Photography Tip #2: Weaning off of Auto Mode
- Anastasia Lapointe
- Jan 11, 2018
- 3 min read
I thought it would be fun to use photos from our trip to Kiawah last April with our sweet friends Talah & McClain and their precious girls Addison & Charlotte, to demonstrate some of these concepts about Av mode. These photos also make say "look at those babies!!!" and "take me back!!" Ok.. here we go...
When I started out, and made the leap from shooting on “auto”, I exclusively started taking photos in the Av (Cannon) or A (Nikon) mode. This is called Aperture Priority and I touched upon this in my Christmas Bokeh post. In the Av mode, you as a photographer are responsible for deciding two things.
The first is the ISO (I’m not going to get all technical… it’s confusing, and I'm not here to confuse you). The rule of thumb for ISO is, if it’s very bright, set your ISO low (100 is the lowest). So this would be if you are outside on a sunny day, or if you are near reflective surfaces (beach & pool.. water in general, and snow). The photos below were both shot with an ISO of 100.
If the light is diminishing… think golden hour right before the sun sets, set your ISO higher (e.g., 300). If you are indoors, and you have a lot of natural light, an ISO of 300 will probably work too. This is the fun part about having a digital camera. You can play with your settings and take gazillion pictures and then delete the ones that turn out funky. Every single photographer does that. Nobody gets that "perfect" shot right away. The photos below were taken with an ISO of 300.
Finally, if you are losing sunlight, or are indoors and it's a cloudy day, you will want to set your ISO high. The highest I set mine is 1000 (it can be set even higher though), but at that point, you really begin to lose the quality of the photo. Think of it this way...the higher the ISO, the grainier your photos will be. Grainy photo=bad. If all else fails, or this is too much for ya right now, set your ISO on auto.
The photo below was taken of the girls with an ISO 1000. This was right before their bedtime, and we had to turn on the overhead lights which is not ideal. I didn't want to use the flash on my camera, so I had to set the ISO way up, which resulted in somewhat of a grainy photo, and the quality isn't great, but it was worth a capture since they looked so sweet in their matching jammies.
The second thing you are responsible for deciding is your f-stop. Here is the easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy on f-stops. The lower the f-stop, the blurrier the background—you know where the trees aren’t trees, but a smudgy compilation of green (like this photo below of sweet Addison picking flowers before dinner).
The higher the f-stop (meaning the number), the more in focus your background will be. I personally love the smudgy background, so my f-stop doesn’t usually go higher than f/2.8. BUT, here is something really really important that I learned when I was initially shooting everything and everyone in f/1.8....I noticed that if, let's say Elle and my hubby were not neck to neck next to each other, whoever was even slightly in the back, was out of focus. That's because the camera on a low f-stop only focuses on the "thing" that's right in the front. Here is a rule-of-thumb that really helped me when photographing multiple people....
Set your f-stop to f/1.8 if you are photographing ONE person.
Set your f-stop to f/2.2 is you are photographing TWO people (see how they are both in focus even when Charlotte is behind Elle?)
Set your f-stop to f/3.0 if you are photographing THREE people (again, all 3 are in focus, even though Addison is the furthest from me/my camera).
In the picture below, I didnt change my f-stop, and it’s easy to see how the two nuggets in the background are out of focus, and Addison is the only one in focus.
Set your f-stop to f/4.0 (or higher) if you are photographing FOUR or more people. If you are doing a big group photo, then I recommend putting your f-stop at 5.0 or even higher to make sure everyone is in focus. You will lose the blurry background, but everyone will look sharp, and that's more important.
Hope you guys found this helpful! Oh and one more thing.... the side of your lens will indicate the lowest f-stop that your lens can “handle”. Just look at the little number next to the "f" on the side of your lens.
Can't wait to see some snaps!! Xx
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