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Ep. 37 Coming out of Auto mode...

• Kevin Ahronson • Season 1 • Episode 37

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Tog-Talk Episode 37: Going Manual

Host: Kevin Ahronson, Founder of Hampshire School of Photography

In this solo episode of Tog-Talk, Kevin Ahronson addresses a common question for beginner photographers: “How do I move from auto mode to manual mode?” Kevin, with over five decades of photography experience and a seasoned photography teacher, breaks down the basics of manual shooting.

Kevin explains that while auto mode is great for beginners, manual mode offers far more control. The challenge is in understanding the “exposure triangle” — the relationship between aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. Kevin carefully walks listeners through each element, illustrating how they work together to achieve correct exposure. He recommends learning in stages, suggesting that aperture priority mode is an ideal stepping stone for photographers looking to gradually transition to manual.

Throughout the episode, Kevin emphasises the importance of mastering the camera and choosing the right mode for the job. While manual mode gives full control, aperture priority is often quicker and ideal for many scenarios. Kevin shares personal anecdotes from his years of shooting, including situations where manual mode is indispensable, like wildlife photography, where consistency is key.

Towards the end, Kevin recommends his Introduction to Photography Workshop on November 9th, 2024, and discusses his Photography Masterclass, a year-long course designed to develop both technical skills and creative vision.


Key Points:

•The exposure triangle: aperture, shutter speed, and ISO

•The benefits of aperture priority mode as a middle ground

•Situations where manual mode excels

•Upcoming workshops and masterclasses at Hampshire School of Photography


Links:

•Introduction to Photography Workshop

•Photography Masterclass


Join the Hampshire Photography Network on Facebook for more tips and discussions!

Got a Photography Question?

If you have a burning question about (virtually) anything to do with photography, click on this link. You can record your question onto your device (phone, laptop, etc) and if picked, I will play it during the show. https://www.tog-talk.com/voicemail/

Looking for courses

Want to find out about my live, in-person workshops, check out the Hampshire School of Photography website:

https://www.hampshirephotoschool.com

Hampshire Photography Network

A free Facebook group for amateur photographers who want to connect, collaborate and grow together.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1222685165227144

Contact me

You can contact me by leaving a message via this link: https://www.tog-talk.com/contact/






Kevin Ahronson:

Hi, my name's Kevin Aronson, from Hampshire School of Photography, and welcome to Tog Talk, which is Photographers in Conversation. I've been behind a camera since 1969, I started teaching around about 2009,. And in 2016, I set up the Hampshire School of Photography. These days, however, I am now semi-retired but still teaching and I'm hoping to leave a little bit of a legacy to the next generation of photographers. So I still run the one-year masterclass that's been going now since 2019. I run two of those a year. Normally I take on a small number maybe just four, sometimes five private students who come to me for one year private mentoring and, of course, I still run the occasional one day workshop. I'm currently in the process of moving over to online training and I'm spending a lot of time getting the online courses and infrastructure in place and I'm now just weeks from going live.

Kevin Ahronson:

So this is a solo show where I answer a listener's question Every other week. I'm joined by co-host Kelly Perrin, who runs a local photography studio here in Fleet in Hampshire, and when we come together, we dig deep, really deep, into some aspect of photography. Hi, my name is Kevin Ahronson, from Hampshire School of Photogra phy, and welcome to Tog Talk 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0. All engines running Liftoff. We have a liftoff.

Kevin Ahronson:

So, anyway, this week's question has been sent in by a gentleman. Yes, we do have gentlemen occasionally phoning into the show, but this particular gentleman, like on the last session when we did this, they didn't want to record their name. They were shy of speaking on air, so the question will be read out by Mr AI. Good old Mr AI.

AI:

Hiya, I've only just recently taken up photography and all my pictures so far have been taken in auto mode. My friend tells me I need to shoot in manual. When I asked her to explain how I do that, it sounded incredibly complicated. Can you help?

Kevin Ahronson:

Well, thanks for sending that question in, and trying to explain how to move from auto to manual on a podcast is going to be a challenge. I will do the very best I can. I like to explain things with lots of visuals and practical demonstrations, and in the workshops I run, that's easy. But but on a podcast, that's a tough call. But I am going to try.

