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Manual Exposure Mode

In the manual exposure mode the whole camera settings are under your control. Manual mode gives you freedom to customise every single setting at the time of shooting – shutter speed, Aperture, ISO, White balance, Colour Temperature(Tint), Exposure bracketing, In-built Flash-light compensation, External Flash-light compensation, Image Size & Formats, Metering modes, Focus points – Single, Multiple or particular area on screen/viewfinder and many more.

If you want to become a pro or a serious hobbyist or just want to learn the creative photography techniques, you are to master all these above settings in order to get the desired photograph. So you need to shoot on Manual Exposure Mode Only.

There are some modules specially designed for you in order to practice and master the manual mode. Hope this will definitely work and give you wonderful results as you practice more…

Module 1 – Mastering Shutter Speed

Set your dial on Shutter Priority Mode (Tv/S). Stand at your favourite place at your home, most probably the window is the best place to experiment where you see people, vehicles moving around and kids playing in the street. Now you switch on your camera and start shooting with a shutter speed of 1/1000 then with 1/500 and so on…(1/250 – 1/125 – 1/50 – 1/25 – 1/8 – 1/4 – 1/2 – 1sec – 2 sec) upto shutter speed of 4 seconds. You can decrease no. of shots as you can take 5 shots only with the same shutter speed range (from 1/1000 to 4 seconds). In the Shutter priority mode only Shutter Speed of the Camera will remain under your control, rest all other settings will be on auto mode. So After capturing you will get an idea that “Why & Where to use faster shutter speeds(e.g 1/200 or as less as 1/8000 of a second) and Slower shutter speeds(e.g more than 1 second).

You will find Slower the shutter speed will result in less static subjects in photo as you can see the things which are static, and could not see the things in motion(blurry lines).

Second practical you can do with water streams.

You can shoot water stream, outside if possible or just start with a water tap at your home.

While shooting at faster shutter speeds you will see the crystal clear image of the even water droplets coming out of tap. And while shooting at slower shutter speed you will see some milky white shades of water and all other subjects very much clear in the photograph.

Module 2 – Mastering Aperture

For Understanding the work of aperture in a photograph you need to know whether you want Shallow Depth of Field(blur background) or Narrow Depth of Field(sharp background).

Or in simple words we can say the depth of the area in sharp focus is depth of field.

Example – Take the lens with the widest available aperture either it’s a kit lens with 3.5 or a 50mm with 1.8. Take one photo with the widest available aperture and compare the same frame with an aperture of atleast 22 or 16. In the photo with higher f-stop no. you will observe more area in sharp focus, and in the photo with the lower f-stop no. you will observe more blurred or defocused area.

You can practice these photos at any place whether it’s crowded or at table with different set of cups or at garden with flowers or landscapes. You can clearly see the difference in sharp focused area with changing the aperture value.

You can also use the aperture to control the amount of light coming into the camera.

For any questions please comment.

Before giving the correct exposure to your pictures it is important to know what a correctly exposed image looks like. A correctly exposed digital picture is a file that shows a full range of tones, from deep shadows to bright highlights, with details across the entire image and all the tones.

One should be able to see some detail in the dark shadow areas while at the same time retaining detail in the brighter highlight areas. Providing you get this, you can decide later whether you actually want the full tonal range to appear when you print/publish the image or not. If you could not ensure that you have the full tonal range while shooting, there is little you can do about it later in some photo editing software.

The picture with the shadows can be fine-tuned to great extent but once if the picture with more highlights or burns the details can’t be recovered from the same.

This last point is more crucial when shooting in JPEG format. When shooting in RAW mode, getting the right exposure is a more easier process than it is when you shoot color negative film because you can correct the color in your computer later.

If you shoots RAW then it’s easy for your to correct the image’s White Balance, Brightness, Contrast, Sharpness, Color Balance, Exposure and many more parameters. Whereas JPEG gives less freedom to play with all the above parameters.

Now, we will explain some terms being used in photography & you will need to know. Then we can learn in greater detail about each one.

Exposure is the amount of light, controlled by aperture and shutter speed, that reaches the image sensor. Now ISO is also added to control the sensitivity of light.

Shutter Speeds is the measure of the duration or length of time that the shutter stays open. The longer the shutter stays open, the more light will be allowed to reach the image sensor.

Faster shutter speeds freeze the action and usually require more light and a larger aperture (smaller f-stop number).

Slower shutter speeds enable pictures to be taken in lower light with a smaller aperture (larger f-stop number).

Aperture or F-stops are the measure of the size of the opening, or aperture, in the lens. Remember, the larger the f-stop number, the smaller the aperture and lesser light to the sensor.

The smaller the f-stop number, the larger the aperture and the more light the lens will let through to the image sensor.

ISO – Camera Sensor Sensitivity. Earlier in the negative film the term ASA(American Standards Association) was used which was changed to ISO(International Organization for Standardization) later in 1987.

ISO helps camera image sensor to become more sensitive to light with increasing ISO range. Usually it starts from 100 and go up to 12,800. But now a days in some high end Cameras it starts from as low as 50 and can go upto 3million, which is required and helpful for low light conditions only. Generally a photographer uses from 100-1600 ISO range only.

One more fact to add is, the lower the ISO the better the quality of photograph in terms of noise and details. And higher the ISO the more will be the noise in the photographs with less amount of fine details.

So, keep on experimenting and improve your photography. If you like the post then follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook.

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Manual Exposure Mode – Explained

Give Correct Exposure to your pictures

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