- Taking Your Photography to the Next Level
- Poring Over the Picture
- Poring Over the Picture
- P: Program Mode
- Tv: Shutter Priority Mode
- Av: Aperture Priority Mode
- M: Manual Mode
- How I Shoot: A Closer Look at the Camera Settings I Use
- Chapter 4 Assignments
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
How I Shoot: A Closer Look at the Camera Settings I Use
Whether it’s isolating my subject with a large aperture or trying to maximize the overall sharpness of a sweeping landscape, I always keep an eye on my aperture setting. If I do have a need to control the action, I use Shutter Priority. If I’m trying to create a soft waterfall effect, I can depend on Tv to provide a long shutter speed. When trying to grab a shot of my toddler, I definitely need the fast shutter speeds that will freeze the action. While the other camera modes have their place, I think you will find yourself using the Av and Tv modes for 90 percent of your shooting.
The other concern I have when I’m setting up my camera is just how low I can keep my ISO. I raise the ISO only as a last resort because each increase in sensitivity is an opportunity for more digital noise to enter my image.
To make quick changes while I shoot, I often use the Exposure Compensation feature (covered in Chapter 7) so that I can make small over- and underexposure changes. This is different than changing the aperture or shutter; it is more like fooling the camera meter into thinking the scene is brighter or darker than it actually is.
One of the reasons I change my exposure is to make corrections when I see the “blinkies” while looking at my images on the LCD, which indicate that part of my image has been overexposed to the point that I no longer have any detail in the highlights. The only unfortunate thing about this feature is that it doesn’t work with the full-screen preview mode. You have to set your camera display to the histogram display mode (see Chapter 1) to see the highlight alert (Figure 4.13).
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Figure 4.13. The EOS M’s highlight alert
As you work your way through the coming chapters, you will see other tips and tricks I use in my daily photography, but the most important tip I can give is that you understand the features of your camera so that you can leverage the technology in a knowledgeable way. This will result in better photographs.