read online...is it true the MAIN reason is that we use M manual for panorama, or subject stil but background light change freuqnetly because the shutter and aperture can be set constant as opposed to Av/Tv mode ?

what is the other reason for using M mode? I am an Av mode user primarily..not sure am i remembering it correctly but when I tried to shoot shaded area photo, altho the metering in Av mode is in the centre (0), the picture that comes out tend to be underexposed .. why is that a case? and when i tweat to M mode and set the metering to the middle, the picture comes out perfectly..

This post has been edited by piano_freak: Mar 16 2015, 07:35 PM

another main reason i would go M is shooting with flashes/ strobes. other than that 95% of the time I am using Av.

what you said is right. the reason for anyone to change the shooting mode is due to depends on which you "need" to be in control with.

eg. in moving train/car... you need to set Aperture to 5.6 or 8 for nice decent of sharpness, but the shutterspeed automatically put you in 1/60 (using kitlens at 18mm) will result in motion blur. hence you need to force your shutter to go 1/250 minimum.
two way to do it, one is to bump your iso high, but with high iso shutter speed will go up, then again due to shaky train, your camera will swivel up and down, the metering will read the sky up and down causing random shutter speed. hence the other option is to set it to manual to have a constant exposure.

another thing is i notice a group of people, have problem with shaky hand, will use Tv (shutter mode) and fix the shutter to an amount to avoid blurry photo from shaking.... but wouldnt understand the downside of unpredictable aperture.

so in the end, you need to understand what are you doing, and lead what you needed(setting) to give you the right result.

+1, same here I use manual mode for long exposures from time to time as well

Aperture mode is very convenient in most cases

actually its depends on whats u want to shoot...learn to use M mode...then u will know whats function for ISO,aperture n shutter...

sometimes Av/Tv cant measure the right metering.... but for panning, i will use shutter priority =)..the rest M mode =)...

hello. i want to hijack this thread. i'm beginner trying to learn. in Aperture Priority mode, I have to set manual aperture and ISO? And the shutter speed will be automatic right?

Yeah, in Aperture priority you are free to adjust F values as you see fit. You can adjust ISO too if your ISO is not set to Auto
And yea, shutter speed will be automatically adjusted by the camera to properly expose your photo

thanks! should ISO be set auto ? what do you recommend?

mostly I use Av mode with exposure lock, more convenient to me.

when doing long exposure or fast shutter, M mode is more convenient than Tv mode.

Depends on your camera iso ability. If it looks good at 1600 but bad at 3200 then set its auto limit to 1600. For camera like FF can set much higher.

you should also try shutter mode and see which fair better.

For starters, it all depends on your skill level I suppose. If you feel that having need to control ISO, shutter speed, aperture etc. at the same time might be abit too much, then just stick to auto-ISO first- one less setting to worry about. The general "rule" is to keep ISO as low as possible, without affecting the intended results for a particular shot

I don't use Auto-ISO because by adjusting to the ISO value I can indirectly affect the shutter speed, to cater to the things (moving/non-moving etc.) I want to photograph (abit faster than switching to Manual mode and then readjust)

This post has been edited by [PF] T.J.: Mar 20 2015, 01:18 PM

Errr.....you dont "generally" keep the iso as low as possible. As long as its within acceptable threshold, preferably keep it as high as possible for fast shutter. "Generally" low iso is desirable for non moving scene with tripod and long exposure at night as the noise tend to show at black areas.

Exposure is affected by aperture, shutter speed and iso. The key is to get the balance between them to get right exposure. Aperture for bokeh. Shutter for moving subject. Iso is just sensor sensitivity to light which affects noise. Therefore you can leave iso at auto as long the acceptable noise threshold is not exceeded.

This post has been edited by DaddyO: Mar 20 2015, 02:01 PM

Yup, which is why I have a "without affecting the intended results for a particular shot " behind the sentence

Well for street photography i prefer having a high iso even if it creates bunch of noise than low. Its easier to correct the noise than having unusable blurry shots. So really depends on what you shooting.

Yeah, that was what I meant
It all depends on what you intend for the final shot, which is to "freeze" subjects in street photography. If ISO800 allows fast enough shutter-speed to get the shot you want, it is unlikely you will still shoot at ISO1600 (unless if you purposely want the "noise" feel for your shots)

"Well for street photography i prefer having a high iso even if it creates bunch of noise than low" - would that affect shutter speed if shot in A mode ? meaning, slower shutter speed == more blurry shots ? please enlighten me

yes. As i mentioned, a, s and iso are related to each other affecting exposure. The bigger aperture, the faster the shutter you can use while maintaining iso and exposure. Vice versa if you adjust shutter speed. You can test out by adjusting the aperture in A mode. You will see the shutter speed auto adjust to maintain same light to the sensor. However there is a limit to that due to the lens capability. Thus iso need to raise sensor sensitivity to maintain same exposure. This is rather technical with a lot of explanation to it so u need to study further on the effect of adjusting each setting.

It boils down to a lot of times people want low f aperture because it allows faster shutter speed to maximise sharpness and maintain low iso. But thats not always possible unless you spend a lot on big lens so high clean iso is important part of camera purchasing decision.

This post has been edited by DaddyO: Mar 20 2015, 03:37 PM

Hi TS, when u talk about photography, you talk about lights. So by using the Av mode for Panorama u will face problem when the area are thought to be bright or dark by our camera. Just like if you take photos of snow with AV or TV mode, the snow turn grey and not white. That's just an example.

Since we are stitching the this Panorama picture, we canot do that unless u are sure that the Speed and apeture is the same for all the picture (rare case). On top of that, for me ISO should also set to Manual too. But before that u have to measure the lightings for the settings for Panorama. Example: 1/120s, F9.0 ISO400.

So, Is manual important? Yes. And also it's very useful if u use with flashes.