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View Poll Results: Which do you prefer?
Shutter Priority 19 82.61%
Apature Priority 4 17.39%
Voters: 23. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 6 Nov 2005, 14:35 (Ref:1453366)   #1
Allen Mead
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Which do you prefer?

Which do you prefer to shoot with, Shutter Priority or Apature Priority and why?

Now, this might sound daft, but I did take a few snaps using Shutter Priority on an overcast day with the white balance set to 'cloudy' The snaps came out quite dark, should I have just left it to work it out automatically or set it it to bright sunshine?

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Old 6 Nov 2005, 14:47 (Ref:1453370)   #2
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Originally Posted by Allen Mead
Which do you prefer to shoot with, Shutter Priority or Apature Priority and why?

Now, this might sound daft, but I did take a few snaps using Shutter Priority on an overcast day with the white balance set to 'cloudy' The snaps came out quite dark, should I have just left it to work it out automatically or set it it to bright sunshine?
It shouldn't make any difference to the exposure whether you're using shutter or aperture prority. The exposure should be the same, you're just deciding which one takes priority (hence 'priority'). In your example, the headlights are probably fooling the meter causing it to underexpose. Only way around it is to take a meter reading from something neutrally lit like tarmac or grass and lock your exposure in which ever mode you're working, or to set both aperture and shutter manually.
Also, white balance shouldn't have any affect on exposure.

For motorsport under normal conditions (no dazzling reflections or headlights) I'd be using shutter priority and auto white balance.

Forgot to say why I'd be using shutter priority. Usually I'd be wanting to control sharpness vs impression of speed of the target. For best sharpness use high shutter speed, for best impression of speed, use low shutter speed - especially when panning.

HTH
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Old 6 Nov 2005, 16:27 (Ref:1453434)   #3
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I think your picture is suffering from where you have the meter bias set, centre weighted, spot or matrix. I would think you had that set on centre weighted or spot, but I would bet on centre.
As Dan says the headlights have probably fooled the meter.
I use matrix or whatever your camera's equivalent is for motorsport shots especially if I can't get near the action.
If I am panning I go for shutter priority and a slowish speed to blur the background but rarely use aperture priority as I like to have control over the motion of the picture in motorsport.
Although with a bit of help from PS it isn't too bad

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Old 6 Nov 2005, 18:24 (Ref:1453479)   #4
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What aperture was the picture shot at? If it was the maximum for the lens your underexposure is the result of using too fast a shutter speed for the available light.

I'd also second gungadan's advice to take an exposure reading off a neutral surface - grass is as close to a grey card as you'll get!
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Old 7 Nov 2005, 22:14 (Ref:1454715)   #5
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The pic was shot at f/22 @ 1/200 Lens is the 70-200 L USM. This is showing up my very, very limited knowledge of taking pictures. I will need to experiment a lot more. Light wasn't too bad, this pic was taken a few moments later but on "point and squirt" sports mode.

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Old 7 Nov 2005, 22:16 (Ref:1454716)   #6
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Thanks for the info guys. Can anyone recommend a photography course that would be worth going on apart from learning by trial and error myself, it'd be nice to have a bit more of a helping hand
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Old 7 Nov 2005, 22:30 (Ref:1454738)   #7
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I always use Shutter Priority, rather than Apature can sort its self out, but for head on stuff like the example above I always aim to go for F5.6.

I would learn by trail and error, that's what I have done, some of my stuff from the rallycross yesterday came out very dark, but i now how to sort it out.
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Old 7 Nov 2005, 22:55 (Ref:1454769)   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Allen Mead
The pic was shot at f/22 @ 1/200 Lens is the 70-200 L USM. This is showing up my very, very limited knowledge of taking pictures. I will need to experiment a lot more. Light wasn't too bad, this pic was taken a few moments later but on "point and squirt" sports mode.
Not sure if this is what you're asking but I did a City & Guilds course at my local college which was very enjoyable and gave me a far better understanding of the technical aspects of photography than I had before.

Although nothing directly related to motorsport was taught, we were able to chose our own themes for modules (within guidelines), so picked motorsport for a photo-essay. Whether that sort of thing is of interest depends whether you have a general interest in photography (I did) or whether you just want to concentrate on motorsport.
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Old 8 Nov 2005, 10:04 (Ref:1455020)   #9
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As you know Allen I'm in pretty much the same situation as you - used point and squirt mode but am looking to move on from that. What I'm tending to do at the moment is leave it on point and squirt for anything I really want a picture of and then use other races for experimentation (for the TRC races I've generally left it alone but stuff like Caterhams, Formula Ford etc that I have no interest in I'm happy to play with the camera settings). Once I'm confident I can get good results on a regular basis I'll switch to shutter priority all the time (unless I bottle it )
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Old 8 Nov 2005, 10:21 (Ref:1455031)   #10
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I tend to use Aperture priority for most of my head on shots. I tend to use 8.0 if the light is good, going back down towards 6 and 5.6 in darker conditions.

