The Photography Tip of the Week #011
Photography Tip of the Week 011 (audio)
You’re not a real photographer
Real photographers have lots of equipment. They will spend more money on a single lens than a family of four will spend an entire year. They have the perfect set of tools to get the shot every time. They are flawless people that traipse around the world taking photos all day long. They make tons of money and are highly sought out professionals. They are rugged people with no time for family and friends because their art is of most importance. And above all else, real photographers shoot all photos in manual mode only. Automatic settings are for wimps and wannabes. Manual mode is the only setting for a real photographer.
Does this sound familiar? It may, but it shouldn’t. What is the mark of a real photographer? I see it as a person who has a real passion for photography. You only excel at things you are passionate about. So if you have a real passion for photography, then you are a real photographer. How you get to the final image; the printed photo does not determine if you are a real photographer or not. What matters is that you are taking photos and you get that final image. But I know there are a lot of people out there that think they have to have expensive camera equipment, top of the line lenses, and only shoot in manual mode to be a real photographer. These are just tools. You should use your tools to the fullest. Learn and practice with the tools you have. And don’t worry about ever going into manual mode. With my “big” camera, I shoot in aperture priority mode almost all the time. There are times when there is call for shutter priority and even program mode. But I’ll tell you one of the few times when I go into manual mode.
I use manual mode when I what to take photos that I’ll later stitch into a panorama. Why is this you might ask? It’s pretty simple actually. Manual mode insures that each of the photos I take for the panorama will be exposed with the exact same settings every time. If I don’t so this, the automatic capabilities of the camera may kick in and change the exposure settings of each photo to give me a better balance of light and dark within the single image.
These are some of the images I took for the panorama. They are very different in content and any camera in automatic mode would have exposed them differently making stitching very difficult.
There’s no way to tell the camera that you want it to balance the light and dark areas across the next 10 or so photos. So you have to use manual mode. But here’s the real tip, shoot a couple of photos of your pano area first using your favorite “automatic” mode. Then go back and see what settings the camera picked and set your manual mode to those settings.
