How to Learn to Shoot Manual

Do you need to shoot manual?

Before we go any further, let me say this. You don’t have to shoot manual. I wrote a whole article about that. You can go through your whole life, shoot a million images, make the cover of National Geographic, and have your work displayed in the Louvre without shooting manual.

You probably won’t, but you could. There are times when manual is better and times when it is almost essential. But you can get excellent results most of the time shooting in aperture priority or one of the other semi-automatic modes on your camera. An image shot at 1/1000th at f8 and ISO 100 will look exactly the same whether it was shot in manual, aperture priority, or fully automatic. Exactly the same.

Also, know that, despite many photographers spouting about how you have to shoot manual to be a professional, this is nonsense. Shooting manual isn’t going to make you a better photographer, a more successful photographer, and it certainly isn’t going to make you a professional photographer.

In fact, if you don’t learn how to do it right, all it will do is make you a bad photographer. I can’t tell you how many awful, poorly exposed images I’ve seen people post on forums wanting to know what was wrong. “But I shot in manual,” they all say. I’ll tell you what is wrong with it.

You didn’t know what the hell you were doing, that’s what’s wrong with it. M stands for manual, not magic.

So, having got that off my chest, let’s move on to the subject today, how to learn how to shoot manual. This article isn’t for the complete beginner, but pretty close. I will assume you know the basic controls and settings on your camera. If you don’t, get out your manual and read it. All of it.

Even if you don’t want to shoot manual, this article contains some excellent information and advice so, since you’ve already got this far, why not finish it?

Getting Started

I will assume that you are still shooting in fully automatic mode, the green setting. If not, feel free to skip ahead.

First, leaving your camera in automatic mode, go outside, and take some pictures. Ideally, take someone with you and take some pictures of them. Take enough so that you know you have a few keepers. Make sure you are happy with a few of them. Load them on your computer and look at them, discarding any that aren’t perfectly exposed. Repeat this process until you have at least one great picture. This will be your baseline image. Using the camera or computer software, note the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO the camera used to capture that image.

Now, look at the mode dial on your camera. If you don’t know what or where this is, go back and read the manual. This is the last time I will say that, but know that if I refer to something you don’t know how to do, it’s in the manual. Trust me.

Anyway, look at the dial. You are currently on automatic mode, probably designated by a green dot or bar. Around the dial, you will see a series of other icons and letters. We will start with the icons first. You may have more than these, but I will assume you at least have a face, a flower, and a mountain. These are part of the basic modes and are there to help you improve your photography without getting too complicated.

Take your model back outside and shoot the same image as before. If you don’t have a model, make sure something is in the foreground, a mailbox or sign will do. The light may have changed a bit, but your camera will compensate for that. Now, move the dial to each of those basic modes I mentioned and take another shot. Make note of the order you shot, so you know which picture was shot in which mode. Looking at the back of your camera, they should look almost identical.

But they’re not.

Load them back on your computer. Look at these new images, alongside your original shot. At first glance, they look the same and some may be identical. But at least one or two will be a bit different. The one shot in flower mode (macro) and the one shot in face mode (portrait) may have a different depth of field. This means that your subject is still in focus, but the background is blurred a bit. Make a note of the same three parameters as above; aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. The ISO may have stayed the same, but the apertures and shutter speeds probably changed a bit. Also, look closely again at the images and note any differences, no matter how subtle.

Basic Modes

Let’s talk a bit about what these basic modes are for and what they do. They designed them to change two or more of your settings to take the best shot of their respective subjects. The flower is for closeups (sometimes incorrectly called macro mode); the face is for portraits, and the mountain is for landscapes. There is no magic behind these modes. It doesn’t know what you are taking a picture of. As you just saw, you can shoot the same subject with any or all of them.

The close-up mode (flower) is designed for getting in close. It most likely uses a much smaller aperture (larger number — we’ll discuss this in a minute) than the other modes for the greatest depth of field. It will also use whatever settings are available in your camera and lens to get the closest focus distance. Distance to subject and aperture are two of the three factors that affect depth of field, the other one being focal length. Working close to the subject will give you a very narrow depth of field, often a fraction of an inch. A smaller aperture means slower shutter speed, so the motion of both you and the subject is a factor. In your image, since you were shooting further away, most likely everything was in focus.

Portrait mode (face) is used for just that, portraits. The aperture will be to the wide end of your lens, or smaller number. How wide depends on your lens, but it was probably in the f4 — f6.4 range. This will give you a narrower depth of field, keeping the subject sharp and blurring the background. If you missed your focus, the opposite will be true.

Landscape mode (mountain) is for shooting wide-open spaces. Once again, it will give you a smaller aperture (stop down — larger number) to increase depth of field. The difference is, it is not concerned with distance to subject. Ideally, it will have everything from a few feet in front of you to infinity in focus. You may not be able to see the difference between this one and closeup mode, but it would be interesting to note the difference in settings.

Creative Modes

Okay, now we’re ready to get away from basic modes and move into what they call creative modes. These are aperture priority and shutter priority. Your camera may have other options, but these are the two we need to focus on. This is where many professionals shoot. I do 90% of my shooting in aperture priority mode.

First go back to your baseline image and note the settings. Go back out, put your camera in automatic mode and take another shot. Unless the lighting has changed, the settings should be the same, but note the aperture and shutter speed for the new one. For the rest of this tutorial, we will not mess with ISO, unless otherwise noted. Put it at 100 and leave it there.

Now is an excellent time to discuss the exposure triangle. Entire books are written about this so I will be brief. First, let’s get ISO out of the way. Rather than affecting the amount of light, ISO affects your sensor’s sensitivity to light. That is why your camera uses a higher ISO in dark settings.

