Really Lame Manual Control Questions

Okay, I have a bunch of totally retarded questions that haven't seemed (or if they were I'm too dense to understand) to get answered in the tutorials linked threads and/or in my interweb searching.

I just recently got a new A720 IS to replace my (all but dead) coolpics 5200. It has been a long, long time since I had a photography class much less did anything other than set a camera straight to program/autoscene mode and hope for the best.

WB:

For snow shooting (and w/o carrying a white card) can I just go ahead and set the custom white balance by pointing the camera at the snow (assuming it's not brown with dust)? Good enough to set this only one or two times per day if conditions change markedly or do I really need to constantly reset? I'm just assuming that the AWB setting is going to not get the job done.

Metering:

I read the how do you meter thread and am not right now going to buy a separate light meter:
I have the choice of:
Evaluative (linked to Face Detection AF frame)
Center-weighted average
Spot

I think then the simplest course of action for a primarily snow/sky type skiing shot is use spot metering off of my bare hand and shooting for the pop up metering deal to say +1.

What's throwing me off is that I've seen some places on der interweb say to minus and some to plus compensate and I'm a little lost (I also assume that going for say +1 corresponds directly to the little number that comes up when you half press in manual or Tv Av modes).

If it helps, I have irfan not photoshop or otherwise. I also don't want to have to do a ton of post processing and yes I promise to experiment on my own. Thank you for reading so far in if you indeed have.

Yo!
Best to keep this as simple as possible. You AWB should really be fine in determining white balance. I've never had issues using mine. If the snow ever looks weird, it's more likely due to underexposure than anything else. You can almost always count on exposing an additional 1 to 1.5 stops over what the camera's meter is reading. Experiment and see what works best with that particular camera. Also, evaluative metering should pretty much always do fine.

Thanks, one less thing to worry about.

Maybe to put another way,

Set the exposure to the zero reading on the meter (just for argument if that happens at 1/500 @ f8) the correct exposure would then be 1/500 @ f7 (or f6.5), right?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lemon boy

Thanks, one less thing to worry about.

Maybe to put another way,

Set the exposure to the zero reading on the meter (just for argument if that happens at 1/500 @ f8) the correct exposure would then be 1/500 @ f7 (or f6.5), right?

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Yup. But more often than not, if you're shooting skiing, you'll want to compensate on the shutter speed end of things instead of the aperture (unless you're hoping to get more depth of field).

Thanks.

Just to clarify, the meter on my camera gives values from +2 thru -2 with various shadings between (by 3rds) is each whole value = 1 "stop" or each third? (or not strictly "stop" related in this context?)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lemon boy

Thanks.

Just to clarify, the meter on my camera gives values from +2 thru -2 with various shadings between (by 3rds) is each whole value = 1 "stop" or each third? (or not strictly "stop" related in this context?)

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Each whole value is 1 stop.

thank you!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lemon boy

Set the exposure to the zero reading on the meter (just for argument if that happens at 1/500 @ f8) the correct exposure would then be 1/500 @ f7 (or f6.5), right?

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F-stops are weird. They don't really work that way. 1 stop "more" than f/8 is f/5.6, and 1.5 stops "more would be somewhere between f/4 and f/5.6. You could also stay at the same f-stop and use shutter speed compensation, so using your 1/500@f/8 example +1 would be 1/250 and +1.5 would be ~1/190.

the best thing i ever learned about f-stops, is how to know when im getting a better deal on pizza :)

^^^ What?

Anyway, phil's entertaining, indecipherable, absurd non-sequitor of a pizza-reference aside...

f-stop is a fraction or ratio- specificallly of the focal length of the lens over the diameter of the aperature opening, both in mm I think. So for a given focal length, as the aperature gets bigger, the ratio gets smaller. That's why bigger f-stop numbers actually mean smaller aperatures (An f-stop of 16 means the focal length is 16 times bigger than the aperature.) Aperatures matter because they influence depth of field. Large aperature= small depth of field (less things in focus.)

I find it easier just to think of the f-stop as the denominator of a fraction and put a 1 over it, which is kind of right. So f-stop of 2 is 1/2, which is bigger than f-stop of 16, which is really 1/16. Use it if it works for you.

Re: snow exposures. Cameras try and turn EVERYTHING into a fixed reflected grey- something like 16 or 21% or something (I can't remember.) Kind of like your pupil constricting so things always look ABOUT the same. So something unusually bright, like snow, the camera will make dull, and everything "normal", like your buddy in his new black DNA ski gear, will be basically sillouetted. You want HIM to be the standard reflected grey, and the snow to be outrageously bright and white, like it really is.

Just got it. Double the diameter pizza= four times the volume.

fuck. Funny!

LB, bring your camera to the corn harvest. Sarah has one which I've shot quite a bit and I can give you the lowdown. I've got her shooting in all manual now.

sweet! I will be bringing it and also loaning the CP out to somebody till the battery dies as well. Occasionally it takes a nice picture (1 in 100 ;) ). So they might take .25 pictures before it's dead....if the lens works.