Why it's important to continually check camera settings

A few days ago I went to the Springbrook National Park which is a beautiful rainforest filled with wildlife and waterfalls located in the hinterland of the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia.

As I was taking photo after photo of what I hoped would be great waterfall shots, I happened to glance at the ISO setting and saw that it was set to 1600 – far and above my intended setting of ISO 200! I had no idea for how long it had been set to 1600 or how many of my shots were now going to appear slightly grainy due to the high ISO.

I definitely didn’t deliberately set the camera to ISO 1600. I’m assuming it happened with an accidental press of the ISO button prior to winding one of the dials with the intent of adjusting the shutter speed or aperture. Therefore, while I thought I was changing one thing, I was actually cranking up the ISO. Curses!

Incidents like the one above have reminded me how important it is to check and re-check the camera settings throughout the day/session.


Here’s a list of the things I’ll be checking and re-checking from now on:

•The mode I’m shooting in – is it manual, aperture priority or shutter priority? This of course depends on what is important in each shot – depth of field or capturing motion (frozen vs fluid). I’m often switching between modes during my photography outings depending on the subject I’m shooting so it’s good to always be aware of what the camera is set to each time.

•ISO setting. To prevent a repeat of the above!

•Cleanliness of the lens. At another waterfall photography outing, I was shooting from inside a dark cavern/cave and failed to notice the misty spray accumulating on my lens during some long exposures. This resulted in many of the shots from that day being utterly useless.

•Aperture. As stated above- if I’ve decided that depth of field is important, I have to decide HOW MUCH depth I want. It’s much easier to blur the background (by increasing the size of the aperture) at the time of taking the photo than to do so in post-production. Similarly, if I want all of that lovely landscape shot to be in focus, it pays to check I have selected the correct aperture.

•Exposure level (ie shutter speed). If I’m capturing the motion of a scene such as a waterfall or a bunch of passing cyclists, I have to decide if I want it sharp (fast shutter) or blurry (slow shutter). The available light usually also plays a part in what shutter speed is used.

Dog tired

WHAT

This is my dog, Nelson, having a lie down in his kennel. He's a 7 year old labradoodle and the first dog I've ever owned.

WHY

Why else do people take photos of their pets? Because they love them and want to capture their personality and antics. Plus, I'd recently been asked to photograph the pets of some friends and I wasn't 100% happy with the results, so I thought I'd practice.

HOW

Before venturing anywhere near Nelson, I had the camera already set to what I'd anticipated would work for the outside lighting conditions. This was on manual mode, aperture of 8 and a shutter speed of 1/13s (gauged from using the camera's light meter). This ensured that should he decide to suddenly move and ruin the cute pose, at least I'd have a fleeting chance of getting 1 or 2 quick shots in.

This shot was taken from just outside the back door to our house which is where Nelson's kennel is located. I had to move very slowly out the door with the camera in order to capture him lying down like this because usually as soon as I even look like going outside, Nelson comes flying out of his kennel excited and thinking he's going to get walked, fed or patted (or all three).

I focused on his eyes and got down very low so that I was at his level. I also used the side and floor of his kennel to frame the image.

I used aperture f/8 because this usually produces a good focal length and ensures most things are sharp and in focus. I've encounted problems previously using larger apertures (eg. f/6 and below) when photographing friend's pets with long noses - when you focus on the eyes at these larger apertures, the nose and mouth become soft/blurred and can ruin the shot as you're often trying to capture a dog's smiling mouth at the same sharpness as his eyes.

In the image above, Nelson's nose isn't 100% sharp, however I wasn't worried about that in this instance.

Because it was a very dull/rainy day, there wasn't much light available to produce a fast enough shutter speed for my liking. Therefore I increased the ISO to 320.

POST PRODUCTION

The image was firstly converted to greyscale in photoshop. I then made slight adjustments to the contrast, black point and clarity of the image.