How to Easily Master MANUAL MODE for Perfectly EXPOSED Landscape Photos

What camera mode do you use most often?

As complicated as cameras are today, in one sense they make everything so easy. Before digital cameras I carried 2 camera bodies and dozens of rolls of slide film, Kodachrome 64, and Fuji Pro 50, 100 and 400 asa. If you needed a faster ‘ISO’, you needed a 200 or 400 asa film, or ‘pushed’ the film by shooting it at a higher as a setting on the camera and having it custom processed later. There was no switching a setting and seeing your shot on live view. Technology is incredible and manual mode is so much easier to get a good shot.

You got me to understand it. Thank You! Joe P

Thank you

I have a Sony a7r3 and use aperture priority with the exposure comp dial most of the time. However, if lighting is tricky, I will switch to full-manual mode and expose based on what I know I can tinker with in Darktable. In any mode, I tend to use multi-metering instead of spot metering.

Thinking of Zone exposure while framing or visually determining shots helps me out quite a lot. I can usually get exposure within a half stop of what I wanted without needing to futz around with bracketing.

😊morning Mark from uk
Thank you for your help and time! Moving from sports and special event photography . I thoroughly enjoy your videos and knowledge of the subjects you cover. Most of my old settings were fast and as wide as I could get! F1.8 or F2.8 , anticipation was the key and not much thought went into it really!
However, moving to Landscape photography is hard!! Bad light, thoughtful composition, special subject, manual settings from iso to shutter speed? Then there’s the expertise needed for an exceptional edit??
Thank you for your help and your imagination in your videos sir, I’m eternally grateful!😊

Thanks a lot for another inspiring and very well explained video.😀

Great video I must say you are a very good presenter not over powering very chilled

Get to the point. There is to much dead space in many videos.

Very helpful.

My first camera was a fully manual Nikon f3 underwater camera. You learned manual cause you didn't have any other choice . I would recommend using manual only for beginners because It's a lot easier now with an electronic light meter built in .

Fantastic simple explanation Mark. Thanks for the time you take to explain and educate.

This video was VERY helpful! Thank you so much for sharing this.

Great video 👍

So what’s a better way to get a good exposure, by using the light meter and finding zero or using the histogram and ETTR? Also, if you find zero on the light meter how does that correlate to where the histogram ends up? The other day I was shooting a waterfall mid day, overcast and no sun, F11, 1/5, ISO 100 and the light meter was on zero but the histogram was crammed to the right, clipping like crazy. When I adjusted to get the histogram to stop clipping on the right then my light meter was all the way to the left, negative showing underexposed. I use evaluative metering on my Canon.

👍👍👍

The technique I've started to use, is I use spot meter in most cases, and I meter three areas... the brightest area of the scene (or the brightest area that I care about at least), the darkest area (that I care about in the image) and something middle-gray or middle-towned. This tells me the DR of the scene and from there I can either take one shot exposed somewhere in the middle, or maybe slightly to the right, or use HDR if the DR is more than about 3-5 -stops difference. (And when I'm judging the bright/dark spots, I'm looking at things that I care about the image... shadows under a peer for example I may not care so much about so if they turn out black or very dark, depending on the image, I may not care so I won't meter that, but I might meter something slightly brighter than that that I do want in the image and care about. So I don't immediately go by the brights and darkest elements. And of course, this is after I have my framing so I'm not making exposure decisions based on elements that will not be in the resulting image).

Good info in a surprisingly short video. You kept the how and why of using fully manual mode concise and to the point.
That said, I have lost count of the times people have told me "I only shoot manual", only to find out they are using Auto ISO. Well, that ain't manual even though the camera's exposure mode is set to M. It's not necessarily wrong, but it definitely isn't manual.
I've béen shooting for many decades and some of the cameras I've used gave me no choice but to shoot fully manual. What I've learned is that manual exposure puts me I most fully in charge of how the image will look, but I have to be able to predict the results in my mind to decide the settings I'll use. Also, strictly manual exposure isn't always the best choice. It depends upon the situation.
You were making landscape images and that's your forte. It's also usually a slower and more deliberate or thoughtful form of shooting that really lends itself to fully manual exposure.
But there are other types of photography where some form of auto exposure can be essential, such as a lot of sports photography. Following subjects moving through different lighting conditions and having to shoot rapidly in response to the subect's actions, there's often simply no time to adjust manual exposure.
For that reason I cringe a little when someone tells me they only shoot manual. Maybe they only shoot the types of photography where that's possible, such as landscape, some macro, studio product or portrait work under controlled lighting, etc. However, only shooting manual leaves them unprepared for other, faster shooting situations. I try to encourage people to not restrict themselves to manual only, to learn how their camera works in aperture priority, shutter priority and manual + auto ISO modes, as well as how to use Exposure Compensation to tweak those auto exposure settings. Now, you weren't suggesting in the video that people restrict themselves to fully manual mode. But in my experience people often take this type of video that way, assuming it's the one and only method a "real pro" will use for everything, when it may not be unless they only shoot certain types of images.
Thanks for the excellent video, though. Very useful and informative.

The fact that mirrorless cameras show you what is basically the end result on the screen before you even take the picture makes everything so easy. I think you can even overlay a real time histogram on your screen. This is what's driving me to get a mirrorless setup. That and I'm still shooting with a D700.