For panning I switch to shutter priority since you can't guarntee the camera will select a slow enough exposure for a classic blured moving wheels image.

I'd have like to have taken a course in photography, but am unable to due to time constraints. I freely admit I still have plenty to learn about the technical side of photography, but have picked up most of what I know from trail n error and learning off other photographers.
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Old 8 Nov 2005, 10:55 (Ref:1455065)   #11
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allen even at 200th second...the light would have had to been spectacular to have the aperture at f22...either that or you'd have to have your iso/asa set to around 1000...noisetastic!

i never use aperture priority, and use shutter priority rarely, maybe only when i shoot football or rugby and the play is going in and out of shadow, say from a grandstand...even there the background can screw things up.

my advice(and feel free to ignore it)is switch the camera to manual. learn the basic exposures for the main conditions you might come across(sunny day, cloudy day, floodlights), then tinker accordingly. its sunny...100 iso, 500 @ 5.6 and a half...its a really sunny day, up to 8 maybe...you want to pan pictures - slow your shutter speed down and with each increment close your aperture ring, (feel free to have a quick chimp on the back to see how its looking )

from days of film i've always had my camera set to M...all these priorities just confuse.
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Old 8 Nov 2005, 15:31 (Ref:1455282)   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Allen Mead
Which do you prefer to shoot with, Shutter Priority or Apature Priority and why?

Now, this might sound daft, but I did take a few snaps using Shutter Priority on an overcast day with the white balance set to 'cloudy' The snaps came out quite dark, should I have just left it to work it out automatically or set it it to bright sunshine?

I agree with Falcemob that the metering has been affected by the car headlights. Another possible solution is to use the exposure lock button if you have one. Aim at the track/road just ahead of the subject, lock exposure then recompose the shot.....works for me
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Old 9 Nov 2005, 01:35 (Ref:1455886)   #13
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I use manual all the time these days, just have more control over the shots that way.
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Old 9 Nov 2005, 12:24 (Ref:1456270)   #14
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the reason i shoot manual is the backwards logic of it actually making life easier. if you set your exposure correctly thats it till the light changes. with auto priorities lots of little things can go wrong...like the two rally pictures shown. just the simple fact that one car came along with headlights blazing and one didn't, seems to have made the camera come up with two entirely different exposures.
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Old 9 Nov 2005, 15:27 (Ref:1456387)   #15
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kdr
the reason i shoot manual is the backwards logic of it actually making life easier. if you set your exposure correctly thats it till the light changes. with auto priorities lots of little things can go wrong...like the two rally pictures shown. just the simple fact that one car came along with headlights blazing and one didn't, seems to have made the camera come up with two entirely different exposures.
Comes back to the exposure lock function - shoot whatever priority you want (personally I shoot more in TV than Manual, gives me less to do in a hurry), then lock the exposure on a section of track, compose and shoot. It's as simple as that. Most modern DSLR's will have this function - I know Canon and Nikon do.
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Old 9 Nov 2005, 15:34 (Ref:1456390)   #16
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Originally Posted by Allen Mead
Thanks for the info guys. Can anyone recommend a photography course that would be worth going on apart from learning by trial and error myself, it'd be nice to have a bit more of a helping hand
Join a camera club. Like most clubs, they may be a bit cliquey to start with but you will learn more with a club than on any course.
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Old 9 Nov 2005, 16:01 (Ref:1456400)   #17
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I also wouldn`t use anything other than manual. I use a 20D or a 10D which are half-decent cameras but they still make more mistakes than my brain does!! After using manual for a while you find that you can change aperture or shutter as the light around you changes INSTINCTIVELY. You don`t need the camera to do it for you.
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Old 9 Nov 2005, 16:03 (Ref:1456401)   #18
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Originally Posted by Hubble
Comes back to the exposure lock function - shoot whatever priority you want (personally I shoot more in TV than Manual, gives me less to do in a hurry), then lock the exposure on a section of track, compose and shoot. It's as simple as that. Most modern DSLR's will have this function - I know Canon and Nikon do.
yes i know...but as you can tell i'm a technophobe! pride of place on my desk, (even if it is just as a paperweight now) is my old F3..
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Old 9 Nov 2005, 17:30 (Ref:1456477)   #19
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Not saying exposure lock is wrong, it definitely works for some.

