Manual Mode for Beginners - Basic Elements of Digital Photography
Hey everyone! Welcome to Photog with a Blog, where I talk about all things photography! Today I will be talking about the basics to manual mode on your camera. Essentially, this blog should be like a cheat sheet for you to use when you’re new to photography and needing to recall what settings do what and how they react with each other.
Have you ever received a camera and were asked to take a photo of someone, but their camera was on manual, and you didn’t know what to do? Say less. Here’s everything you need to know about manual mode on your camera.
Background
Did you know the first photograph was made in 1827 by Joseph Niépce? It was called the “heliograph” and it’s the earliest surviving photograph made from the Camera Obscura (Harry Ransom Center, n.d.). Amateur photography specifically came about in 1888 with George Eastman and the introduction of the Kodak #1 camera. It was a simple box camera that came loaded with a 100-exposure roll of fim and when the roll was finished, the entire camera was sent back to the factory in Rochester, New York to be processed (Fineman, 2004).
Joseph Niépce Heliograph, 1827
This brings us to the digital world we live in. Today, everyone has a camera right in their pocket on their phone, but in the 90’s and early 2000’s, digital cameras took over and made film obsolete. The first digital camera actually came about in 1961 with Eugene F. Lally of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Trenholm, 2021). The first actual digital still camera came out in 1975 by Kodak engineer Steven Sasson.
1. Camera Quality
The first thing you should do when setting up your camera upon getting it is ensuring that the settings are on the highest quality possible. You can do this by setting your camera quality to RAW + JPEG Fine. This will look different on various camera menus, so if you’re not sure where to find it, you can look through the cameras instruction manual which can also be found online if you don’t have the original booklet. Use RAWs to make the best possible edits on photos and send JPEGS if you’re only sending the unedited photo. Sending a RAW image takes up a lot of space, but it’s perfect for making edits and allows for you to edit in High Dynamic Range, which essentially captures more details in highlights and shadows, which is what you want. Send JPEGS when you’re not going to be making edits, but shooting in JPEG Fine ensures that the photo quality will still be high. Do note that shooting in RAW + JPEG Fine does take up a lot of storage.
2. Shutter Speed
The shutter speed on your camera is how fast the shutter closes capturing the image. A faster shutter speed will result in less image blur, but less light will be let into the camera so the photos may appear darker. A slower shutter speed will let in more light but will result in more photo blur. For sports you may want to shoot at 1/1000, but for portraiture you can shoot in the 1/125 range, but it is recommended to never go below 1/60. My photography professor told us that 1/250 + is a fast shutter that can stop faster moving subjects, 1/125 can stop casual movement, and anything below 1/60 is considered a slow shutter, and that’s where you get blurry images. If you choose to shoot at a slower shutter speed, like if you’re planning on doing night photography where you will need a lot more light, use a tripod.
Slow shutter speed - approximately 1 second
Fast shutter speed - 1/4000s to stop the leaves in action
3. Aperture
The aperture of your camera is what allows for the light to come into your camera. The larger the opening, the more light you let in. The smaller the opening, the less light you let in. There are a few things to keep in mind here for aperture that may be confusing: the bigger the aperture, the more shallow depth of field you’ll have. This refers to how much of the picture is in focus and photos with a larger aperture tend to have blurred backgrounds (which personally I really enjoy in my photographs). The smaller the aperture, the less shallow depth of field, which means more will be in focus. The aperture numbers on your camera: smaller number means a bigger aperture, and larger number means smaller aperture. This can be confusing!
Sometimes when you’re in lower light situations, shoot wide open. “Wide open” refers to shooting with the aperture as open and large as it can possibly be (or the smallest number possible on your camera). I always shoot wide open on my camera as it allows for the most light to enter the camera as possible and because it creates a beautiful shallow depth of field in my photos.
