On Sat, 15 Dec 2007 09:46:42 -0500, "Reginald P. Smithers III"
[email protected] wrote:

HK wrote:
JoeSpareBedroom wrote:
"HK" wrote in message
news JoeSpareBedroom wrote:
"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 15 Dec 2007 03:02:13 GMT, "JoeSpareBedroom"
wrote:

You have to learn to take pictures which are 99% correct when you
click the
shutter, and forget that there's software, the modern equivalent
of the
darkroom. Shut of ALL focus and exposure automation, and never
mind the bad
eyes excuse. Alfred Eisenstadt took nice sharp pictures with a
manual focus
camera until he was much older than you.
I disagree with that approach.

In my opinon, you start with the automagic components and see what the
camera is using as a base line for most of the images you take.

Once you get a feel for how the camera looks at the world, then you
start experimenting with the manual functions bracketing the auto
features base settings.

You have to have a feel for it first.

Admittedly, John is using a hammer to drive a stick pin approach when
he'd probably be better off with a really nice point-and-shoot, but he
has it, so coaching him through the proess is the better way to go.

OK, but one needs to understand what light meters can and cannot do.
One thing they can't do is know what you're photographing. An
interesting exercise is to evenly light 3 different flat objects:
One black, one grey, one white. Fill the viewfinder with each object
and take a picture, letting the camera choose the exposure. Of, if
in manual mode, "obey" the exposure meter. The results should raise
questions in the user's mind immediately.



I don't see how you can take decent indoor portrait shots without a
good flash meter or difficult outdoor shots without a light meter.
There are some combo units that do the job.


It's unlikely that the vast majority of people will buy a flash meter.
But, since flash is usually the dominant light source for indoor
pictures, a few test shots will often solve the problem. With digital,
you see the results right away. With film, you just have to know the
characteristics of the film you're using. There's a guy around here
who does a lot of band pictures with flash, and his shots are
gorgeous. He uses some sort of high end Canon camera. He shuts off all
automation and tweaks the manual settings to an extent that disagrees
completely with what the camera says is right.

Outdoors, a separate meter is equally unlikely for most users. A
camera with a spot metering option is helpful. For photographing
people, using your own hand as the meter target is a good trick for
setting exposure, assuming it can be metered in the same light as the
subject. But, once that's done, you have to have a way to tell the
auto exposure thing to leave your settings alone. If the color of your
hand doesn't closely match the key subject, then you have to make
adjustments based on your knowledge of grey scales. If the light's not
changing quickly and constantly, one adjustment should be all you need.

As far as John's problem with manual focus, I wonder if his camera's
split prism isn't up to par. Or, maybe it hasn't got one at all. Even
when I was 20, I ran into occasional situations where focusing
would've been difficult without that tool. It's there for a reason,
not just for people with bad eyes. It's fast, too.


http://www.normankoren.com/zonesystem.html
http://www.kodak.com/cluster/global/...f9/index.shtml

http://www.normankoren.com/digital_tonality.html



I don't know what camera Herring is using these days, but if it is a
digital nikon "slr," then it doesn't have a split prism. It takes a lot
of practice to properly focus one of these new digital slrs manually.
Even on pre-digital SLRs, though, once you got beyond a certain focal
length, maybe 105 mm, the damned split prism would black out on one
side, so I simply went to a plain focusing screen.


Actually it is not as hard to manually focus as one would think with the
Nikon D200. If you manually focus on the subject, a light on the far
left in the camera viewfinder will come on when you are focus, then you
can compose your shot.

By golly, you're right!
--
John H