Hey AO…

[Eric DeWitt]

I’ve been thru your worldcast photos a couple times now on your zenfolio site and continue to be amazed.  Its a tremendous set of images.  It look like a lot of those are shot with fast primes, and its making me want to add to my lens collection in a bad way.  

A couple questions for you if you don’t mind.. First, i noticed in the exif that most, if not all, shots are in manual mode?  You really doing that?  What do you find the advantage of that to be vs. leaving it in P or Av and firing away?

Also, a bunch of those shots are shot right into the setting sun, but the exif says no flash.

[Eric DeWitt]

Any other nikon users want to weigh in on this one?

[John Bennett]

Eric.

It sounds like it basically exposes the bright areas of the sensor at 1 stop slower iso speed to help reel back in some of the highlights.

 Thats pretty much what they do. Great for your highlights i your pushing the edges of blowing them, but what about shadows?

Perfect example of where you wouldnt want something like this are loons or any other image where you pushing the edges of a cameras dynamic range.

In both cases Im using center point af and spot metering because I want to expose for the black of their heads and nailed exposure perfectly, lots of detail in the blacks, you can count individual feathers. If Id been using somthing like highlight priority in an affort to save the breast, it would have lost the shadow detail. Less light in the same amount of time.

M vs AV and TV.
Similiar thing. In M your in full control, in AV and TV its split. I use AV when its advantageous to do so. All the camera will change there is my shutter speed. Unless I have a reason to maintain a slow SS most pictures will look the same whether they are shot at 1/500th or 1/1000th.

I use AV when light is intermittant (constantly changing) and I cat keep up or Im making mistakes as a result or in a case like above.
Use spot metering and AV, the slightest change will change your settings. As I was in a boat where its impossible to keep the center point on something small like a Loons head by using AV I know that when center point is on target, it metering for what I want, and Im releasing the shutter at that instant

If Im in M trying to get a meter reading is tricky..One moment black, one moment white and all over as the boat moves.

But on the whole I prefer M for that reason. Set your camera to AV/TV and point our lens at the horizon. Swing up/down and watch what happens to your setting the camera is controlling. A good example is a fish shot where dark water is the BG, change the perspective a bit so some sky is visible and the camera will change your exposure.

Why should it? The light on your subject hasnt changed.

If your in a situation where taking your reading is reliable and light is unlikekly to change, thats the settings you want and Ms the only one that does that.

Artistically you can always +/- exposure bias if you want something under/over relative to your reading, just as you can leave your settings under/over relative to your reading, so thats 6 of one, half dozen of another.

[kurt budliger]

Personally I don’t use the highlight priority feature on my canons and aside from shooting a lot of fishing and landscape stuff I shoot a ton of weddings and believe me the white dress is the first thing to go blinky.

[Author]

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