One thing to keep in mind is if you are shooting multiple people, the first number of your aperture should be equal or close to how many people. For example, if I am shooting a group of 7, my aperture should be around f 7.1. This is to ensure that everyone in the photo is in focus, because of the fact that if you shoot at a lower aperture less faces will be in focus.
Shallow depth of field - f 5 (I would recommend even lower for an even greater shallow depth of field though)
Deep depth of field - f 16
4. ISo
ISO in basic terms is your camera’s sensitivity to light. A smaller ISO is less sensitive, and a higher ISO is more sensitive. This step can get really confusing, but a key thing to remember is the higher the ISO, the more image noise/grain your photos will have. Noise and grain are the number of visible pixels in your photos. The higher your ISO, the noisier and grainier your photos will be. I usually change my ISO depending on what I am wanting my shutter speed and aperture settings to be, it’s the last thing I check.
ISO 100 is usually the best setting to have for the least amount of image noise possible, but this is rather difficult to achieve, and I only shoot at ISO 100 if I’m in broad daylight. Typically, if its cloudy or your indoors with decent lighting and you’re shooting an event or portraiture, ISO 400-800 is the right place to be. Anything over ISO 1600 is where you start to really notice grain in your images. If your shooting sports, ISO 3200 will suffice because you are already shooting at a really fast shutter, and you need a lot more light. If you specifically want more information regarding the basics of sports photography, you can read my basketball blog post here.
High ISO - 1600 - decent amount of image noise/grain
Low ISO - 125 - almost no image noise/grain
5. White Balance
I usually leave my white balance on auto as my Nikon Z6iii does a decent job at correcting white balance in my photos. The white balance refers to how much cool tones or warm tones and how much green or purple tint is in the photo. Indoor locations tend to have more warm tones, and I prefer cool tones, so I’ll set my cameras white balance setting to stay on the cooler side. All cameras are different on how the white balance behaves, so if auto isn’t cutting it out, play with your cameras presets if it has some or mess around with the white balance manually based on your locations lighting. It’s better to have your white balance corrected in the original photo than to have to correct it in every single photo and have it match in editing.
6. Autofocus Settings
Sony, Canon, and Nikon all have different autofocus settings, so it’s best to familiarize yourself with the various settings your camera has. I like to shoot in autofocus continuous as it works best with photographing people. If you have a newer camera, you can also opt to shoot in 3D tracking. My Nikon’s 3D tracking isn’t always great, so I’ll sometimes stay on just continuous autofocus. If you’re shooting still life, you can also shoot manually and just move the manual ring until the photo is in focus.
Used a manual focus here to get the exact focus I wanted on her face.
7. Composition
This is quite frankly one of the most important things to know about photography and is also all entirely preference based. Composition in simplest terms refers to how the image is set up and how subjects are positioned within the frame. Composition can consist of many different artistic elements, including rule of thirds, symmetry, balance, depth of field, etc. Some things to keep in mind are perspective and having flattering angles of your subjects. You want to shoot eye level and not too far below or above them, unless that’s specifically what you’re going for in your photo of course. Keep note of where objects or people in your photo are placed and its best practice to ensure people are not too close to the edge of the photo. Also do keep them aligned, I usually shoot my photos with a grid on screen to see where people are lined up with the rule of thirds.
The Brooklyn Bridge is always a great example of amazing composition, which is why I keep using it. Just look at all the lines and how they take up space in the photo!
Conclusion
And that’s it! Next time someone hands you a camera, you should know exactly what to do. And if you don’t, you can always come back and read this quick guide!
All the photos I used in this blog were actually from my first digital photography class, so they were all taken when I was first learning all the settings you read about. Well, all of them except for the Brooklyn Bridge, but that's one of my favorite photos of all time, so I had to include it.
Do you use manual mode on your camera? Or do you use settings like aperture and shutter priority? Let me know!
I’m Sadie Lynn, and thank you for reading this edition of Photog with a Blog. Until next time, bye guys!
I took this photo on my first day of photography class in 2023. The beginning of something incredible.
