where there’s smoke there’s forum fire
["How is full manual the only way to go in low light or at night? I don't get this at all.
What is the issue with metering your subject and shooting in A or S?"]
It was just my opinion. It's what works best for me. Again, there's room for me to learn here so your input is welcomed. I can tell you all about wildlife shooting but this sort of thing is where I become the student lol
["There is a huge communication gap between the pros who teach, and the beginners who want to learn."]
No truer statement has ever been made :)
I'm expressing confusion, gentoo, and would appreciate knowing why manual mode accomplishes what you want where other techniques do not.
Soap:
Mainly because I control everything completely in those situations. I don't do much shooting at night either way. When I do I set ISO, shutter, aperture and try to get the look I want out of a particular night scene. I think I did do a couple of my night Seattle pics in A mode however with matrix metering and. I left Active D lighting on auto (I used the D90 for those shots).
Gentoo - I think you will find that most people who buy SLR's just want a camera with no shutter-lag, decent low light performance, and possibly the ability to make some cool home movies of the kids. I'd actually be surprised if more than half of the D90's sold ever make it into the semi-manual modes... Just like most people tend not to tweak their PC's, their cars, or really anything that lies outside of their core interests.
Your point about the D700 is much more valid. The D700 is actually an inferior choice for casual shooting. The only reasons to own a D700, which has none of the full auto or scene modes, is to extend your capabilities as a photographer. D700's are for getting wide, and being able to really explore the ambient light.
I'm actually shocked that Nikon hasn't released a consumer FX body. To me, its the most obvious way for them to re-sell to their current installed base. I'm sure its coming, but I figured it would be here by now.
EDIT: BTW, that sony DSC-H1 was an excellent camera. Probably the best point & shoot of its time (although not very compact).
Willis
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Gentoo - I think you will find that most people who buy SLR's just want a camera with no shutter-lag, decent low light performance, and possibly the ability to make some cool home movies of the kids. I'd actually be surprised if more than half of the D90's sold ever make it into the semi-manual modes... Just like most people tend not to tweak their PC's, their cars, or really anything that lies outside of their core interests.
Your point about the D700 is much more valid. The D700 is actually an inferior choice for casual shooting. The only reasons to own a D700, which has none of the full auto or scene modes, is to extend your capabilities as a photographer. D700's are for getting wide, and being able to really explore the ambient light.
I'm actually shocked that Nikon hasn't released a consumer FX body. To me, its the most obvious way for them to re-sell to their current installed base. I'm sure its coming, but I figured it would be here by now.
EDIT: BTW, that sony DSC-H1 was an excellent camera. Probably the best point & shoot of its time (although not very compact).
I'd have to say that you're probably right. I know a few D90 users who use it exactly as you said.
That Sony was a really good camera in it's time for a P&S. I still have a few pics on my gallery taken with it:
http://www.pbase.com/shonn/image/89953276
And why do you guys care? Well, I guess you guys don't have much to worry about...
I bought a D90 because it was a good deal and I liked it a lot. I shoot using A, S and P and my pictures suck. It it not the camera, it is me. Still a lot to learn So why do you care if someone uses Auto? As long as their pictures look good...
You guys are not even consistent. Some of you complain about those that buy D90s for the megapixels, while others are complaining about those that don't take advantage of all those megapixels... It doesn't make sense. If a D40 is all you need, then a D90 in medium is a D40 with better ISO.
Broad brush there, seba316.
When it comes to scene modes in DSLR cameras, then those are mostly lures for P&S folks who want better results without having to do anything themselves. Most probably it has been decided somewhere by engineer that for the time being a D90 should be the last DSLR to have scene modes, maybe it will change.
@soap, one reason to use M with night shots are exposures exceeding 30 seconds.
seba:
["There is a huge communication gap between the pros who teach, and the beginners who want to learn."]
Hope that clears up the confusion
Soap: sorry, to clarify, yes, I use M in low-light situations because my D200 has a tendency to not give me a fast enough shutter speed (it'll choose 1/5 and I'll opt for 1/6 or 8) with some of my slower lenses (f/4 or greater).
with my primes, Aperture works well enough give a latitude of adjustment on the ISO scale (clean shots at 800 with a f/2.2 or 2.8 and shutter speed of 1/4).
But I'm a bit limited by ISO on my D200, 800 is already not pretty at all. . .I'm considering, amidst all of this forum drama, a D5k given it's price point (nearly $600) and skipping the 60mm micro for Xmas/Diwali. . .the high iso capabilities would give me a 1.5 stop advantage over my D200, which would be nice :-)
And i'll use it in Full Auto to piss myself off too!
