Your General Shooting Technique?

[jcdill]

Originally Posted by DSJohnson

...an order of operations you go through when you are setting up your shot.. Selecting ISO, Shutter Speed, Aperture and in what order? Do you use a hand held light meter or grey card?

1) Already set settings:

RAW: Unless a client has other criteria, I always shoot in RAW. When I finish a job where I was shooting in JPEG I reset back to RAW right away, as this isn't always something I check when I first pick up the camera (since it's usually in RAW already).

Auto WB: Because I shoot in RAW, I don't bother setting the white balance in-camera. If necessary I can easily correct the WB in Lightroom then apply to all other photos shot in that same light. If I am shooting in drastic lighting I may use the custom WB so that I can get the best review image, but I'm still going to tweak the WB in Lightroom so the WB setting doesn't really matter.

One reason I rarely check these settings is they are shown/set on the "back" screen, not the "top" screen. The following settings are all on the top screen in my camera:

2) ISO: The first think I check when I pick up the camera is the ISO. I use ISO 200 for most daylight shots, unless I'm shooting sports. For sports, I push up the ISO depending on how fast I need the shutter speed, and how bright the light is (e.g. time of day, daylight versus overcast), and what f-stop I require for that sport. If I'm shooting available light in a low light situation I set the ISO to 1600. I never use incremental ISOs, only 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600.

3) EV: I usually have -0.3 EV set as my camera tends to shoot a bit hotter than I want - I like the deeper saturation that comes from underexposing slightly. I adjust the EV as necessary to account for environment/background.

4) Metering: My default metering mode is evaluative. For me it's faster/easier to take a quick test shot and review the image and histogram and then adjust the EV as necessary for a given shooting situation than to deal with the other metering modes.

5) AF Mode: If I'm shooting sports I generally use AI Servo and follow the action. However, if the action is coming to a set spot I may set AF Mode to One-Shot and prefocus on that spot and wait for the action to enter the zone (this works well with horse jumping). If I'm not shooting sports then it's set to One-Shot.

6) Frame Rate: If I'm shooting sports I often set the drive to a fast frame rate (8.5 frames per second). But not always - sometimes I use One-Shot and just work on nailing my shot timing. It depends on the sport. For instance, when I'm shooting photos of horses jumping, I can use One-Shot for advanced riders but will use 8.5 FPS when I'm shooting beginning riders because often they look a muddle at the point over the jump when they *should* look great, and the action is too fast to change when I take the shot to shoot a fraction sooner or later and catch the photo that looks best. In that situation I shoot a burst, then chimp to select/save the best shot of the series and delete the others. If I'm shooting landscape/street scenes with a very slow shutter (without a tripod) I sometimes use the 2 second delay and prop my camera on something - this way the vibrations from pressing the shutter button don't affect the image.

7) Exposure Mode: I shoot in a variety of different modes, most often AV, TV, and Manual. (I never use P unless I'm shooting in JPEG, on instructions from the client. Like my file format, I change it back out of P to AV or TV as soon as I'm done with the job.) For sports I use AV if I have plenty of light and can afford the luxury to set the f-stop I want knowing the shutter speed will stay high enough to get good shots. If I have low light, I drop to TV so I can control the minimum shutter speed. If I have *really* low light, (which often means extra dark backgrounds) I go to Manual mode and often under-expose by 1 stop (giving me 1 more stop of shutter speed to try to stop the action) and then "push" the image during RAW processing. I find this gives better results with my camera than pushing the ISO (to high AKA 3200). I also often set my exposure settings for the brightest lit areas, and then wait for the action to come to where I have enough light to get a decent shot.

8) I also check my lens settings to make sure I'm in AF (sometimes the button gets slid back to M when I put the camera in my camera bag) and that the IS settings are correct for the situation, and clean my lens/filter as necessary.

[chl0e]

I usually shoot in aperture priority or manual

I usually turn on the camera, take a photo and then realise I've still got realyl blue white balance settings on or the 2 second timer *ha ha ha* so I have to set those back. It's a really bad habit of leaving them on, I'm trying to get out of it xD

Now I'm shooting in RAW I don't use white balance so it's not so bad xD

After I've done that I'll select the focusing point out of the 9 spots and possibly change the kind of metering mode and the exposure balance thingy.
That's it I think. I tend to leave the ISO on 100.

[MissHK]

Originally Posted by chl0e

I usually shoot in aperture priority or manual

I usually turn on the camera, take a photo and then realise I've still got realyl blue white balance settings on or the 2 second timer *ha ha ha* so I have to set those back. It's a really bad habit of leaving them on, I'm trying to get out of it xD

Me too! Especially with the self-timer. Always leaving that on by mistake.

Other than that, I tend to shoot A-P (I have a preference, bordering on obsession, for f/5.6 - I don't know why, I just do) if I'm outdoors and manual if I'm indoors and it needs a flash or in studio. If I'm shooting A-P, I pick f/5.6, adjust the shutter speed to give the exposure I want (I tend to opt slightly on the side of underexposure if things are getting difficult and consistently perfect exposure is too much for my tiny little mind to handle!). I'm not too fussy with ISO but, then again, a lot of my outdoor stuff tends to fall under the "art" heading anyway so sometimes a little bit of digital noise is a help rather than a burden.

[vrillusions]

My basic order is first check iso. Outdoors are 100 or 200, Indoors are 400 or 800. Then I check the white balance. I try and make sure to reset it to daylight, I never use automatic white balance. I shoot raw but I'd rather get the white balance good beforehand. The mode is usually in P but I've slowly started using aperture priority more often. Metering is pretty spot on for me. I'll hop between evaluative and center-weighted.

I have a grey card, but I always forget to use the darn thing.

If a flash is involved I try to gel it to match the location. For example if I'm in a convention center that's using fluorescents I'll use the green gel. This is because I keep flash to a minimum, usually at -1 or -2 power on the flash. Then I shoot in Av mode so it generally exposes for ambient but does flash. I also normally have second curtain sync on so it looks better on longer exposures. As you can tell if I can avoid flashes in a non-studio situation I do