What Manual settings should I use for daytime landscapes?

[jsl]

Hi guys,

I'm slowly getting myself out of automatic mode and trying to create photos myself. What Manual settings should I use for daytime landscapes? For example, I know that for portraiture, I need to get as small (correction, I mean low number) an aperture as possible.

I have a feeling that I need to set my camera to aperture priority and set the aperture to as small as possible and ISO as low as possible. However, I think someone else has also told me to us time priority so I'm confused.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[auto-focus]

Hmmm...

I'm slowly getting myself out of automatic mode and trying to create photos myself. What Manual settings should I use for daytime landscapes? For example, I know that for portraiture, I need to get as small an aperture as possible. Not true...a wide aperture is typically best for portrait work

I have a feeling that I need to set my camera to aperture priority and set the aperture to as small as possible and ISO as low as possible. However, I think someone else has also told me to us time priority so I'm confused. I don't think you can make a general statement like this...depending on the time of day for your shots you have to take light condidtions into consideration before making your settings. And yes, to maximize DOF a small aperture would be best along with adjusting your shutter speed and ISO settings accordingly to produce the correct exposure

[Taallyn]

It depends on what you are trying to do with the photograph. You will want a small aperture (large f#) if you want a lot of detail all of the way from the foreground to the background. Conversely, you will want to use a larger aperture (smaller f#) if you want to isolate a subject against a blurred background, say a flower with the faint impression of a snow capped mountain in the the distance.

The same goes for shutter speed. Use a fast shutter speed to freeze action for sharp detail. Use a slower shutter speed to blur moving subjects like water or a field of wind-blown wild flowers.

For ISO, use the lowest for which your camera is calibrated. My camera's lowest is ISO 100. The Nikon D90's is 200. However, the D90's can be set lower than 200. Such setting is shown as Lo1 or such. It is not calibrated to a specific ISO number, but can get you close if you need it. General sticking with the camera's base ISO will give you the best image quality. Increase the ISO if you need more light for either stopping action or depth of field.

Exposure settings ultimately come down to a creative decision. For any given "correct:" exposure, there can be five or six other combinations of aperture and shutter speed that will give you the same quantity of light. However, each combination will be vastly different in creatively with some isolating a single subject with limited depth of field, others having foreground-to-background depth of field, others freezing any action, and others blurring action any action.

No single combination is more correct than the other. The best one is the one that matches your internal vision of the image.

[inkista]

It's all about tradeoffs, and what you want to emphasize in the scene.

Your instincts are good about shooting wide open for portraits, and stopped down for landscapes and using the lowest iso, but there are also reasons why you might not want to do these things--you have to weigh up what's most important to you and what you're willing to compromise on.

With ISO, you're typically going to be juggling noise against getting more light (usually to increase the shutter speed). Landscape photography typically uses the lowest iso possible to decrease the possibility of noise, but this will result in a slower shutter speed, which is why so many landscape photographers use tripods. But iso alone is not your only factor when it comes to eliminating noise--avoiding underexposure can do as much or more to eliminate noise as halving the ISO setting.

With aperture, you're juggling a lot of different factors (which is why aperture priority is a popular shooting mode to use). The aperture controls how much light comes in, but it also controls the depth of field. And it affects the performance of your lens. Lenses are rarely at their best wide open: sharpness, chromatic aberration and vignetting can all often be improved by stopping down at least one full stop from wide open. It's up to you whether or not it's worth it. And at the other end of the spectrum, the diffraction effect means that at very small apertures, you lose sharpness. I'm not saying you want to be at f/8 all the time. There are good reasons to just damn the consequences and shoot wide open or stopped down to f/22. Just be sure you're making a choice. You don't want to unthinkingly limit your options by automatically using only specific aperture settings.

Shutter speed typically is the simplest option--you use it to make the other two fit the exposure you want. ... unless motion blur is a priority. Introducing or eliminating motion blur depends on whether you've got stabilization or a tripod or monopod to use as well. If you're handholding the camera without stabilization, you have to watch your shutter speed so it will be at least 1/focal_length or faster to eliminate camera shake blur and with a lower bound around 1/30s. And this is separate from freezing subject motion, which may be a completely different requirement, based on how fast the subject's moving.

I know it seems like a lot at first, but eventually, it's like driving. You will eventually get to the point where you can weigh up the situation, prioritize factors, and make up your mind about what you're going to do instinctively.

[wulf]

What settings? Ones that work. Generally the light will be brighter than indoor settings and you will want a larger depth of field so you will probably want to stop the aperture down a few notches. However, the most important thing is to know how to adjust the settings.

Try taking several shots of the same scene using different combinations. You can use the onscreen histogram to zero in on a good exposure and, back on your computer, you can look at the finer details.

Wulf