I'll take auto-exposure all the time in my D90 (on A or P). I find the exposures virtually flawless. The AWB and Auto-ISO are less perfect, but the camera can adapt more quickly than I can when there's a lot going on. I remember when a ratcheted film advance felt like a big step forward, then match-needle, auto with aperture priority, then auto-focus. Each time I got to give more attention to my subject and composition and each time my percentage of good shots increased. I like having increasing levels of technology serve my goals. As memory gets cheaper and bandwidth expands, then bring on the megapixels too, I'm sure my lenses can resolve more!
+1 Willis.
public rudeness is inexcusable, as is ill informed advice.
shivaswrath - Is your D200 exposing brighter images than you prefer - or are you purposefully underexposing somewhat when shutter speeds are so low to keep from bluring and then kicking the exposure up back on the PC?
Either way, couldn't he just use exposure compensation?
I was going to go there if what he said made it seem applicable. Wasn't sure if it was a consistent problem or not.
If he was doing it to underexpose to prevent blur in the field and then crank up exposure PC side I was going to suggest that a stop extra ISO (even on the noisier D200) is cleaner than letting the D200 underexpose.
Though he could just be doing it for artistic reasons and might have tricks up his sleeve I'd like to hear!
Not always the case. Let's say I need a sensitivity equivalent of 12800 to reach my desired shutterspeed on my D300, which only goes up to 6400. In this case, I would be forced to underexpose 1 stop and push in post processing.
Not having a stop of ISO available isn't the same thing as +1 ISO noise being not better than pushing exposure a stop post, eh?
Of course not. If you don't have the ISO available, then you have to regain exposure in PP. However, I agree with you that if you can jump to the next ISO in camera then do it in camera, as it'll yield better results.
Hear! Hear! better to change film than push (or pull) what you have! That's old equivalent to ISO. Somethings seem to never change.
Question:
I know that a 1 stop underexposed photo taken at ISO 800 pushed 1 stop in PP will look the same as a photo correctly exposed at ISO 1600 without any pushing.
However, how about a 1 stop overexposed photo taken at ISO 1600. When it's pulled (presuming you recover highlight detail because you're shooting RAW). Will that look like a correctly exposed image taken at ISO 800?
alphanikonrex - actually on most digital cameras underexposing and "pushing" will be much noisier appearing than using the higher (and naively noisier) ISO.
and a 1 stop overexposed photo pulled will TEND to look better than even a normally exposed one. (assuming you don't clip that potion of the image you are most concerned with)
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/expose-right.shtml
for the math involved in point #2
The corollary of point #2's math is actually most the reason for point #1, the other part being that the human eye is more sensitive to noise in dark subjects than in bright ones. (and it is the dark detail you're doing a bastardized recovery of when pushing)
By exposing to the right you're not only taking advantage of the math, you're taking advantage of human perception.
Thanks soap!
I don't have a ND filter, so I have been considering overexposing a little and pulling back in PP when necessary. I wasn't sure what the noise would be like though.
So it looks like to keep ISO 3200 nice and clean I'll shoot in 6400 instead!
No. (Assuming you're pushing the edge of your shutter speed and are worried about blur) Don't shoot in any ISO with a ND to increase exposure time, shoot in the next ISO up with the exposure compensation kicked up .3, .7, or 1 stop (whatever it takes to push your histogram to the edge w/o going over.*
Once you clip you're losing data forever. The trick is to use all 12/14 bits (depending on camera) you've been given (since they are linear) and when you convert from RAW to JPG** they'll be 8 bits, but logarithmically storing intensity values - which actually does a better job of matching our perception. The issue is that the higher bits are storing "more" information, and by leaving them "empty" in RAW you're wasting more information than is stored at the lower (least significant) bits.
Google "expose to the right" and you'll find better explanations than I could ever give.
*Even if you're not shooting on the edge of your comfortable shutter speed exposing to the right has real advantages, just mentioned it in that context as it is what we were talking about.
**heck, even a 16 bit (linear) TIFF, etc will take advantage of the situation.
No, no, no, you misunderstood me.
I do not have an ND filter, so I want to shoot slight overexposures at *ISO 100* to get the effect that I want—silky water, panning, whatever.
I glanced at the expose to the right page—looks interesting. Give me a chance to read. Thanks for your own explanation though.
I looked at the chart—I get it now. Thanks soap.
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