Camera Settings 2 - Things That You Might Change When Out Taking Photos

Camera Settings 2 - Things That You Might Change When Out Taking Photos. Hi and welcome to Episode 102 of the Photography Explained podcast.

 I’m your host Rick, and in each episode I will try to explain one photographic thing to you in plain English in less than 10 minutes (ish) without the irrelevant details. What I tell you is based on my lifetime of photographic experience. And not Google.

Before I go on I need your help. I need your questions to answer. This is why my podcast exists, so please get in touch with your question and get a shout out from me in a future episode. Just head over to photographyexplainedpodcast.com/start.

OK – thank you and I really look forward to hearing from you.

Here is the answery bit.

Cameras these days have so many settings, but not all of them you have to change when you are out and about taking photos. Settings that you might change when you are taking photos are

Yep, these are the types of settings that I might want to change during a shoot. Just these. I know.

And I will come on to the things that I might change for a specific photo in the next episode.

The point I want to make here is that just because you have an endless array of camera settings, this does not mean that you have to be constantly changing stuff ok?

Right, let’s look at these, which as I say, are things that I might change during a shoot.

Picture taking modes

My default picture taking mode is AV, or aperture value, or aperture priority. I choose the aperture, normally F8, and the camera chooses the shutter speed to give me a correct exposure.

If the lighting is particularly challenging I might switch to manual mode which gives me direct control of the camera settings.

If I am in a point and shoot mode I might change to P for Programme (not P for Professional). I know, people might call me out for this but if I am just out and about enjoying myself and happen to have a camera with me I turn the dial to Programme so I don’t need to worry about stuff.

There is nothing wrong with this, I am aware of the limitations that this imposes – sometimes life can be more important than the shutter speed/ aperture combination.

And if this is how you want to take photos then that is fine – just make sure that you are of the positives and the negatives of doing just this.

And there are lots of other, situationally specific modes that you can use such as Portrait, Landscape, that kind of thing. Now I have to be honest and say that I have never used any of these, but that is only because when I first learned photography it was before this digital stuff so there were much fewer options available, typically you had the choice of

Shutter priority, or TV for time value, is another popular mode, where you select the shutter speed and the camera selects the aperture.

Metering mode

Cameras have different metering modes. These are different ways of measuring the light in a composition. I use Evaluative Metering on my Canon 6D, which works for me for most things. But every now and then I might switch to spot metering.

Evaluative metering takes a meter reading based on the whole scene but with emphasis on where the point of focus is. It is a good all round mode to use, certainly for general photography.

And spot metering is the metering mode where the meter reading is taken from a much smaller area in the middle of the composition.

For completeness, the other Canon metering modes are Partial and centred weighted average.

Drive mode

My camera is set to the 10 second self-timer. Press the shutter release button and ten seconds later the photo is taken. I do this so there is no movement of my camera which is placed on a tripod most of the time. I will change from 10 seconds to 2 seconds sometimes.

Interestingly, having set my camera to auto-bracketing, using the self-timer it takes the three photos for me.

But if I have to shoot handheld I will change to Continuous shooting, taking the 3 photos by keeping the shutter release pressed down until all three photos are taken.

And when I am taking one photo, rather than three, I will change to single shooting.

AF Mode

Although I am taking three photos, I can keep the camera in One Shot Mode, which is designed for shooting stationery subjects. You would think that I would need another setting for this but the self-timer sorts this out for me which is fine.

If I were to switch to photographing moving subjects then I would switch to AI Servo.

And even more interestingly is AI Focus, which I want to mention, which very cleverly switches between the two, with the camera doing some clever stuff.

I still can’t get my head around using One Shot though, and taking three photos.

ISO

I start off with an ISO of 100. And if I can take all the photos on a tripod using this ISO I am happy. The lower the ISO the higher the quality of the images that I get.

But there is a time when I will change the ISO for a section of a shoot – this is on construction sites, where I am photographing interiors handheld. These can be so dark that I will need a faster ISO to get sharp photos handheld.

I covered taking photos handheld in a previous episode, Photography Explained Podcast Episode 94 - How To Take Photos Handheld - Camera Settings That Work For Sharp Photos.

And as I have said before, whilst increasing the ISO increases the chances of getting noise in photos, a noisy photo is better than a blurry photo.

Time

Now this is the one that I should have mentioned in the last episode, but I forgot.

The one that I always seem to forget when I go away is to change the time to the local time where I am. It is not a difficult thing to do, I just always seem to forget.

Now the good news that, if you forget like I do, you can change this after the event in Lightroom. Yes you can change the time that is stored in the photos metadata. An interesting thing to be able to do, as I always thought that you couldn’t change the time on photos, but you can believe me. And to make sure that I don’t mess it up I will make sure that the time is the same as the time recorded on photos taken on my iPhone, which updates automatically for wherever I am. Clever thing that it is.

What do I do?

Not a lot. I often don’t make any of these changes on a shoot, and that to me is a good thing. But it depends of course on what you are photographing – I am photographing buildings and locations, so the settings dialled in work for me.

The talky bit

Now I am going to be completely honest with you, once I started writing this post I was regretting choosing this subject, but as it turns out I am really happy with this episode, as I think that I have come up with some good stuff, some really helpful advice to help you.

I know, there are lots of other things that you might want to change during a shoot, but these are the only ones that I would think about changing. This is how I work. I do not get bogged down in the constantly changing things confusion unless I have to.

I used to, so this is you learning from my mistakes.

And what I am talking about here applies to my commercial work, architectural, construction and real estate photography, and also to my personal work, which is landscape and travel photography.

The point here, the big takeaway, blimey that is the first time I have used that term which I like.

The big takeaway is that when I am out and about taking photos I normally don’t change anything on my camera other than the stuff specific to each photo.

There are camera settings that I have set and never change, and there are a few that I might change during a shoot.

This is my point – when out taking photos concentrate on what you are photographing. Get your camera set up properly and then use it, but concentrate on the exposure and getting the best composition that you can.

Don’t spend all your time fiddling around with camera settings. But do use the settings that you need to get the best photos you can.

I know that this sounds like a bit of a contradiction, but it isn’t really. I prefer spending my time concentrating on the compositions of the photos that I am taking, rather than fiddling around with my camera.

Big takeaway

Loving this term, so I am going to add it to all episodes.

The big takeaway is this, only change camera settings when you need to to get the best photos that you can. Concentrate on what you are photographing.

Related episodes

Episode 100 - Why Are There So Many Camera Settings? I Am Confused - Help Me? This is what started this sequence of episodes off. And there is episode 101, Camera Settings 1 - Things That You Can Set And Forget.

Next episode

Photography Explained Podcast Episode 103 – Camera Settings 3 - The Things That You Set For Each Photo You Take.

Yes I am going to wrap up this section before going into individual things on a camera, which has just given me about 5 years of new material.

Shout out

Shout out to me and my new course – find out more at rickmcevoyphotography.com/courses. Well if I can’t promote myself here where can I?

OK - I’m done

Thanks for listening to my small but perfectly formed podcast. To find out more about my podcast and do stuff to help me check out Photographyexplainedpodcast.com/start.

Brought to you by

This episode was brought to you by lovely water.

I’ve been Rick McEvoy, thanks again very much for listening to me and for giving 10 (ish) minutes of your valuable time, and I will see you on the next episode.

Cheers from me Rick