manual exposure instead of AV

[van bogaert erik]

hello, i want to begin with manual exposure to shoot birds. Now correct me if i am wrong ;

When the light is the same (blue sky and sun) , i will measure a neutral tone like a tree and change the shutter speed so that i am in middle of the bar in my viewfinder and i had the ISO at 400 and f6,3 . so far so good i think ?

but 1 problem is when its becoming darker like overclouded or hen i am photographing a bird in the blue sky and i want to compensate to put more light on teh underwing or should i correct this with shadows in a program ??? there wil be more problems but i am hust starting out on manual .
thanks
erik

[Doug Brown]

Hi Erik. You can use a neutral tone as a reference point, but you don't necessarily meter for that tone. If you are shooting a bright white bird, you'd want to underexpose relative to your neutral tone. Basically you are trying to properly expose the bird; using manual exposure the bird will remain properly exposed regardless of the background (assuming that the light is constant). When the light changes or your subject changes, your exposure must also change. How you adjust exposure is entirely up to you; it doesn't have to be your shutter speed.

[David Stephens]

I mainly use Av mode, but switch to manual in situations where the BG and the subject are going to be vastly different and the BG will change a lot. For instance, shooting a flying raptor against a blue sky, I'll stay in Av mode and simply add plus EV by spinning the wheel on the back of the camera; however, if the sky is a mix of blue, dark grey, bright white due to partial clouds, I'll shoot manual, with the exposure set for the bird type and coloring. I have friends that insist on shooting M mode all the time. I prefer to understand how my excellent meter in my camera works and use it to react quickly to changing light. Whether in Av mode or M, you need to be aware of the exposure relationship between the subject and the BG.

Some people use spot metering, but I find that often counter intuitive, for instance, under exposing a white bird because the meter wants the bird to be medium grey. Many photographers don't realize how the metering system compensates toward medium grey, whether the subject is medium grey or not. This is one of the most important concepts in digital photography to understand.

[Jim Michael]

You can adopt Ansel Adams' Zone System and it makes it pretty easy to determine exposure. A scene ranges in brightness from pure black Zone 0 to pure white Zone 10, with a stop of gradation for each step between 0 and 10. Middle grey is Zone 5. Your meter wants to make things look like Zone 5, but you may want them to be on a different zone. White things with texture would be around Zone 8. Dark things with texture would be about Zone 2. So instinctively you can say when you are targeting something you want to render white with texture you "place" it on Zone 8 by adding 3 stops of exposure (8-5=3). Likewise, if the thing you would like to render should be black with texture you would underexpose by 3 stops or so to place it on Zone 2. Don't over think it, it's just an approximation. See how you like the results and tweak from there. Camera sensors have a lot of latitude these days and you may be able to expand things a bit. A Pentax 1° spot meter is useful if you can find one, but if you are shooting with a long lens and your camera has a well defined spot region you probably have a close approximation using that.

[Gary Kinard]

It ain't rocket science. Just shoot a twig in a tree against the sky . Compensate until it is the way you like it. After you blow out a few it is easy to get close. Also depends on the equipment you use. Sensors? I use Canon the most, 7D, Mark IV. Got to be the worst sensors on the market for pulling shadows IMO. So I shoot a the max for these sensors ( push it to the right as far as I can). Sony sensors, I tend to be a little more lazy in my settings. Just shoot RAW. And don't give up. It is much better IMO