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Manual Mode

Lesson 7 from: FAST CLASS: Speedlights 101

Mark Wallace

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Lesson Info

7. Manual Mode

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Lesson Info

Manual Mode

manual mode. Are you guys ready to learn a do manual mode? OK, we're gonna do this with a Nikon. Okay? We've had enough cannon for right now. We're gonna do this with a Nikon, and we're gonna shoot in now. When I say manual mode, by the way, we're gonna shoot the camera in manual mode. We're not going to shoot with a flash in manual mode yet. We're not ready for that yet. We have got to grow up a little before we're ready for that. We're gonna show how to shoot with the camera in manual mode. So what I'll do is I'm gonna go into live you here on my Nikon camera so you can see everything that I'm doing. I'll try to hold. This is still a possible Oh, sorry not to make everybody sick on. We have a couple of things going on. I'm gonna point this at the floor. So in every camera, there is some kind of meter. So in a Nikon into the right side of the screen with a cannon, it's on the bottom of the screen. This is what you would be looking through when you look through your viewfinder. There's...

some kind of thing that tells you if you have too much light or not enough light. Um, and I need to put this in manual mode to so we can actually do this. The other thing that we have is somewhere in your screen. You'll have something that says what the aperture value is and something that says with shutter speed is so on this I can move the aperture value. I'm doing that with my finger on the front. So that's on the front on Nikon cameras. It's on the back on canon cameras. You use the little dial there, so what we'll do first is we first have to set where I eso is going to be. So in here, we have a lot of light. I'm gonna take the isso as low as it will go. Um, this camera only goes to 200. So Nikon people 200. So I have taken it all the way down. Now that where should you put your eyes? So it base. It's based on how much light eyes in the room or outside. So normally I keep my eyes so as low as possible because the lower the I s o the cleaner. The images are so I like to keep it low. So in here, 200. So right now I s so low. So now we have the question of this. Where should we put these two things? We have to start somewhere. So the question is, what's more important? Is shutter speed more important or his aperture? More important, the only way we know that is to say is motion more important to me or is depth of field. This is not a basic photography class, so I can't go into details on that come to the tour. But we're going to say the basic thing is this. If your shutter speed is slow, you're gonna have a lot of blur. If your shutter speed is fast, it's gonna freeze that blur. If your aperture is a small number, it means it's really big and wide, and not very much is in focus. If you're small, like 2.8, if your aperture number is high like 22 it's actually really small and lots of stuff is in focus, So we have to choose which one of those things is more important to us. So for me right now, what I'm going to say is, I want to control how much is in focus. So I'm going to change my aperture value. And I wanted to be I'm just gonna make something up here. In fact, Sarah, can you come on out here? We're gonna do a portrait, and I want shallow dip the field, which is something like like, this picture right here. We have flowers out of focus, but we have a model and focus. That's what shall adopt the field is. So come on over, and I'm gonna have you stand right here. Here we go. Good. Just right there. So what I want to do here is I want to make sure your and focus and the background falls out of focus. So what I'm gonna do here is this aperture value needs to be a small number. Somebody go down. I'm gonna go all way down to 2.8, which gives me really shallow depth of field, so you'll be in focus. That'll fall out of focus. So the question is, what should my shutter speed be? That's the question. I don't know, but what I do know is I have a gauge that will tell me so all I'll have to do is put this up and then this is gonna be really fun because I'm doing this backwards. I am going to roll my shutter speed until my gage says zero. Right. Mammo Now is a little blurry because I don't have a tripod. And I was shooting with my head looking back way, but I was doing this. Give me some credit here. Um, so that gives us a new exposure. That is pretty close. The white balance is off. Let me see if I can fix that. Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about still alive. You Let's talk about exposure. Compensation? Ah, much better white balance. What if we wanted Teoh do exposure compensation and make this under exposed normally in aperture priority mode? When we change exposure, compensation, it changes. What? Shutter, right? Yes. If we're in shutter party mood and we use exposure compensation, it changes. What? Aperture? Yes, Right now, what's the most important thing to us? We already said it. What is it? Aperture? Yes. So my exposure compensation is gonna be me changing my shutter. Right? So What I'll do is I want to have this looking backwards again. I wanna have this picture under exposed just a little bit. So what I'll do is I will change my shutter speed until it says I'm under exposed to you there in the right hand side, it says I'm under exposed by one stopped by two stops. Click, click. I'm under exposed by two stops. That's exposure compensation in manual mode. I did