But until they make cameras that are smarter than our brains (which will incidentally coincide with the end of the world) M is best, IF you can teach yourself to change ap and shutter quickly and without thinking. Because of 2 reasons I can think of immediately:

1) Some cars reflect the light differently than others (Champion Audi for one, they are bright bright white with reflective decals that will do a number on a camera algorithm) So, even just taking a reading from the track surface will give you a perfectly exposed grey track but 1 to 1 1/3 stop overexposed car. In manual you can anticipate this and stop down to compensate for that bright beam of Audi light that's coming to you. I've been in a situation where I needed an Audi shot bad, and literally shot an entire lap 1 stop under just for the Audi. In the end, it makes for less postproduction work in PS and overall a better photo.

2) What happens if between the time you took the reading from the track and locked exposure to the time the car comes by, the sun comes out from behind a cloud? Suddenly everything is overexposed. Conversely the same would be true if the sun disappeared as well. In Manual, you can immediately adjust your aperture or shutter (which ever suits best in the situation) and get a correctly exposed shot even though the light changed just a moment before.

But it does come down to personal preference, I know a guy who shoots american football and is constantly changing the AF points as the action happens in the viewfinder and snapping. Now, on a D2h, with 9 or 11 AF points that's impressive!

Now for general news assignments, I find myself using Aperture priority a bit, because the lighting conditions are changing so much, with such a variety of shadows and highlights in as many as 2 or 3 subjects moving etc. I use A priority because I like to control how the background looks like and I have a steady enough hand that if the camera gives a slow shutter speed, I won't get a blurry mess.
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Old 9 Nov 2005, 17:45 (Ref:1456487)   #20
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It's interesting seeing the mixture of views on this subject, and just what a Photography Forum should be about. The races I tend to shoot most are generally only 15 minutes or so long, and I have a fairly specific remit from the Editor I shoot for, so I tend to rely more heavily on the cameras brain than my own.

I have only been doing photography for just over a year now, and have much to learn, and many things to master with my cameras. One fine day when I am shooting for myself I'll give the manual trick a go, but until then any advice would be appreciated.

Cheers guys
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Old 9 Nov 2005, 18:20 (Ref:1456527)   #21
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give it a go sometime hubble...its relatively easy and painless. i shoot championship and league one football when i get the chance, and focussing on two men running erratically for a ball, even with af, makes manually exposing pictures seem like a walk in the park!
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Old 9 Nov 2005, 18:36 (Ref:1456542)   #22
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I use both Shutter Priority and Aperture on my Nikon D2H in equal measure....

The two shots below show you why in my case.. I suppose it depends on your subject matter and desired outcome.

Image 1

Shot at 1/640s @ f5.6 over 800mm (400mm f2.8 lens with 2x converter) on Aperture Priority. I wanted to 'throw' the background out but freeze the subject as at this circuit and corner there are a lot of distracting objects that you just can't get away from at a big meeting like the British Superbikes yet the action is too good to not stand there with a camera. It also adds to the feel when the foreground is thrwon out too.. Another cracking reason to use Aperture priority for this type of shot can be seen on the LHS of the shot. I think the heat-haze from the exhaust really adds to the image and is something you don't get with Shutter Priority.



Image 2

Shot at 1/200s at f8 with and 80-200mm f2.8 zoom

Here, I wanted to get the bike 'in full motion' mode knowing that the front end would be lifted under power. The purists in bike racing photography say you must 'lose the spokes' on the bike and the only way to do this with a side on shot is to control the shutter speed.



I occasionally use Manual priority as shots can underexpose with auto metering. I'd take a shot on Shutter or Aperture priority and then up the exposure by a notch by setting the camera to manual and controlling both settings.

Guy
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Old 9 Nov 2005, 19:36 (Ref:1456591)   #23
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in image 1 guy, surely though if you set your camera to shutter priority @ 640th, the camera will select 5.6 as your aperture and you'll end up with the same result, heat haze et al. or am i being dumb?

ooh my head hurts...i'm remembering now why i stick with manual.

i think i know where you took that shot at brands, on the rise as they go out into the country. great pictures to be had, but you're right the background is a shocker.
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Old 10 Nov 2005, 00:03 (Ref:1456815)   #24
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Possibly true kdr,

.........but it's easier for me to say at a predetermined f5.6 I'll throw the complete background out and at this angle the corresponding (but obviously quite high) shutter speed is irrelevant as the motion effect on the bike is not an issue nor is it what I'm after.....whereas trying to guess what effect a 1/400s Vs 1/640s or Vs 1/500s shutter speed will give on a shot when all I want is to freeze the action and throw the background out, especially when you won't know the f number you've been 'given' until the shot is taken.

Basically I'm trying to say there's times when you want to guarantee the DOF you'll achieve but don't really give two-hoots about the shutter speed you'll get - head-on motorsports shots being the classic example.

.......and yes you're right....that 1st shot was taken on the exit of Surtees at Brands Hatch as the bikes head off onto the GP circuit.

Regards, Guy
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