That photo themes project to which I contribute seems to have occupied a fair bit of my time this month… already!
Whereas I normally submit just one pic (or two if they’re really lucky) I’ve already submitted three this month, and just now I’ve added a fourth. And its still only the 14th!
And I’ve still got loads of ideas. I haven’t even properly started yet. Shame really, cos the group “rules” stipulate a maximum of five pics from each participant per month. Oh well.
However, have to admit to being a bit pleased with this present contribution.
I spent absolutely ages getting it set up just how I wanted it but then, and the real cause for my pleasure, after a few test pics I actually shot it in full manual mode! Wow!
About the only time I’ve ever previously turned the dial to “Manual” has been by accident, and promptly rectified as soon as spotted.
My default mode tends to be “Aperture Priority”, with “Shutter & Aperture Priority” ranking second. I’ve played with the other modes occasionally, but “Manual”? Whoa, far too complex for me.
But not any more, cos the selection this time was by choice.
Only thing I’m slightly niggled about is the white balance. Again I was in Manual mode, but couldn’t quite get it spot on.
Did a bit of tweaking in post-processing and was reasonably satisfied with the result… until it was uploaded to Flickr and then double-checked on another machine.
Bad move!
For the reasonably satisfactory result was achieved on my colour-balanced machine. Yet when I looked at the result on my other machine (a Sony Vaio) whose colour reproduction is probably much closer to how most folk have their monitors set, well, it just looked all wrong. Principally the reds and the pinks (which also impact the blues). The yellow wasn’t quite right either. In fact, looked at with the Sony the whole colour balance was screwed.
Back to the drawing board then and a bit more tweaking until I’d achieved a sort of compromise result for “just about acceptable” reproduction on both machines.
In fairness to myself though, the room in which the shot was taken is… um… “weird” colour-wise. My fault of course. If I must insist on using a mix of different coloured low-wattage light bulbs, then introduce my “additional” lighting specifically for the pic but still retain the “ambient” lighting… well, you get the general idea.
That aside though, yep, overall I’m quite pleased with the shot.
Fantastic shot! AND congrats for using manual mode. I love manual mode. I’ve use aperture priority mode some. I bet if I used it more often, I’d have better pics.
I’ve really got to get on the ball with my theme shot(s). Oh, and the rule of five submissions, perhaps that rule should be relaxed a bit.
Thanks Tam.
Well, now I’ve got over my initial nervousness at using full manual mode and, more to the point, discovered I actually can produce something usable with it, I shouldn’t be at all surprised to find myself turning the dial in that direction a little more often. And there’s a helluva satisfaction from achieving something with it.
The truth is, to get the shutter speed and the aperture and the sensitivity I wanted I didn’t really have that many options other than to use it… or completely change the location of the shot. So I suspect aperture priority will still remain my favourite.
Re the rule thing, no, I vote we leave it as it is. Well, certainly in my case anyway. After all, I can’t really see me bumping up against it all that often.
I always find going full manual to be more of an experiment in frustration. One almost never gets it right the first time so one must fiddle with one or the either setting (or both) until some level of acceptability is obtained.
I do go manual when I’m looking to experiment for a particular purpose, but I’ll stick with aperture or shutter priority most of the time.
I imagine one would, over time, come to be rather skilled at “knowing” what would be the correct settings for both aperture and shutter speed based upon conditions, but that seems more complicated than I’m willing to be at this juncture.
Oddly I didn’t have any real problems with it at all. Coupla tweaks to the shutter speed and “Bingo”… got precisely the result I wanted.
Might just have been a fluke of course, but it was sufficient to encourage me to turn the dial in that direction again at some point.
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