bastro

Great thread imho.
As a relative "newbie", no offense taken, it is great to hear what others with more experience think and do.
For me, doing more still shots, I adjust the aperture to make sure I won't be grainy and the shutter is fast enough for a sharp handheld shot.

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

Hi Steve. That is an interesting experience. I have found that Program mode usually manages aperture and shutter speed together to try to avoid odd or extreme combinations, but on most bodies, the values presented can be adjusted with the command dials. Also...I'd expect that somewhere in your manual is a chart or discussion that describes the default function used to set exposures.

Edit: I'll have to experiment a little bit, but would suspect that things might go awry if using Auto ISO as well as Program mode. That makes a lot of parameters for the system to coordinate. I do not recall that my manual information for operating in "P" mode makes any reference to floating ISO. I'll check tonight and report back.

lsupremo Loc: Palm Desert, CA

Way back while I was spending an incredible week with Ansel Adams he never stopped talking about “pre-visualation. We needed to know what we wanted to create and then take the steps to reach our goal, BOTH on the film and in the darkroom.

genocolo Loc: Vail and Gasparilla Island

Great discussion for most of us. Thanks for the topic and opportunity to learn.

NCMtnMan Loc: N. Fork New River, Ashe Co., NC

If I know what I want for the shot, then that rules everything else. If it's DOF, then ISO and shutter speed are all subject to the settings necessary for it. To me the least important is ISO since it is the one variable I can modify in post. Can't fix out of focus or blurry ot DOF.

lsupremo Loc: Palm Desert, CA

One of the great advantages, or maybe disadvantages, of digital photography is we can keep playing around with all these buttons on our cameras and see what comes out. Or maybe it doesn’t matter, we can fix anything in photoshop.

camerapapi Loc: Miami, Fl.

Linda I am not going to go into passive or active approach with my comments since my cameras most of the time are in aperture priority or manual mode depending on the subject to be photographed. If action or wildlife is what I am going to shoot I select a wide aperture and watch the shutter speed. I seldom set my cameras to shutter priority. It works for me that way but I can also understand that my approach will not work for everybody. I agree that for the novice (better than newbie?) Program mode is a great choice since they do not have the experience to make those decisions.
Manual mode is my favorite for still subjects although many times I go with aperture priority. If I go manual my humble experience tells me, according to the subject, which aperture will be preferable and that also applies to aperture priority.

philo Loc: philo, ca

I believe that your main discussion pertains to M mode and not A or T mode.
I use A mode 90 % of the time. However I have to be careful about my S speed while shooting in shade. As one gets older it is a good idea to increase S speed.

John_F Loc: Minneapolis, MN

There is a Third approach - it called for want of a better word, baffled.

RRS Loc: Not sure

Linda, the very first thing that I look at is the light I have to work with. I always shoot in manual, next is what am I shooting. I primarily shoot wildlife and with long lenses and that is at f/2.8 to f/4.0. I set the shutter speed be it for a sitting subject, owl in a tree, slow moving bear or for BIF (Birds in Flight) and lastly adjust the ISO to give me the exposure I desire, sometime over and others under. If I have good light I'll set the aperture from F/6.3 to f/8.0 for a better DOF especially for BIF and bring down the ISO. I've been doing this for over 60 years and to me I really don't even think about it because it automatic. When I first started out I would write down what settings I used for each shot and look at the results and taught myself what I needed to change to get it better the next time. Todays cameras now record all that pertinent info for you. I strived for SOOC (straight out of camera) I guess but when that didn't work I learned how to do darkroom magic, dodge and burn along with other tricks. Today we have Photoshop and many other wonderful tools at our disposal and setting the aperture and shutter speed is just the beginning of a long process.

gessman Loc: Colorado

Perhaps Linda, ever the charming and considerate one, was thinking about a comment you made in a recent thread that might, at quick glance, appear to be in conflict with what you said this morning in this thread, "Today I take a lot of pictures as part of my work but I use the cell phone for that." "https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-562207-6.html" entitled, "A little too much burst - a personal look" wherein you said, "I use a camera at work that can shoot 10,000fps for motion study but still sometimes I don't think it's fast enough."

I'm sure there's a simple explanation but perhaps you would like to expound on what we don't understand about "the camera you use at work?" I've been thinking all morning how badly I must need to upgrade my year old cell phone.

2mdman

I'd say my approach is more Adaptive - i.e. shoot based upon what I'm trying to do (what you call "active") and what the conditions dictate. As an example, returning from a trip to Europe where I was in & out of museums, then going into the harsh mid day light, and winding up near dark, I was constantly adjusting ISO, Aperture, and Shutter speed to adjust to what I was shooting at the time with aperture being give the priority since I was shooting mostly still. If it were moving subjects, then shutter would have been my priority.

As a "newbie" (I'm not offended), it can all be somewhat overwhelming and I'm particularly displeased that I failed to adjust properly to conditions after stepping out of a museum (wide open aperture, long exposure, high ISO) into the bright sunlight. It was my reliance on Auto ISO and trouble reading the scale in the viewfinder that caused me the difficulty. I now have a better eyepiece and the experience now to watch ISO.

Good thread Linda and a nice discussion.

GrannyAnnie

As someone who has, for years, been trying to wrap my head around the "hows" and "whys" of photography, I am not at all ashamed to think of myself as a "newbie". May I never become so arrogant as to think I have nothing more to learn......and I have a lot more to learn. Thank you, Linda, for opening a very helpful and interesting discussion!

BebuLamar

Oh I use the cell phone most of the time at work to document my work. The camera that is capable of 10,000fps is a high speed camera and it's a video camera. We shoot at 10,000fps and play it back at 30fps. It actually shoot very low resolution only 640x480 and B&W. We use it to troubleshoot high speed moving machine. We don't use it often though perhaps once in 6 months. I wanted to list the make and model but I can't remember it and it's in another plant right now.

BebuLamar

I would like to point out that the histogram is the result of metering mode and/or exposure compensation or if you are in manual the degree that you deviate from the meter. If you keep the meter in the metering mode (spot, center weighted, matrix or evaluative) and not using the EC or manual mode then the resulting histogram does not change for a given scene when you change mode A, P, S or full auto.
The differences between these modes are the choice of of shutter speed, aperture and ISO combinations that would give the same exposure (the term exposure is wrong in this context but please don't flame me for that). Now that if I can create a mode to choose the combination I like it wouldn't work for all cases but I can make it work for more than 90% of the time. It wouldn't work for you but it would work for me as each of us are different.