A Better Way To Shoot Aperture Priority
Aperture priority is the go to semi auto setting for most people and for good reason. It gives you the most direct way to creatively control your photo. Depth of field and selecting what’s in focus or out of focus has a huge impact on either the story of the photo or just from a pleasing visual perspective. From a practical point of view, more and more brands are now starting to add aperture rings to their lenses thus making this mode even more intuitive and allow us to even set the aperture with the camera switched off. Finally as long as auto shutter is set correctly, and we will get into that later, you can shoot with peace of mind and only focus on the photo you’re about to take and any creative depth of field decisions.
Minimum Shutter Speed & Auto ISO
This one catches so many people out when shooting aperture priority or even full auto. By default, the minimum shutter speed your camera will select will be extremely low. I am talking 1/30 to 1/100 if your camera is generous. Of course if you are on a tripod, this ain’t an issue. However if you’re walking round especially in low light and taking photos in aperture priority, you will end up with many blurry photos. Your camera will always prioritise a lower ISO and because it doesn’t know what you’re taking photos of or how you’re holding the camera, it will always push that shutter speed down to the minimum. That’s why this is the first setting we need set and it is usually found in the Auto ISO settings under something like minimum shutter speed. For this I always set it to something around 1/200. I know this is high enough for my needs.
While we are here, we can also set the auto ISO. For this I put the base at 160 and max at 3200 for my day time photography.
If you have a fuji or your camera supports multiple auto iso settings, then I set them as follows:
1 - Min shutter 200, Min ISO 160, Max ISO 320 - Day Time.
2 - Min shutter 200, Min ISO 500, Max ISO 6400 - Low Light.
3 - Min shutter 200, Min ISO 500, Max ISO 12800 - Someone is stealing my recycling bin at 3am and I need to get him on camera so I can find where he lives and go egg his house setting.
A big warning however…. Some cameras can still over ride the minimum shutter speed if there is simply not enough light… so even though you set it to 1/200 i still suggest keeping an eye on it when shooting in low light. Finally if you plan on switching between these auto iso settings, I suggest assigning them to a custom button like I did.
Aperture Settings
Default is f4, I find this is the best mid ground for me with regards to out of focus elements being present but not too extreme as well as the amount of light coming in. It gives me a stop or two of quick adjustment either say to either change the look of the photo or to let more or less light in thus helping the camera out and bringing the shutter speed or ISO back under control.
I would open the lens up to anywhere between f2.8 and f1.4 if I want:
More out of focus elements and more attention on the subject.
Shoot in low light.
Softest possible image - lenses at their softest open.
I would close the lens down to between f8 to f11 if I want:
Less out of focus elements if the image needs it.
Shoot in bright light.
Sharpest possible image - lenses at their sharpest mid way through the range.
Exposure Compensation
By this stage we’ve set our aperture to f4, we’ve selected Auto ISO 1 for daylight shooting and are comfortable knowing we have a minimum of a 1/200 shutter speed. The next step is to assess the ambient light and decide on whether to adjust the global exposure or not. There is no clear rule on how or when you should change it however personally I avoid making changes over + or - 1 stop. If I need to shift the exposure that much, I would much rather use a different method that I will explain soon. This is because global exposure adjustment is not a creative choice but more so a corrective one and this is how I would typically adjust it
Normal daylight - between -0.3 and +0.3
Harsh daylight - between -0.6 and 0
Overcast - between 0 and +0.6
Snow & Fog - between +0.3 and +0.6
This is just a rough guide and is very situation dependant. As a rule of thumb I am looking to overexpose fog, snow and dull overcast sky. I am looking to slightly underexpose harsh daylight. Personally I am not too fussed about having something slightly blown out if the light is very harsh but that’s a whole topic for another video.
Photometry Settings
These settings can sometimes be overlooked or even feared and I certainly remember when I started entirely dismissing them, to my own detriment of course. Well let me tell you that they are actually very useful and once you get your head around them, it will feel like you have a cheat code to aperture priority. To put simply, you will use photometry settings to tell your camera how to expose and what to expose for. I am sure every manufacturer called them something different and some even have different variations but in order to keep it simple, we will only focus on 3 main ones that you will use all the time.
The first one is called Multi and that is if you like a smart metering mode that gives you an overall balanced exposure for the whole scene. However this is not just simply an average of the exposure. The camera will detect certain scenes and expose to create as natural of a photo as possible. I use this metering mode about 70% of the time.
The second key mode is the centre weighted metering mode. As the name suggests, the camera will only expose for what is either in the middle of the frame or around the middle of where your focus point is. A good example is you know when you go to take a photo out of a window, however get annoyed because the camera is trying to expose for everything and in the process you have a well exposed window frame yet a blown out view out of that window? Well this is where centre weighted metering mode comes in and you end up with a well exposed view out of the window with the window frame falling into shadow. Aside from shooting out of windows, you can use this metering mode if you want more emphasis on a specific highlighted part of the image with the rest falling into shadow.
Finally you have spot metering which is basically a more extreme version of centre. So rather than just take a small average from the middle, this is literally the spot where your focus point is sitting on. As expected, this causes vast fluctuations in exposure when scanning the scene and i reserve this setting only for specific scenarios like exposing for the brightest highlights to create abstract photos. Finally I highly recommend assigning the photometry setting to a custom button so you can adjust on the fly.
Auto Exposure Lock
We are nearly at the end and I saved the best till last. If you can understand this and find a way to implement it into your workflow, then I honestly do feel it will have a huge positive impact on how you shoot in aperture priority. Auto Exposure Lock or AEL is a button that you will find on the back of most cameras. Obviously if you shoot only manual, then chances are you’ve re-programmed it to do something else. However many people I met on my workshops who shoot in a semi automatic setting, also have never used it…. So let’s change that. Auto exposure lock as the name suggests locks your exposure at whatever value it is at the time you press the button. It is similar to your shutter button however with one key difference. It over ride the shutter button. So when you press it and lock the exposure, the shutter button then is only used to focus and take the photo.
What does this all mean? Well it means you can now point the camera at a chosen exposure within the scene, lock that exposure and then recompose to take your photo. When you couple this with a metering mode such as centre weighted, you can now adjust the exposure without touching any dials what so ever. You literally adjust the exposure but pointing the camera at something that is exposed in the way that you like, locking that exposure, recomposing and taking a photo.
Obviously once you let go of the AEL button, the camera the unlocks the exposure and resets as normal.