Av or Manual?

I've used both in the past, but of course with manual a few times I've missed that moment, and dont want to miss many more opportunities underwater. I try to keep to manual on land to try and improve my reaction speed but thinking to keep to Av now underwater, not sure to be honest. I'm also, when I get time, looking back at my old photos, now I've keyworded them all, at the exif data selecting particular speed and aperture ranges to try and learn from them.

Do people tend to start with Av and move on to Manual, or stick with one or the other?

Your opinions and thoughts on this would be appreciated

Cheers

Woody

Almost everyone shoots manual, almost all of the time. Alex

Thanks Alex,

As a guide to continue, am I best judging the speed of the subject and adjusting my shutter speed to suit, then finding an aperture to suit the surroundings? or using aperture first if depth of field is the main concern in the photo? No doubt, the more I do this, the more I will know exactly what setting will suit what shot?

Hi!

Started with manual, and have never ever used anything else.

I think I probably should atleast try to get familiar with shooting Av and Tv, but yeah... that's still on my to do lists.

Karel

Damn. Yet again I am not part of "almost everyone." I am unique.

For wide angle shots I use Av mode. Check this post on DDN for my comments. I will adjust EC depending on the desired result.

For close-up macro shots without a blue water background I generally shoot in Av mode at f16 but with my flash control set so that the shutter speed is forced to 1/250. This is to eliminate ambient lighting as much as possible and rely solely on strobe light.

For fish portraits with the 60 mm lens I am generally on Av, f8, EC -1.

YMMV.

John

I shoot manual mode 90%+ of the time. But when in auto I prefer to set shuttle speed. All too often it seems the camera wants to use a slower speed than I'm comfortable with. The old rule of thumb - shutter speed equal to focal length (or faster).

Like most here I shoot manual almost all the time. If I have a fast moving subject like dolphins I'll switch over to shutter priority to avoid the blurs in low light. They have a interesting habit of swimming around you in circles and one frame may be up sun with the next across or down. I guess that's why they put all those knobs on the camera. You get to pick the right setup for the image you want to make.

Have fun,

Steve

Shoot Av most of the time and use exposure compensation to accomplish the same thing I could in manual but faster. Usually shoot strobes in external Auto mode as well.

I shoot manual most of the time, but on shutter priority if I have fast moving subjects, or aperture prioritty if depth of field is a concern. My strobes are not TTL, so it is very difficult to get a "balanced" exposure using any of the cameras auto modes when they are the primary source of light (lighting the subject). I guess with TTL, you may be able to make more use of the auto modes.

Adam

Thanks Alex,

As a guide to continue, am I best judging the speed of the subject and adjusting my shutter speed to suit, then finding an aperture to suit the surroundings? or using aperture first if depth of field is the main concern in the photo? No doubt, the more I do this, the more I will know exactly what setting will suit what shot?

I think you will find the best thing to do for Wide Angle work is to set your aperture first based on how far away you are from your subject. This is to get your foreground (strobe lit) subject illuminated correctly. Your strobe will have a chart giving you an approximate distance to fstop setting, something like F16-F22 for 1 foot or less, F11-F16 for 1-2 feet, F8-11 for 2-3 feet, F5.6-8 for 3-4 feet. etc.

1) compose your subject and look to see how far away you are

2) set your fstop based on that distance

3) now set your shutter speed to -1 or so using the light meter in the camera with the camera pointing at the open water column in the direction you are going to shoot, don't cut off the light with the subject in the way.

4) adjust your strobes accordingly

5) fire

adjust your shutter to bracket the background lighting

adjust your fstop or strobe power to bracket the foreground subject.

I think you will find the best thing to do for Wide Angle work is to set your aperture first based on how far away you are from your subject. This is to get your foreground (strobe lit) subject illuminated correctly. Your strobe will have a chart giving you an approximate distance to fstop setting, something like F16-F22 for 1 foot or less, F11-F16 for 1-2 feet, F8-11 for 2-3 feet, F5.6-8 for 3-4 feet. etc.

