Photography

Manual Setting

Manual Mode allows the user to choose the Aperture value and Shutter speed. The camera will no longer have any control over the exposure and will just shoot using whatever setting you select. Some cameras will still perform its usual exposure metering but only up to a point of showing the user whether the current setting is above or below its calculated values. An indicator may appear in the viewfinder or LCD display showing if the image will be over exposed or underexposed using the current settings and oftentimes a proper exposure compensation value is displayed. It's up to the user to use this values as a guide on how to proceed.

Many users may consider the Manual Mode to be a very cumbersome way of getting a proper exposure as you would have to change the aperture value and shutter speed in almost every shot. It may be true as would be expected on any Manual Mode, but on the other hand this option gives you a considerable amount of flexibility if you know exactly what you want and you know how to do it. If you get accostumed to the Manual Mode, you might even find it more consistent than other modes as you will get used to always check for both variables.

Personally, I find using the Manual Mode easier than a combination of the other modes with Exposure Compensation. Since the automatic and semi-automatic modes often gives unacceptable results, it would require you to change your Exposure Compensation settings. In manual mode, the same results can be achieved without going to a bunch of menus and setting values everytime. The preview in the viewfinder or LCD display will be a good reference if the exposures settings are already to your liking.

For night still photography, you can set the shutter speed as long as you like while you set the aperture value to a right one. This way you won't have to adjust your Exposure Compensation values to get the scene's correct lighting.

Manual Mode can also come in handy for cases like indoor sports photography where the use of Flash is prohibited. Indoor lighting is often not bright enough to allow for a very fast shutter speed. Without Flash it would require the highest ISO and the smallest available aperture value. For non SLR cameras this would pose a big problem specially for ISO values of 800 and above where noise becomes very hard to tolerate. With Manual Mode you can easily set the exposure settings such that an acceptable shutter speed can be used while slightly underexposing your image. The brightness level of image can then be brought up in Post Process using software programs like Photoshop. This process gives a much better result than doing a Noise reduction on a high ISO noise because Noise reduction programs tend to soften the texture of the image thus reducing the details.