"Like I said in the other thread you started, start clicking - put a role of film in it, shoot it and take it to be processed. You'll learn a lot that way.

"You didn't like my advice before, so maybe you'll not like it again, but that doesn't make it bad advice...."

1) got it--the first time and the second time.
2) thank you--both times.
3) you made your point.

spraynpray said:
Like I said in the other thread you started, start clicking - put a role of film in it, shoot it and take it to be processed. You'll learn a lot that way.

That really is good advice. You did say that you prefer full control over the camera, but that does not necessarily mean that you need to set everything manually. It should mean that you know what you and the camera are doing. When you start out in P mode and you find it is limiting yourself e.g. because controlling the aperture value is not intuitive then changing to A mode will be better. It will not give you more control but a different type of control and I think that is a matter of experience when to use what mode and how it helps you to get what you want.

There will be situations where you will find M mode better (but you will have to find them yourself as it depends on your situation and your way of shooting), but most of the time it just means that you need to set an additional value manually that could have been set by the camera much faster and you might miss a photo. :)

So go ahead and use all the help you can get from your camera. After all, you did get an F100 not an FM2...

Hi Dean,

Like I said in the other thread you started, start clicking - put a role of film in it, shoot it and take it to be processed. You'll learn a lot that way.

You didn't like my advice before, so maybe you'll not like it again, but that doesn't make it bad advice....

on f100 You need to lock the lens on maximum f stop, the small tab is like correlli wrote to ensure that You don't change the aperture accidentally. then You simply control the aperture using the camera. in manual mode, one of the dials is responsible for aperture the other one for shutter speed. using the function button (never liked it in f100) You can adjust which dial would be assign to shutter and which to aperture.

I am not sure about the F100 but on the D700 it says that you have to set the aperture ring to the largest value. The tab is just to make sure that you don't change the ring by accident. I think that if you don't set the lens to the largest value you will not be able to use P and S mode and you cannot change the aperture using the camera controls. But it should work with A and M mode, but please check the manual for details (I am just guessing here).

I would recommend to set the lens as pointed out in the manual and use the camera controls. This way it is much easier to set half or third f-stop values in case you need it and you don't need to change anything if you want to use S or P mode.

Personally I use M mode every time I have determined the correct exposure (by test shots, camera metering or external metering) and I want to make sure the exposure does not change depending on the subject that I shoot. Example: you want to take pictures of people outside and some of them are dressed in white and some in black (or the background is sometimes very dark and sometimes very bright). You do the correct metering for the skin and you don't want the camera to adjust this correct exposure for the color of the dresses or the background.

In my film days when I shot b&w or color negatives I simply used A mode 99% of the time and it did work very nice (but you need to know when to compensate the camera metering e.g. in snow scenes). When using slides I sometimes used an external meter as slide film is unforgiving and in that cases I used M mode (my camera did not have P or S modes).

Hope that helps

hello--

re: 50mm f/1.8D AF Nikkor on Nikon F100

My novice question is: if I prefer to use manual mode (setting focus and aperture myself) is the aperture ring normally locked when first mounted on the F100? And, to set aperture via the aperture ring (versus the [sub]command dial) do I then unlock it via the small orange tab?

I shoot b & w exclusively, and prefer full user control of the camera. Please enlighten me as to a more experienced photographer's choice of manual mode: when--or, possibly more pertinently, why--would he choose it over P, S, or A?

thanks to all!

Dean Taylor