Kevin Ahronson:

So you know, when people buy their first camera, they shoot in auto because it's it's easy and because they can take pictures straight away without having to understand the principles of how things like the aperture works and how it interacts with shutter speed and ISO. But in auto, none of that is necessary. In auto, you just point your camera at the subject and press a button, and sometimes you get great shots and sometimes you don't. You are at the mercy of the camera, sometimes you don't. You are at the mercy of the camera. The transition from auto to manual is quite a significant one, which is why so many people find a halfway point. Now there's a mode that you can shoot in which has many of the benefits of auto and many of the benefits of manual. It's called aperture priority and there's also a shutter priority, but I'm not going to cover that today. Aperture priority is probably the most popular shooting mode amongst photographers around the world, even amongst professionals around the world, even amongst professionals. But what we can't say as photographers is that there is only one way to take a picture, Because once you really begin to understand how your camera works, there will be occasions where shooting in manual is absolutely the right way to go forward. But there are other times when shooting in aperture priority is the best solution, and sometimes either will work.

Kevin Ahronson:

Let's look at what happens when you take a picture. There are three things that affect your exposure, that give you correctly exposed images. We have aperture, we have shutter speed and we have ISO. Some people call it ISO, some people call it ISO. It doesn't really matter. So the aperture's job is to let in an amount of light to hit the sensor at the back of your camera, and it controls that amount of light by opening up to a large opening, which lets more light in, or closing down to a small opening which lets less light in, and aperture is one of the key factors which controls how much of your picture is going to be in focus as well. So an understanding of that is quite helpful, but we're not going to touch on that today.

Kevin Ahronson:

So aperture controls the quantity of light entering your camera. Then there's the shutter. Now the shutter controls how long that light goes in. For if the aperture is controlling the quantity of light, the shutter or the shutter speed that you select is choosing how long that quantity of light is actually going into the camera. So it can go in for a long time or a short time or a very, very, and the quicker that speed is, the more the camera is able to capture fast moving subjects. So someone kicking a football, for instance, you could freeze them. So the minute the foot hits the ball the picture is tack sharp and everything is absolutely crisp. Or you could pick a slower shutter speed and then you'd get some blur in the shot and that could be used to creatively convey movement. So there's an element of artistic interpretation. So let's just recap aperture controls the quantity of light going into the camera and a shutter speed controls how long that light goes into the camera.

Kevin Ahronson:

The iso or or ISO and it doesn't matter which way you pronounce it is a very different kettle of fish because, unlike the other two elements, which naturally control light by the size of an opening and how quickly a shutter moves. Iso is an electronic control. It controls the amount of light coming off of the sensor. It actually amplifies the signal. Now, back in the old days in film, iso was about film sensitivity, so that you'd buy a film which was sensitive to low light so you could shoot in low light. But ISO on digital is not about sensitivity, despite what you might hear from other photographers. It's about how much the signal that's hit your sensor has been brightened up or amplified. The technical term is how much gain has been applied. But you don't need to know that. So there we go the three elements You've got the light coming in, the quantity of light you've got, how long that light comes in for, and then how much brightening up of the signal, how much gain is applied by the ISO. Those three things make up what's known as the exposure triangle, and when you're shooting in manual, you have control of all three of those.

Kevin Ahronson:

Learning the exposure triangle is something you just have to do when you become a photographer. It's one of those non-negotiable things. It's the pain barrier that everyone who's picked up a camera and used it with any degree of creative purpose has had to do. It's the rite of passage, and it's balancing those three elements the aperture, the shutter speed and the ISO. And the question you have to ask yourself and I am asked constantly by new students is which one of those three elements do I set first if I'm shooting in manual? Should it be the aperture or the shutter speed, or the ISO? And the answer always has to be it depends. So many questions are answered in photography by it depends. So it depends that if, for instance, you're photographing some fast moving action, you may decide you want to choose a fast shutter speed and give that the priority. So you would choose a shutter speed capable of freezing that action, in which case then you achieve the correct exposure by playing around with the aperture and or the ISO. It could be you're shooting indoors in low light, in which case the first thing you might want to do is to push up your ISO in expectation that there just isn't enough light there for your aperture and shutter speed to cope. So there is no instant answer to that question. Which one do I do first?

Kevin Ahronson:

So the aperture, depending on the camera, is usually controlled by a control dial somewhere on the camera. On some cameras it's actually on the lenses. The shutter speed will be another dial on the camera and the aperture will be another dial, which may also require you to press a button and another dial. It sounds complicated, doesn't it, but in reality it's not. Your job is to look inside the viewfinder and watch the effect that your changes in those three parameters do to the little needle that's running up and down or across left to right in your screen, because in your screen is a scale a little bit like the scale you'll get on a ruler, and in the middle of the scale is a centre point. And to get the correct exposure as far as the camera's concerned, you adjust either OR and PLUS or any combination of the aperture, the shutter speed and the ISO to get that needle in the middle. Once it's in the middle, you can take the picture.