Hi mark I'm doing landscape photography I'm new at photography If I'm shooting in manual mode what is the best f stopped number I use for landscape photography on manual mode I'm using a Fuji film s1000fd.

THANK YOU!!! fairly new with my Nikon D3500 and only you have managed to get me to finally understand manual mode - I can't thank you enough!

Do you ever use a Off-Camera Flash in your Landscape Photography, for an Added effect to your Image?

That’s brilliantly explained. Yes as you said I got that AHA moment. Blown out my mind with clarity of how to perfectly shoot. Thank you for this most amazing video. So many videos seen till now to get the complete idea on this subject. Here I got. 👍🙏🏽

Doesn't need actual O in light meter. -1 or + 1 is still Mid tone and doesn't need actual 0 for perfect exposure.

Great tutorial, Mark...Keep em coming! :)

Great video. When using it vertical, does it get the photo closer to the ground or does it matter vertical or horizontal. please advise. thanks

wow major difference between the two photos! For the first time, I actually am grasping how to use manual mode! Thank you!

Thanks for the tip. I was always scared of manual mode and only shot shutter or aperture priority. Now i will experiment with manual.

Actually when the triangle is at dead center it means the meter considers the light is being read as middle grey, not that it is the "proper exposure." The advantage of manual metering is that you can decide what in the scene you want metered at middle grey, not leaving it to the camera to make that decision.

Thank you for explaining this in a way that is easy to understand. I will be taking this information and applying it to help me become a better photographer in manual mode!

My first camera I got was on 12/7/20 it's a bridge camera powershot sx540hs cause of my budget. The week prior I was watching manual mode videos day and night. So on 12/7 so on 12/7 when I took my first photo of my kids in there room. No light source so dark. It was like 1/100 f5.6 iso 100 LMFAO! I like these videos that take it back to the basics. Thanks Mark!

( I saved my first manual mode picture so I can laugh at it from now and the future)

Subbed!

Experimented yesterday with full manual at a bird sanctuary. New to birds, not to photography. Would you set ISO to auto or still try estimating? It was an overcast Dec. day. with many fast birds. Thank you.

Great job (as usual!), Mark...while I've been OK shooting in Aperture Priority, full manual had me a bit...buffaloed. Your explanation...and how to play around with things to gain some competence and experience...BIG help!

No mention of using exposure compensation to try and zero in on things...beyond the scope of this session?

A great explanation of the benefits and the simplicity of manual mode. 95% of the time I'm shooting in Aperture Priority with 5-shot bracketing. However, for my upcoming trip to the Smokies I spend more in manual mode. Thanks so much for your great videos and super content.

Hi Mark, I owe you a debt of gratitude. I was having fits with my new (this year) camera, it's a Nikon D7500 with the 18 - 140 kit lens. All my exposures were coming out way under exposed and when I tried to balance it out I would get an over exposed shot - very frustrating until I viewed your video on shooting manual. I took out my camera and found that I had exposure compensation maxed out to the negative. I zeroed it out and now the camera is performing beautifully in all modes. Many many thanks to you, problem solved

I just started in photography about 5 months ago, kind of. I have been exposed to photography my whole life, my dad was a really good photographer back in film days, but never made the digital conversion. One of my original goals was to not shoot in auto at all. Another goal is to maybe get my dad back into photography, he’s retired and could use a hobby.
I often find myself shooting the same compositions with vastly different settings just to learn.
Keep up the great videos, I am enjoying the learning experience, especially with post editing as I am finding that more difficult than expected.

My goal for 2019 was to ditch manual mode. Now it’s late 2020 and I’m not super comfortable with it but I’m making myself use it more and more. This was a great video that was very helpful. Thank you!

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, I just turned 77 years old and purchased my first digital camera and have been struggling with manual mode settings. While I have no problem taking photos with my new Nikon D850 in auto mode it was a big problem for me in manual mode. Again I thank you for a very easy to understand explanation about manual mode.
Chuck

Talkative video without getting any results. Poorest one

LOL! I'm late to this show but...Dang!, it's exactly what I needed. Thanks for being such a good teacher.

Thanks for the tips.. help me alot

Most helpful video. 2nd time watching it. Learned even more. My question is, do you take any precautions about Lyme disease. If so what. We seem to be walking in the same kind of woods. Thanks.

It was so boring!
Plz be prepared and get things done faster than that!!

Thanks Mark . Have been trying to wrap my head around using the Light meter, will use this lesson over and over again.

I use manual mode mostly for landscape and program mode if there are a lot of people as subjects or the situation is unpredictable. When I hand my camera to someone else to use, I put it in full auto mode, specially if I am the subject.

All of this is great. Thank you!

I watch several different landscape photographers channels and here lately I can't get this thought out of my head. When they are doing the shots of walking thru the woods (in this case) they have to set up their camera, walk by, turn around to pick up the camera, then walk to the next spot and repeat. Must be exhausting!

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and details guide. You make photography more than a hobby.

Thanks Mark I have been meddling with auto mode for a while and always wondered why the exposure meter was never centred. Your simple explanation has created my light bulb moment....thanks so much.📷😊

Aperture priority