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I should have responded on my laptop but I had left it in my studio. My initial post was typed out on my phone so it may have came off short and abrupt, my apologies. 🙂

In my opinion, shooting in Manual is the best way to learn your camera. Many bad photographers don’t realize what aperture is or how shutter speed affects a moving shot. There was a local photographer I spoke with recently who said when she is shooting fast moving objects, she switches over to the “sport” scene mode because she doesn’t know how to do it on her camera.
How do you do this as a profession and not know how? That’s like not knowing where your hazard lights are on your car. I’m not nagging about shooting in Scene so much as nagging about the lack of knowledge of the fancy camera that cost a couple thousand dollars.

I shoot primarily in Manual, but I utilize my Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority.  On rare occasion do I shoot in any other mode. It’s a personal preference, and I’m sure you can achieve the same shooting in Auto Mode + RAW, but I like knowing I have that control over the image.

As for ‘salvaging’ images, there are simply some images that cannot be saved. I learned this the hard way. I had to shoot where we were fighting for light during winter hours.  The images were beautiful, but horribly underexposed. The grain from trying to bring up the light was noticeable even after processing and no matter what I did with the RAW file, it just continued to look worse. That’s when I learned to schedule outdoor winter portraits significantly earlier in the day. If you have to jump through hoops to fix* an image, chances are that it’s not going to turn out to be something worth putting on your client’s wall. Granted, I don’t nail every shot, and shooting in RAW helps me keep a consistency in my images.

*fix does not refer to composite images or adjustments such as head swapping. 😉

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Learn how to shoot in Manual, and ONLY Manual.

Never, ever, ever, ever EVER use your body flash. Invest in your equipment and purchase an off camera flash.

Don’t be afraid to learn something new. I learn new things about my D600 every day. Recently I somehow jammed up my sensor and I was not properly exposing images during a shoot. I pulled out my phone where I keep my digital copy of the manual and found out how to reset my body to factory settings. A few tweaks to the Manual settings and I was good to go.

If you have to ‘salvage’ an image in post, don’t use it.

Avoid over editing and overuse of actions. Learn how to create your own and practice to find YOUR style.

 

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