put on a closet shelf and never used.

 

[DWThomas]

Guess I can't understand the problem as my first camera was a Brownie target Six-20 circa 1950 and my second was an Argus C-3 in the late 1950s. I even shot slide film in the Argus without a meter for the first year or so -- Kodachrome at ASA 10 anybody?! I mean, later in my life self cocking shutters were dazzing new automation!

Anyway I believe even today some schools require a camera that can go fully manual for beginning classes. That's apparently with the intent that students gain some actual understanding of what's behind the automation. So now I have a broad range of camera technology at hand to keep up my "muscle" skills.

Sometimes I think we are prone to over-think this stuff.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

I fully agree with you. Learning to shoot photographs in automatic mode does not translate well into understanding the exposure triangle. Having no DOF preview limits the understanding of aperture size.

I equate it to learning to drive a car. If you learn to drive on a standard transmission, it is very simple to transfer what you learned and feel fully comfortable driving an automatic. If, however, you learn to drive on an automatic, it still takes a lot of practice to feel comfortable driving a standard transmission. Many (most) folks never do make the transition.

what's an exposure triangle? Ialways used a light meter or 'sunny 16' prior to that

 

[gone]

Actually, I don't see any difference between setting everything manually and using an AE camera that gives you speed and aperture readings in the viewfinder, and an exposure lock feature. It gives all the information that you would get by manually doing things, and does it it a lot faster. If you really are a beginner then stop down metering is hard to beat because it allows you to visually see the effects of aperture adjustments and DOF.

I use cameras w/ no meter, a manual meter, and AE metering every time I go shooting and I would much rather use the AE camera w/ exposure lock because it's not only faster, it frees my mind and eye to do the important stuff like focus and composition. It's pretty much the same as shooting a scale focus Retina that I have everything all set to before putting it up to my eye to shoot, but w/ AE I don't have to remember to preset the focus and lens/shutter settings.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

I,for one, are very happy with auto-ecerythingand my camera is set to it.now, I can finally concentrate in the image-making process and forget about the image-taking process.

 

[L Gebhardt]

There's nothing wrong with learning on an auto exposure camera. For the most part the Matrix metering on Nikons is right where I'd set it. When I use my Nikons they are almost always in Aperture priority mode. My film comes out exposed the same as when I use my manual spot meter on large format or the Hasselblad. So if a beginner can let the camera deal with the exposure while they focus on composition (which in my mind includes the aperture) I don't see anything wrong with that. Now fully automatic focus is another issue.

 

[ME Super]

FART for good photos, according to Ken Rockwell. Its an acronym that is easy to remember.

1. Feel the urge to take a photo.
2. Ask yourself what it is that made you want to take a photograph.
3. Refine your photograph once you have answered the previous question.
4. Take the picture.

This is what KR says he does. Its a remarkably simple yet effective way to photograph landscapes at least. Feel, Ask, Refine, Take. I've noticed in my own photography that if I don't go past feel, my picture isn't as good as if I go through the whole process. Auto exposure with the in-camera meter gives me a starting point for the refine process, because I can choose the aperture or shutter speed to get the result I want without having to set that third leg of the ISO/aperture/shutter speed triangle. I would argue, if pressed, that I do understand photography, even if I choose to let the camera do some of the thinking for me.

 

[Nikanon]

As others have said above, use good equipment and you will get good pictures. If you want to expand beyond that, you better know what you're doing because your brain has to substitute for all that electronic brain power. Do you know more than a computer? Good luck, buddy.

There is nothing difficult about using a camera in manual, not unless the lens is difficult to turn or the camera is difficult to lift, it's not difficult. The brain power is not substituting the computer, it's the reverse, and the computer has done a horrible job if that was it's task. The computer is an interface, just as the knobs and dials are an interface. When using the camera manually, you interact with the camera, when using it automatically , you consult with the computer that interacts with the camera. That computer is incapable of the creative decisions you make for simple tasks the photographer directly wants the camera to accomplish when the shutter is tripped. The computer may know a lot, but it's not able to do very much with what it knows, and if it could, what would be the point? This is really irrelevant to the idea of using a camera "manually".

If anything it is much more complex to get a desired result when haggling with an unintelligent machine.

 

[LyleB]

So if a beginner can let the camera deal with the exposure while they focus on composition (which in my mind includes the aperture) I don't see anything wrong with that. Now fully automatic focus is another issue.

The problem is that many (most) never actually learn about exposure. They still get decent photos, but they don't understand how or why they did it.

If end result is the only goal, then fine.

I just consider it a couple steps away from being a traditional, well-schooled photographer. Then again, the same can be said for a lot of things, like development and printing - I would agree with those being a requirement for, in my mind, a "true" photographer. I don't necessarily qualify, I'm still an amateur picture taker, but slowly working on it. This, by the way, has nothing to do with selling photos. Plenty of folks sell photos, not all of them are photographers.

 

[Xmas]

all wrong borrow a box camera load it with ISO400 remember to wind on between shots it is like discarding part of bikini if you are girl…

 

[markbarendt]

There is nothing difficult about using a camera in manual, not unless the lens is difficult to turn or the camera is difficult to lift, it's not difficult. The brain power is not substituting the computer, it's the reverse, and the computer has done a horrible job if that was it's task. The computer is an interface, just as the knobs and dials are an interface. When using the camera manually, you interact with the camera, when using it automatically , you consult with the computer that interacts with the camera. That computer is incapable of the creative decisions you make for simple tasks the photographer directly wants the camera to accomplish when the shutter is tripped. The computer may know a lot, but it's not able to do very much with what it knows, and if it could, what would be the point? This is really irrelevant to the idea of using a camera "manually".

If anything it is much more complex to get a desired result when haggling with an unintelligent machine.