 

1) compose your subject and look to see how far away you are

2) set your fstop based on that distance

3) now set your shutter speed to -1 or so using the light meter in the camera with the camera pointing at the open water column in the direction you are going to shoot, don't cut off the light with the subject in the way.

4) adjust your strobes accordingly

5) fire

 

adjust your shutter to bracket the background lighting

adjust your fstop or strobe power to bracket the foreground subject.

Great stuff Mike, thank you I've never looked at f stops for my flash as I was TTL with my last one, so the f stop settings on the flash are the opposite to the aperture? The further away the subject the lower the f stop? "f stop" to me, still doesnt have a proper definition, as it seems to be used for more than one subject, is there one?

When you say set your shutter speed to -1 do you mean adjust the ss until the exposure bars in my viewfinder are 1 bar to the left?

Sorry if these are silly questions

Great stuff Mike, thank you I've never looked at f stops for my flash as I was TTL with my last one, so the f stop settings on the flash are the opposite to the aperture? The further away the subject the lower the f stop? "f stop" to me, still doesnt have a proper definition, as it seems to be used for more than one subject, is there one?

When you say set your shutter speed to -1 do you mean adjust the ss until the exposure bars in my viewfinder are 1 bar to the left?

Sorry if these are silly questions

After a bit of googling I'll try myself

F stop...(short for) Focal length STOPping point.....the f-number is the focal length divided by the "effective" aperture diameter. ...

Would people agree? The focal length is taken from your lens, but how is the aperture diameter discovered?

More stupid questions!?

So on a flash how does this translate?

Ah, sorry about that. I mean the fstop that you set on the camera. If you are approx 3 feet away from your subject you will want an fstop somewhere around f5.6 depending on the strength of your strobe, which ones do you have? They should have a small chart that came with the strobe when you bought it that has approx strobe to subject distance settings on it. Even if you have your strobe set to TTL, you need to have your camera fstop in approx the right place for best results. The effective fstop is different for when you have your strobe set on full, half, quarter etc.

Yes, for the SS you are correct, the -1 means 1 full bar to the minus side of the 0 in order to get pleasant blues.

Keep in mind, the -1 for your shutter speed is for WA shooting, macro is a different animal

After a bit of googling I'll try myself

 

F stop...(short for) Focal length STOPping point.....the f-number is the focal length divided by the "effective" aperture diameter. ...

 

Would people agree? The focal length is taken from your lens, but how is the aperture diameter discovered?

 

More stupid questions!?

 

So on a flash how does this translate?

Mathematically you're right f-number = focal length / effective lens opening diameter.

But from a photographer's POV the other way round is more interesting, since you set the f-number on the camera:

effective lens opening = focal length / f-number.

You often see the f-number denoted as "f/8" or somthing like this. This reminds of the equation above and means that the eff. opening of the lens equals to 1/8th of the focal length. The standard sequence of f-numbers (1.4 - 2 - 2.8 - 4 - 5.6 ... ) was designed to increase or decrease the amount light passing through the lens by a factor of 2 depending on whether you open or close the aperture. So for example opening the aperture from 5.6 to 4 doubles the amount of light that passes through the lens. This "normalization" of the lens opening enables us to measure the exposure and to properly set the camera and lens independend of the focal length.

It also allows us to setup strobe and camera to properly expose the image manually. Look into the manual of your strobe and find the guide number. This "magic" number is defined as

gn = distance * f-stop

That makes it easy to find the correct f-stop for your shot: Estimate the distance between your camera and your subject and divide the gn by that value, there you have the f-stop you need. That's how the exposure table on the strobe has been computed and it's why Mike's method works!

Happy bubbles and good images!

Almost everyone shoots manual, almost all of the time. Alex

I bet your seminars are riveting Mr M ...

Dive safe

DeanB