Take Better Photos, Manual Camera Settings For More Control

Most modern SLR cameras have automatic and program metering ‘modes’ that take care of speed and aperture settings. These work well for most situations but switching to manual can give you extra control of your images.

The processor in an average digital camera is very powerful, but it can’t read your mind and may not record something in the way that you hoped. Scenes with a lot of light or dark tones, backlit portraits and shots at dusk are all examples of situations where manual controls may work better. Manufacturers have tried to improve automatic metering by adding extra ‘modes’ to cameras, normally on their lower to mid range models. These can include ‘landscape’, ‘portrait’, ‘night time’ and slightly more bizarre ones, like ‘pet’ modes. These are useful for people that don’t want to get too involved with the technical side of photography. They will often do a very good job, but camera auto ‘modes’ are making educated guesses when, with a bit of knowledge, you can do better yourself.

Understanding basic light metering.

Basic metering systems assume that there will be a certain amount of light and dark tones in a scene, this averages out to an 18% grey tone. This means, when you point your camera, set on automatic, at an ‘average’ scene, the exposure will be correct. If there is any variation from this average your exposure may be less than perfect. For example, if you were taking a photo of a landscape with a very bright sky in the background, an average meter reading won’t know which part of the scene is important to you. The automatic reading will probably underexpose the foreground, making it look dull and dark.

One of the ‘mode’ settings might sort this out, or it might not, you won’t know until afterwards because it’s all programmed into your camera and you have limited control.

Situations where manual metering may improve your image.

Knowing that the camera is looking at everything expecting a 18% grey tone means you can start to identify situations where auto settings may not work well: scenes with a lot of light or dark tones, scenes with a wide range of brightness, situations where subject and background have different levels of lighting, and many more. Look at your composition, decide which are the important areas, and try to take meter readings for these.

Example #1. Imagine taking a portrait photo of someone with the sun shining behind them. Automatic metering is going to take an average reading, take the brighter background into account, and underexpose your subject.

Instead of relying on auto, take a manual reading from your subject. Move in closer, or use the spot meter setting if you have one, so there is no bright background in the frame, and take your exposure reading. Set the aperture and shutter speed manually, then move back, re-compose and take your shot. Now your subject will be correctly exposed, while the background may be overexposed and lose some detail.

Using the same scene you might want to change the look of this image and expose for the background instead of the subject. Take your reading from the background, excluding the subject, and reset the aperture and shutter speed. This time the background will be correctly exposed and, depending on the range of brightness, your original subject may be underexposed or be silhouetted against the light.

In either case you have decided on the look that you want, instead of waiting to see what the automatic settings gave you.

Example #2. Ever tried taking a close up photo of a bride in a white dress? If you did this with your camera on automatic you would probably find that the whole picture came out much darker than the original scene. This is because your camera was assuming that the white dress was an 18% grey. It underexposed the shot and made the whites look grey.

If you set the camera manually you can compensate for the white dress or any other large area of white or light tone in the picture. You could do this in a couple of ways; either take a reading from another area, near the subject, with the same lighting conditions but a more average range of tones, or, if that’s not possible, take a reading from the dress and make an adjustment to allow for the lighter tones. In this case I would probably open up another 1.5 to 2 stops to get a good result.

Keep experimenting.

There are lots of other situations where manual metering will give better results, too many to cover in this article. Try to visualize how you want your image to look and adjust your settings accordingly. With a digital camera you can keep experimenting and check your results as you go. You’ll soon become familiar with this technique and find it as easy as using the auto settings. You’ll also have much more control over the look of your images. So, forget auto ‘modes’ and switch to M for manual.