When we end up "haggling" with a camera, we are really just haggling with it's meter and where it wants to focus.

The problem isn't that the camera's meter or auto-focus system or it's processing algorithms are "unintelligent"; it is simply that the camera's meter is a reflective metering system and our preferred focus point might not be exactly where you want to point the camera for the final shot.

The problem, like most photographic problems, is our failure to understand what the system needs to do a good job.

Modern matrix metering systems do a really good job of setting exposure without our intervention for the grand majority of shots, but it is still a reflective metering system with all the same inherent problems. The camera has to deal with what we show it and sometimes we don't show the meter or the auto-focus system the right subject matter.

This is nothing new, it has been a problem for ALL TTL cameras, manual or auto, since they first came into being.

Modern cameras give us a variety of focus/exposure points we can pick from so that we can refine the exposure and focus, we are telling the meter/camera what's most important. This is also why many new cameras are being designed to "look for faces". The thought behind all this is basically the old idea of pointing the camera away from the composition that we really want to place the focus point or split prism on the most important subject matter in the scene, setting exposure and focus while we are there, and then recomposing to get what we want.

Older cameras that lack selectable points, like the N90s and a plethora of others, can do can solve this issue by recomposing.

Many modern cameras, anything on par with say a Nikon F100 or better, have easy over-rides to solve these problems completely and even separately making these cameras potentially much faster and more accurate to use than any manual camera without ever changing the grip we hold the camera with. These cameras can be pointed away from the final composition, exposure can be found and locked with one button, then auto-focus can be used separately to track the subject or locked based on a specific point.

I use this two button technique when shooting sports and weddings especially. Any place where there is high contrast and subjects moving between lighting situations. My daughter did junior olympic kayaking and it was very normal for one frame to have the main subject in full shade with bright white foaming water in full sun filling the rest of the frame 75 feet away, the next frame to have full sun for everything 10 feet away, the frame after that full shade for everything 20 feet away.

I think people get overwhelmed with all the choices available on the modern cameras and their big manuals, what I think most miss though is that most of these cameras get programmed once, not every time it turns on. I also believe that most people don't know the fancy cameras like F100's and better can be programmed to be able to use exactly the same clues they already use with their manual cameras, instead the cameras are simply judged as delivered from the factory.

As I age my eyes are getting harder to use, I recently divested myself of all my manual focus 35mm gear because of this.

Like RalphLambrecht I have found this to be a boon, not a bane. I have more time and brain power available to pay attention to what I'm actually taking pictures of, and I can engage with and enjoy my subjects with fewer distractions.

It's not hard to run a camera manually, but it is harder and slower than using an automated camera.

 

[Nikanon]

When we end up "haggling" with a camera, we are really just haggling with it's meter and where it wants to focus.

The problem isn't that the camera's meter or auto-focus system or it's processing algorithms are "unintelligent"; it is simply that the camera's meter is a reflective metering system and our preferred focus point might not be exactly where you want to point the camera for the final shot.

The problem, like most photographic problems, is our failure to understand what the system needs to do a good job.

Modern matrix metering systems do a really good job of setting exposure without our intervention for the grand majority of shots, but it is still a reflective metering system with all the same inherent problems. The camera has to deal with what we show it and sometimes we don't show the meter or the auto-focus system the right subject matter.

This is nothing new, it has been a problem for ALL TTL cameras, manual or auto, since they first came into being.

Modern cameras give us a variety of focus/exposure points we can pick from so that we can refine the exposure and focus, we are telling the meter/camera what's most important. This is also why many new cameras are being designed to "look for faces". The thought behind all this is basically the old idea of pointing the camera away from the composition that we really want to place the focus point or split prism on the most important subject matter in the scene, setting exposure and focus while we are there, and then recomposing to get what we want.

Older cameras that lack selectable points, like the N90s and a plethora of others, can do can solve this issue by recomposing.

Many modern cameras, anything on par with say a Nikon F100 or better, have easy over-rides to solve these problems completely and even separately making these cameras potentially much faster and more accurate to use than any manual camera without ever changing the grip we hold the camera with. These cameras can be pointed away from the final composition, exposure can be found and locked with one button, then auto-focus can be used separately to track the subject or locked based on a specific point.

I use this two button technique when shooting sports and weddings especially. Any place where there is high contrast and subjects moving between lighting situations. My daughter did junior olympic kayaking and it was very normal for one frame to have the main subject in full shade with bright white foaming water in full sun filling the rest of the frame 75 feet away, the next frame to have full sun for everything 10 feet away, the frame after that full shade for everything 20 feet away.

This is basically the haggling I was talking about. Although I'm referring mostly to personal work where you are not getting paid and not being forced to make certain kinds of pictures. This is all very complex stuff, it's really a hassle as compared to setting the camera as one enters a new lighting situation and leaving it there until you enter another one. If you're talking about 1/1000 of a second, the extra haggling matters. Cameras of any kind are unintelligent. They can acquire information but not apply it. My point in saying that is that using an automatic feature assumes the camera will understand your intention based on where you point it. Autofocus in many situations will focus on an undesired location requiring refocusing or causing defocus. "Average metering scan be easily overwhelmed by an imbalance in intensity. Yes there are times when a user will get lucky and the camera focus and expose as desired, but the fact that that is not a 100% ratio and that mistakes are then made by both the photographer and the computer, there are more headaches created. I don't care much what camera it is, relatively old or new, Nikon D4, or a Sinar P2, just setting the shutter, the aperture, and focus, and having that shutter trip when the button is pressed is essential.

 

[markbarendt]

My point in saying that is that using an automatic feature assumes the camera will understand your intention based on where you point it.

It is never the camera, or the meter, or the fancy computer in them, that screws up.

As long as our cameras/meters are in good repair and have full batteries where needed, we only have ourselves to blame.