it myself. So what I'm gonna do is Kim just call out a number to me between 105 2 50 Perfect. How he's thinking that that's crazy. So what we just did is we said now we're shooting and shutter priority mood. That's what we're gonna do. So we're gonna set this to 250. I'm doing that with my thumb right here. This is 2 50 What should our aperture value be? I don't know. I don't know. So what we're gonna do here is we're gonna put this up. We're gonna take a look. Oh, what's the problem? Under exposed. Can I let in any more light? No, I can't because my aperture is as wide as it can go. What do I dio? I can raise my I s o just like this and check it out. I s 0 seems to work just fine. That's how manual mode words you say. I'm going to start with this and I'm gonna just until everything balances out. If you want under exposed or over exposure, just use your little beater works. All right, let's do the same thing. But now let's throw a flash on the camera when we're in manual mode. We're thinking, now, how is the flash going to automatically know what the exposure should be? The ninja still lives, Okay, So when we do all this stuff, the only difference in that whole act in four parts that happens is when I take a picture instead of the camera me during the ambient light. It's allowing me to figure that out. But the ninja, the pre flash is still going to come out, figure out how much light should be in there and then take a picture. So in manual mode, you could still leave your flash and auto because they're two different things. This is sort of fun. So I have my flash in just t tl mode. That's all we needed to be in TL mode. It's really cool. Um, Yep. It's gente de. There we go. So, um, what I'm gonna do is I'm going to say that aperture is the most important thing to me. I'm gonna take my eyes. So it's at 200. We're gonna leave it there. I'm gonna go Teoh 4.5. I think that's gonna be pretty good again. I'm gonna try to do this with looking backwards. I don't know. I did. Okay, so we're well under exposed, correct? Well, under exposed. And by the way, on this camera, I don't focus. Does early work unless they push this little button. Okay. Did my flash fire it did. So check this out. Under exposed in manual mode. Proper exposure from the flash. We want to increase how much ambient light is coming into our seen. How do we do it? What did we learn? What controls that? No aperture does not capture controls. This shutter controls ambient light. Right? So the more the slower are shutter goes, the more ambient light will get to get more of this. Let's prove it out. Okay, so what I'm gonna do here, or a 250th of a second or ambient light is under exposed clubs Going down, Going down Mawr ambient light, More ambient light. So it's still a little under exposed. See if we can focus a little bit The bone and we got mawr. Ambient light. Slower. Shutter. Faster. Shutter. Okay, so this one was at Ah, here we go. 20th of a second. Lots of ambient light. 250th of a second. Almost no ambulance. 4.54 point five. What changed? These were the same 20th of a second. Let's go forward. Going the wrong way. Sorry, I so aperture the same. The only thing that changed was shudder Fast shutter. Not very much. Ambient life. Slow shutter, more ambient light changing shutter speed changes. Ambient light, faster shutter speed, less ambient light. Slower shutter speed mawr ambient light flash exposure. Compensation changes. The output of the flash. Higher flash exposure compensation More flash, less last exposure. Compensation Les Flash like on owners. Rejoice because that's how you control those two things independently. And I think canon people, you should do the same thing. Shooting manual mode. It's easy and you have a total control. Why not? That's what I like. Okay, Last is this Don't forget about I s o So we've been talking about shutter speeds and aperture values and shutter speeds and aperture values and flash exposure, compensation and all that stuff we haven't talked too much about I s O. So I s O is sort of the tide, the higher the is so the easier is to capture all light, whether it's flash or ambient light. Okay, so the more sensitive your camera is, the less light your flash is going to have to output. Now, if you're shooting a wedding or an event that is important because your battery is gonna die if your flash has to keep pumping out like pumping out like so going from on high eso value of 100 to 200 isn't really going to impact the noise of your images really at all. But it's one stop, which means your flash has to output half the light to give you the same exposure half the light just by changing from 102 100 which means that it's gonna not heat up much is going to recharge faster. And you're gonna get mawr from that flash so you could go to 400 maybe 800 so you can save some battery. You can save some, uh, of your flash. You know, after melt it is just by doing that one little teeny thing, but you really could andan. Also, ambient light is gonna be easier to catch. So in a really dark environment, if you want mawr ambient light and you want to shoot, let's say 1/60 of a second because you don't want a bunch of blurring their images. But you're not getting any of that. You don't have to take your shutter speed all the way down. Did 30th our 15th of a second. You could just increase your eyes so to 200 or 400 or 800 and you'll get that. And your flash is going to realize you've done that, and it's going to reduce its output, and it's gonna work just fine. Two separate exposures. They work hand in hand, pretty cool

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