Letting Go of Control

Spoiler alert: I prepared this a few months ago, as you can tell from the images and clips (we are in winter here in Canada). Things have changed a bit in terms of the equipment used since this was prepared but the message is the same. Read on to the end to find out…

One of the things I have always found a bit ironic in photography is that as you become more and more proficient in the craft, you might seek out better equipment typically, and then, also typically, you TURN OFF all of the advanced automatic features of that better equipment and go “full manual”. I’ve never really understood that. Why would anyone do that?

I decided to try a totally different approach with an area of activity that is growing for me: vlogging. Instead of turning everything off, I’ve put together a basic but decent rig and turned ON all of the automatic functions I could find. I’m doing nothing manually. I think it’s working really well so far. Read on to see what I’ve done. I’ve included a few video clips as well for your entertainment.

Continue reading “Letting Go of Control”

Being in Control

It’s one of the ironies of photography that we spend ever increasing amounts of money to purchase better and better cameras and lenses, acquiring more and more automatic features to aid us in getting the best images possible.

Canon 5DIII Top SideAnd then what do we do?  We turn everything off and shoot completely manually, because “that’s what pros do”.  Think about that for a minute.  Does that make sense to you?  Give your head a shake.

I recently had a moment shooting an event where I had to do just that.  Then I did a little experiment to find out just what I was missing by doing all the work myself.  Read on for the results.

Continue reading “Being in Control”