Sliding into manual mode
I have been struggling and stressing and fighting to understand the manual mode on my camera for a while now. The fact it, it all just sounds too much like math to me. I feel like I almost have a grip on the concept but then it just slips out of my hands and I'm back where I started from.
For some reason though something clicked for me yesterday. All of the sudden it started making sense. Oh don't get me wrong, I still have a lot to learn and I need a ton of practice but it feels so empowering to be able to turn the little dial from A to M on my camera.
Yesterday I took a few pictures of Elle using only the manual setting and I was pretty pleased with the results. (You can see them here but be aware blogger reduces photo quality something fierce.) I have learned two things about shooting in manual:
1) I CAN do it and it's not nearly as scary as it seems at first.
2) I really need a pedicure done by someone other than a five year old.
Four years ago today I wrote a post about body image and MTV that to this day gets tons of traffic.
Jen
3 comments:
I hope to one day master the manual mode. Actually, I hope to one day be able to even use it at all.
Thank you for writing this. I have a lovely camera purchased for me by my husband and I got a new lens a year later. I'm pretty good out there on my own, but I confess that the settings and dials may as well be Sanskrit for me. I don't get it. It is, as you say, too much like Math.
Thank you, I'm glad it's not just me. And I say that because I know we're kind of in the same place in the photography kicking off business thing. I don't shoot full auto, I usually do a program mode which gives me some control over settings. I flip flop between, "If I don't shoot full manual, I'm not good enough and will never be a 'real' photographer!!! Alas, alack!" and "You know, I'm comfortable right now with these settings and get good results, and it's the eye and not the buttons that matter."
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