 Hector Caroselli |
Manual exposure with digital camera & light meter I am a fairly experienced film photographer who recently acquired a digital camera. Unless I am missing something, using aperture priority, shutter priority, or manual exposure seems to be a very slow process when trying to determine the correct exposure. I believe I am following the procedure explained in the owners’ manual. Is this process normally this painful? If so, can I use an external light meter and use the shutter speeds and f/stops suggested by the meter? BTW, the camera I am using is not a digital SLR but it’s considered a “prosumer” camera. Would a digital SLR be faster to use in the manual modes? Thank you.
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Christopher A. Vedros |
Using aperture priority, shutter priority, or manual exposure is technically no different on a digital camera or a film camera (provided the digital camera has those capabilities). The problem is that not all digital cameras have convenient controls that are easy to adjust on the fly. Especially if you are used to turning an aperture ring and a shutter speed dial while never moving your eye from the viewfinder. And yes, you can use an external light meter with a digital camera just as you would with a film camera.
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Ryan Jones |
Chris is right. I did a lot of research before buying my digital SLR and found that there are two distinct catagories of digital cameras: point & shoot and DSLR. I own a Nikon Coolpix 5400 which is a point and shoot camera. It works great and has all the automatic and manual features of prosumer and professional cameras, but it is painfully slow! I'm sure you are using the camera properly, the problem is that a point & shoot camera does not have the memory buffer a DSLR has. DSLRs are much more efficiant and faster than consumer and prosumer point & shoots. Honestly I haven't even touched my Coolpix since I got my D70 DSLR, with a powerful memory card the speed is just as fast as using a film SLR in manual and all other modes. My gallery has images taken from both cameras but the more candid shots were taken with the D70, images my 5400 would never be fast enough to catch.
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Daniel Diaz |
While you guys are on topic, my Fuji S5100 has an exposure bar you can adjust in manual mode, however I'm not sure if this is the same as a light meter, it's suppossed to tell you proper exposure when it's set right in the middle of the bar. My question is does it work the same as a light meter??
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Christopher A. Vedros |
Yes, Daniel. The exposure bar is your camera's light meter telling you if you have a proper exposure set.
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Daniel Diaz |
Thanks Chris, can you also tell me how accurate these tend to be, I notice I have to sometimes go lower than center to obtain a better result as my pix sometimes seem to have overexposed areas, is this when you'd use bracketing? I have an auto setting for this.
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Hector Caroselli |
Thanks everyone. It sounds like my camera and its controls is simply not designed to do things manually in a convenient and fast way. Oh well, now I have a better excuse to move up to a digtal SLR. Thanks again for the responses.
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