Mistakes Many Photographers Make, Example III

Detail, Red Hot Rod Flames

A third example, in this short series of posts, that photographers often make is to not check and re-check their camera's settings before, and in the midst of, their photography.  Let me give you a couple of examples.

You are out in the late evening after a long day of photography.  The sun has set, it is even past the "blue hour" but you spot a really nice subject that is being indirectly illuminated by the sky.  In order for you to "get the shot", so to speak, you increase your ISO to 6400, set your white balance to daylight (as you want to keep those rich yellows, oranges and reds of the late evening light), set your aperture to F/4 (in aperture priority as it is how your normally photograph) to get a sharp image but with limited depth of field so you can emphasize the subject, and then you make your images.  You are really happy when you look at them on the LCD.  You then head home and tell your significant other what a great day you had.  A bit of supper, a glass of wine and you drift off in your easy chair.

Bright and early the next day you are, again, out and about looking for images.  It is a bright, beautiful, blue sky with puffy white cumulus clouds type of day.  Perfect for the landscape images you want to capture. There are some foreground objects to lead the viewer's eye into the frame and some background objects that have some wonderful detail.  You estimate that F/8 will give you sufficient depth of field, set up your tripod and make your images.  They look great on the LCD.  Back in your car, you move on looking for more images.

You find another great image of a field of blooming yellow with lots of detail.  Again, your set up your tripod, this time set your aperture to F/16 as the flowers are from very close to infinity, and make some images. They look great on the LCD and you are happy.  So far, a great day.  You continue your hunt.

As the day progresses, you make more images.  Seredipitously, you happen across a steam engine pulling a tourist passenger train through the countryside just as you were driving along.  The train is really moving fast, but you drive ahead quickly to a road crossing a few miles up the road, stop the car, jump out and run up near the tracks just as the train approaches.  You carefully frame your composition so that the crossing gates are a good foreground and make the image perfectly. Yes!  Another great image on the LCD.

After you get back in your car, you decided to look at the day's images again.  Something doesn't look right on the LCD?  All of a sudden you realize that your ISO is STILL set to ISO 6400!  What?  How could that be?  You can't believe it!  All day you had paid no attention to the ISO or shutter speed, only the aperture setting.  Oh no! Those beautiful and delicate details of those landscape images you took earlier are full of digital noise and are a bit mushy.  Can you fix it in Photoshop?  Maybe or maybe not.  Darn!  Oh No!  What now?  Even if you can fix it, it won't be the quality you want.  That train shot you just got is blurry?  What? You jumped out of the car, ran up but didn't check your settings and, because when you hastily grabbed your camera the aperture wheel was moved by the palm of your and and was set for F/32, the shutter speed was not sufficient enough to freeze the fast moving steam engine.  You didn't check it before you pressed the shutter button.  Another one lost.

So, you now adjust your ISO down to 200, and set your aperture to F/5.6, a nice middle value for aperture priority photography.  You swear to yourself that you will check your settings from now on.  You are mad as hell with yourself at this point.

As you continue to drive you head to the city to do some street photography.  You park your car and head out to a street concert to photograph the musicians.  You are in the middle of a crowd of young people dancing and singing along.  You are having as much fun making images as they are.  A bit of jostling is going on and you are trying to adjust your camera, as you swore you would do, as well as double-check the settings as you photograph.  After the concert you get back to your car and make the drive home.  Tired, you eat a bit of supper then go to bed.

The next morning you are anxious to see your images on your 24" calibrated monitor.  You start to look at your images.  What?  Oh no!  You don't have enough depth of field on those first landscape images to keep everything in acceptable focus.  But it looked good on the LCD?  You think to yourself that you should have pressed the "depth of field" preview button and really looked at the depth of field before estimating what aperture you "thought" would be needed.  You think to yourself, "I know better than that."  "How could I do that?" You also discover that, while adjusting your camera in the crowd of party-goers at the outdoor concert, you have accidentally changed the file format over to jpeg.  What?  How did that happen?  You checked the shutter speed, ISO and aperture, but didn't check anything else.  Not again...  You also notice that the white balance on the jpegs is set to daylight, but you have been photographing under streetlights, which now makes your images look green on your LCD.  The whole day has been a disaster.  You say to yourself, "I can't believe the stupid mistakes I have made."  You, again, swear you will take more time, check and double-check your settings, apertures, shutter speeds, file formats, and all the other settings BEFORE AND DURING you next outing.  You swear you will!

Of course, this is exaggerated to make my point, but I have been guilty of some of this over the years.  I have gotten into the habit over many years to check and re-check my camera's and lens's settings during the day. I almost get paranoid over it as I don't want to accidentally miss opportunities to make photographs that may be once-in-a-lifetime or at a place to which you may never return.

One thing that I always do after a day of making images is to clean or wipe down my cameras and lenses, reset all of my settings to my "base" settings, as I have developed them over the years, charge all the batteries and put everything away in its proper place so I can tell if anything is missing or not in my bag.  By standardizing this procedure, I am confident that, each day when I start out, I know the settings of my gear and that all the equipment is with me.

Thanks for looking.  Enjoy!

Dennis Mook

Many of my images can be found at www.dennismook.com.  Please pay it a visit.  Thank you.


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