Kevin Ahronson:

It's as simple as that, yeah, but believe me, once you've done it a few times actually it's, and really just a few times, it's all it takes you realise what you're doing and it is a piece of cake. It just sounds worse than it really is. Genuinely. It's easy, genuinely okay, but one of the big problems with shooting in manual is your ability to react quick enough to any given situation, and sometimes, as you move your camera around and point maybe in a different direction, you have to change your settings on the fly, and if action is taking place while you're making those changes, you could lose the shot, which is why so many photographers prefer to shoot not in manual, but in aperture priority, where all you have to do is pick the aperture and the camera does the rest. So it's like auto, but it's a kind of semi-auto. You have control, you control the aperture, the camera makes the changes it needs to give you the correct exposure as it sees it, and so the only difference between manual and aperture priority is that aperture priority is quicker. Aperture priority is that aperture priority is quicker. It's quicker because the camera is controlling your shutter speed and your ISO and it can do it in a fraction of a second, whereas if you do it manually, it'll take longer and you could miss that shot.

Kevin Ahronson:

Now there are lots of purists out there, who perhaps were trained on film cameras, as indeed I was, who say well, actually the only way to really control your camera is in manual. And yeah, yes and no, because you do have more control with manual, but not a lot more. And the beauty of manual is that once you fix the settings, the camera stays at those settings. If you're in aperture priority, it'll change as you move the camera around, and you may not want that to happen. So in the illustration I've just given you, where you've moved your camera through a I don't know, you're pointing it in the opposite direction and all the all the light is different.

Kevin Ahronson:

In aperture priority, your camera would change to give you the right exposure. In manual it won't change and you could end up with a picture that's too bright or too dark. So there really is no right or wrong answer. You just have to learn to become the master of the camera. So what does that mean in real terms? Become master of the camera? Well, well, photographers at a high level, particularly those who have been an amateur for many years and have lots of experience under their belt, or maybe those who have gone professional, they know that sometimes you just have to adapt yourself to any given situation.

Kevin Ahronson:

So the camera is equipped with full auto, which we want to avoid. Full manual, which is brilliant, aperture priority, which is also brilliant, and there's also a shutter priority, where you set the shutter and the camera does the rest. And if you are to become a master of your camera, you really ought to understand what they all do differently, what the advantages are of each of those individual systems or modes and when to use which, because there is no one-size-fits-all. You cannot truly say that you should only ever shoot in manual. You cannot truly say you can only ever shoot in aperture priority. A wise person picks the appropriate mode for the job. No two jobs are the same and the requirements may be different. So, for instance, when I'm using a DSLR, I reckon about 95% of the time I'm shooting in aperture priority. I reckon about 95% of the time I'm shooting in aperture priority. If I go into a studio, I absolutely do want to be shooting my camera in manual. So it goes over to manual because I'm working with flash and when you shoot with flash you've got more control. When you shoot in manual, a lot more control.

Kevin Ahronson:

And then there's wildlife photography. You see, if I'm photographing a bird flying across a beautiful vista in front of me and it's flying in front of a piece of woodland and then the woodland gives way to maybe some open sky, and then the bird's flying against a mountain, and then a bit more sky and then another piece of woodland. The background behind that bird is constantly changing and as your camera sees that background, as it tries to expose the picture correctly the picture of the bird against the woodland background you're probably going to get a correctly exposed picture of the bird. As soon as the bird starts flying in front of a piece of open sky, the camera's going to look at that and think, oh, that's a bright scene, I'd better darken it down. So it does, and you get a great view of the sky and the clouds. But unfortunately the bird goes silhouetted so in aperture priority. That would be a nightmare scenario because the exposure will change depending on what the camera sees. Far better would be to shoot it in manual and you lock the settings in manual so that, regardless of the background behind the bird, your camera is taking pictures correctly exposed for the bird, not for the background you expose for the bird. So the bird can fly in front of trees, rocks, rivers, sky, clouds, you name it, but the exposure on the bird doesn't change. It's only the background that changes. And so by shooting a manual, if you've got the exposure correct for the bird, it really doesn't matter what the bird's flying in front of. You'll always get the correct exposure on the bird. So there are times when manual's brilliant.