The two factors that affect the light are aperture, which is the size of the hole that allows light in, and shutter speed, which how long that hole stays open. That’s it. We will discuss why each of these affect the image differently in their relative section, but know that as you change one, you also have to change the other to keep the same exposure. If you open the aperture wider, you have to slow down the shutter speed by the exact same number of settings, called stops, or f-stops. Don’t get too caught up on that just yet, all will be made clear.

Shutter Priority

We will cover this one first because I use it the least. Your results may vary. If you shoot action or sports, you will spend more time there. In Shutter Priority, you decide what shutter speed you want to shoot.

You would use shutter priority for two basic cases; you want to freeze motion, or you want to show motion.

For sports, kids, and anything moving fast, you usually want to freeze the motion. For those cases, set the camera at a fast shutter speed, probably 1/1000th or faster. It will depend on your available light. If you can’t get the shutter speed as high as you want it, without the camera wanting a smaller aperture than you can set, you have to raise your ISO. But outside, on a reasonably bright day, this won’t be a problem.

Sometimes you will want to slow the shutter speed down to show motion. I can think of a few reasons for this, but the classic example is a waterfall. You’ve seen the images where flowing water looks like cotton? That was done with a slow shutter speed. Since it needs to be around 1/4 second or slower, you will need a tripod. It also needs to be a fairly dark location or you will need a neutral density filter on your lens. Otherwise, at such a slow shutter speed, too much light will be let in and the picture over-exposed.

Put your camera on shutter priority and set the shutter speed to the same setting you had in your original shot and take the same picture. It should look exactly the same and use the same aperture as the original. Two images shot of the same subject in the same light with the same settings will always be exposed the same, no matter how you got there.

Now take a few more images, but each time raise or lower the shutter speed. What happens? The image should still look the same. This is because every time you changed the shutter speed, the camera changed the aperture in an opposite but equal amount. Therefore, the exposure didn’t change. But the depth of field probably did.

Aperture Priority

With aperture priority, it is exactly the opposite. You set the aperture and the camera chooses the shutter speed. This is the mode I shoot in almost all the time. If you are walking around outside, f8 or f11 are good apertures. In photojournalism, there used to be a saying, “Be there and f8.” This meant that to get the shot, set your aperture to f8 and be there. This is a good all-around aperture and is also where many lenses are at their sharpest. If you need to go into a darker area, you would open up to a larger f-stop, perhaps f4. If you need everything in focus, such as for a landscape, you want to be at f16 or higher.

Let’s do the same experiment we did for shutter priority. Set your aperture to the same as in your original image and take the same shot. Still looks the same, right? And it probably used the same shutter speed you just set it to when you were trying shutter priority.

Now, change the aperture and watch how the shutter speed changes with it. Take a shot at each full stop, i.e. f4, f5.6, f6.4, f8, f11, and f16. All the exposures should be the same, but now the depth of field will be different. Study that factor as it is a principal by-product of changing the aperture.

Manual Mode

Wow. We’re finally here. I know we went around the world to get here, but you needed to understand all that other stuff to shoot in manual mode successfully. And I’ve got some excellent news. There isn’t much left to do, except practice.

I used to teach people how to juggle three tennis balls. We would spend a week or so with just one ball, learning control and technique. Then we moved to two balls and stayed there for another week. Once they mastered that, I handed them the third ball and said, “Juggle.” Once you could juggle two balls correctly, adding the third was trivial.

Once you understand the relationship between aperture and shutter, and have practiced the two modes above, manual is trivial. It’s mostly about gaining experience and knowing a suitable starting point, then adjusting as necessary.

After you have shot at shutter or aperture priority for a bit, you will learn to judge the light. Bright and sunny? F16, at 1/125th, or f11 at 1/250th, or f8 at 1/500th. Instead of just setting one, you are setting both. With just a little experience, your first attempt will be very close to correct. Then you just adjust one side of the exposure triangle to get the correct exposure.

Let’s go back to your original shot. Set your camera to M, then set the aperture and shutter speed to the settings you used in the very first image. Take the shot. Perfect, right? Congratulations, you have just shot in manual. Now, it’s just a matter of practice and experience.

But there are two more factors you need to be aware of. In the previous two settings, you adjusted one and the camera adjusted the other. Now you have to do both unless you are changing your exposure.

What do I mean by that? Let’s say, you set your manual settings and take a shot, but it’s too dark. You need to open up the aperture or slow down the shutter. You can do both, but you only need to do one to change the exposure.

But let’s say, as we did above, you take the picture in manual at your original settings. The exposure is perfect. But now, you want more depth of field. You need to use a smaller aperture, right? But you can’t just change the aperture from f8 to f16. You have just let in two extra stops of light. You also have to change the shutter speed in an opposite but equal amount. So, if you were at 1/1000th at f8, when you go to f16, you need to slow down to 1/250th to get the same exposure.

The other thing you need to know is about Exposure Compensation. If you don’t know what this is, learn it. In either of the other two modes, it is a very handy tool. Basically, if your settings are close and you just want it a little brighter or darker, you dial it in using Exposure Compensation (EC). The camera will figure out what to do. I use this all the time.

But it will have zero effect in manual mode. Why not? Because in manual mode, you are adjusting the exposure every time you change a setting. You are in complete control. There is no automatic anything. (For you more knowledgeable shooters, I am intentionally leaving out Auto-ISO).

And that’s it. Work your way slowly and carefully through this tutorial. By the time you get to manual, you will have enough knowledge to know how to use it. And hopefully, enough knowledge to know when you don’t have to use it.

After that it’s just like the punch line to the old joke, How do you get to Carnegie Hall.

Practice, practice, practice.