Blue Pixel

Saturday, March 13th, 2010 by Bill Durrence

I recently returned from leading a photo trip to Costa Rica for American and Popular Photography's Mentor Series (http://www.mentorseries.com). As we were wrapping up the trip, driving back into San Jose, I was trying to answer questions on the bus and there was a good one I didn't have time to answer. I can rectify that now.

It’s a question I’ve gotten before that often frustrates students and also frustrates me, because it’s both a seemingly simple question and a complicated answer. At the same time, with sufficient experience the answer can seem pretty simple because you do many things without having to think about them, which is one of the reasons it’s a frustrating question for me—trying to remember everything that needs mentioning. So I want to try to answer it here, for everyone who might be interested.

The question was roughly, “When you go out to shoot, what settings do you start with?” The answer is, “It depends.” The things to think about, the questions to ask yourself, are pretty much the same every time, but the responses will be different depending on circumstances—what are you shooing, what kind of light do you have, etc.
The first thing I want to do is check my main settings to be sure they are right for whatever I might encounter. Those will be anything that relates to the FEW things that must be right—focus, exposure, and white balance. I also want to be sure my camera is set for the right format (usually Raw for me) and that I have good battery charge, possibly that I also have spare batteries and cards.

Focus—if my subject is static (portrait, landscape) I’ll generally set for Single servo and Single area AF (or maybe Manual focus), choosing the focus sensor in area most useful; if the subject is more active I might choose Continuous servo and Dynamic area, and possibly limit the focus area to 9 or 11 sensors instead of the full 51.
White Balance will normally be for the specific light type I’m in; I seldom use Auto WB. I may deliberately choose a wrong WB for a particular effect, or if I’m in mixed lighting I may do a custom WB measurement.

Exposure—I usually shoot in Aperture Priority, but will consider if another mode might be more appropriate. Then, if staying in A, I’ll set a mid range f stop (5.6, 8) unless that doesn’t work because of light levels, or because I want max (landscape) or min (portrait) depth of field in which case I’ll choose an f stop from one end of the scale or the other. While selecting an f stop I’ll see what kind of shutter speed I’m getting and see if I need to raise my ISO (generally I would have started fairly low, 200, 400, but if the light was low I might have gone immediately to something higher, 1600, 3200, or maybe I would have started high to just play), or use a tripod, or flash, or multiple flash, or some combination of all those things. Maybe I’ll decide to shoot blurry photos on purpose, or shoot multiple exposures.

And while considering all that, I would have been looking for pretty light, or that might be what provoked my intent to shoot to start with. Then as I consider the subject I decide about composition—what to leave in and what to exclude—and if I need to move in, out, left, right, up, down to get the spatial arrangement I want, after which I have to decide which lens will give me the angle of view I want, limiting my field of view to just what is important. And then as I get closer and closer to actually pushing the shutter button (or maybe using a cable release or using the self timer or mirror lock up), I start looking for THE MOMENT, the gesture, the timing, when everything comes together for maximum impact, clarity, and cohesion.
Then, after shooting that first frame, I’ll check my exposure with flashing highlights and histogram, consider the composition and WB, zoom in on the LCD screen to check sharpness and focus, closed eyes, etc.

Then reconsider everything I’ve thought about and decide how to proceed. And all that generally needs to happen in a very short period of time.
So you see………simple, and complicated. I hope that helps at least as much as it confuses.
Good shooting and I hope to see you all down the road somewhere beautiful and exotic,

Bill