Kevin Ahronson:

Now the situation is changing over the last few years because everybody's moving over to mirrorless and of course in mirrorless cameras what you see in the viewfinder is what you get. So when you look in the viewfinder and if the picture looks dark, you just change one of the settings and brighten it up. You don't really have to worry too much about looking at a scale and whether the little needle is moving up and down the scale and heading towards the centre point. You don't even bother with that. You look at the picture in your viewfinder. If the picture's too bright, you darken it, and if the picture's too dark, you brighten it.

Kevin Ahronson:

It's easy, ok, so let's just step back a little bit, because I kind of feel that there's a couple of things here I really ought to cover, and the first is that if you are at that place where you finally have decided to commit yourself to leaving auto mode to go into manual, you absolutely do need to spend some time to understand the three elements of aperture, shutter speed and ISO, how they relate to each other and what their side effects are. And that's all part of becoming a photographer, as opposed to someone who just takes pictures. Taking pictures in auto is one thing, but moving out of auto into manual is a big step because there's a big learning curve. So my second point is that perhaps it might be more appropriate, rather than to make that big step from auto to manual, you go from auto to aperture priority. This would be a much easier jump because aperture priority is a kind of automatic mode, but you've got lots of override and the ability to change settings and compensate for any mistakes that a camera makes. For instance, in aperture priority, if the picture is too dark, you can adjust to what's called the exposure compensation. To brighten the picture up, you just turn a wheel and inside the viewfinder you'll see the picture get brighter. Or if it's too bright, you can darken it down by the same method. So you've got control over the final image, much the same way that you would do in manual mode, but it's just a little bit simpler.

Kevin Ahronson:

Ultimately, your aim as a photographer is to understand both the manual mode, aperture priority mode and, eventually, shutter priority mode. This gives you a broad depth of knowledge so you can cope with almost any situation that comes your way. I think it would be prudent to consider signing up for a workshop, whether with me or with somebody else, to give you a thorough understanding of what's going on with your camera settings. So when you do start making adjustments, you're doing it from a place of knowledge and understanding. If you're looking for a one-day workshop, let me recommend the Introduction to Photography workshop, which I run several times a year Now I'm recording this in October 2024. The next one I've got is on the 9th of November this year, then there's one on the 8th of February, the 24th of May and so on. Visit my website, which is gohspcom or hampshirephotoscorecom, and click on courses there and you'll see the introduction to photography workshop. However, if you're looking for something a bit more substantial which will give you a really broad understanding right across many genres of photography, coping with all kinds of situations, then maybe you ought to listen to this.

Kevin Ahronson:

Hi everyone, it's Kevin Aaronson and I want to tell you about some exciting changes I've made to the Photography Masterclass, my in-person course that's been helping photographers grow since 2019. Yep, this is an in-person course, in a classroom, with me, face to face. This is not online. As we approach our 10th intake in January, I've made some significant changes to celebrate this milestone. This masterclass goes beyond just technical skills. It's about learning to see the world as a photographer. I've shifted the focus to give even more attention to creativity, with three entire modules dedicated to developing your photographer's eye. I retained the more popular modules on shooting landscapes, photographing people, and there's a new one on black and white photography. This masterclass is more than just a course. It's a creative one-year journey you'll share with other passionate photographers, growing together and forming lasting connections along the way. Need more information? Visit gohspcom, click on courses and select masterclass. I'll also provide a link in the show notes below.

Kevin Ahronson:

Masterclass has proved to be a real success story, with so many photographers from all over Hampshire and Surrey and Berkshire joining its ranks year after year. We started it in 2019. It was a big group then, with about 18 people on board. These days, I keep it small Eight people at a go, just eight. It's easy to make friends within Masterclass and historically, every time we run a Masterclass, friendships grown during the course of that year have remained intact once the class has finished. Anyway, that's it for this session. It's a relatively short one. I hope it's answered the question. Thank you so much for sending it in. I'll see you next week with Kelly and then the week after that I'll be back with another solo session. Have a great week, enjoy your camera, get out there, press the button, take some photos and join the Facebook group Hampshire Photography Network. If you're not already a member, it's free. It costs nothing, but you'll meet lots of other photographers just like you. See you again soon. Bye.

People on this episode

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Kelly Perrin

Co-host
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Kelly Perrin

Co-host
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Kelly Perrin

Co-host